Father's Day

Father's Day has been my favorite holiday (or whatever it is) for more than a decade now. It's early in the summer so school is out but summer camps haven't started yet. I spend most of the day with my kids. This Father's Day I was with my family from the time I woke up until just a few minutes ago when they all went to bed.

Just before 8am, my daughter Lisa and I rode to the Greenfield Criterium, a race that has been one of the Pennsylvania State Bicycling Championship races for more than a decade and has always been held on Father's Day. From 2001 - 2004 Lisa raced at Greenfield in individual races and with me on the tandem. Today we both used the ride to the race as a 7-mile warm up: me for the bike race, she for a five-mile run that is part of her summer training for cross country in the fall.

I warmed up with my teammate Kevin then we lined up at 9am for the 55+ State Championship race. The field was small, just over 20 riders, but included several masters state and national champions. Worse than that for me, each one-mile lap of the 20-lap race ends with a 1/4-mile 5% climb. On the positive side, my wife and kids were on the side of the road near the start-finish line cheering every lap. They only cheered for me for five laps. I was hanging in for most of five laps, but at the end of the fourth lap they rang the bell for a premium prize or "preem" as they are called. For the first four laps there were a few half-hearted attacks that got sucked right back into the pack so I could hang on. After that bell rang, one of the stronger riders took off on the long, shallow downhill. By the flat stretch at the bottom of the hill we were strung out in a line going 32mph. I was 8th at the beginning of the lap and last as we turned up the hill to the start-finish line. By the time they crossed the start-finish line I was gasping, wishing I had skipped breakfast, and watching the rest of the riders disappear.

But I only expected to last three laps, so I felt pretty good. We cheered for my teammate and for Scott Haverstick for a few more laps then Lisa and I rode home to change for a day trip to NYC. It was fun to be in a pack again and riding fast, even if it was not for very long. I am going to need a lot of hill training when I get back from Iraq.

Just after 11 am we were on the road to NYC. We drive to Newark, park the car and take the train to Penn Station when we go to NYC. When we first got to NYC my kids walked south on Broadway from 32nd to get some lunch and I went up to 6th and 47th to the NY Post office. I visited a friend there for a few minutes, but like every major daily they do maximum work with minimum staff, so after we chatted for a while I went across the street to Pret a Manger (Ready to Eat) for a sandwich and a drink since the kids had already finished eating.

While I was eating, a tall man in his early 60s strode in. He was dressed casually in expensive clothes. He had a theatrical air enhanced by his well-dyed, well-coiffed red hair (NO ONE his age has red hair). He was waving a $20 bill over his head and saying "I need change." He passed three other people in line and shoved the bill toward a young woman behind the counter who took it then continued to wait on the customer in front of her. Mr. Drama paced left, turned and looked at me (I was in uniform) and said "Gussman, what MOS are you?" in a very Broadway voice. I kept eating. He said, "I was a 95B20 in Quan Tri in 1967. I used to drive lifers like you crazy." Then he grabbed his money and strode out.

This dramatic draftee was in when soldiers wore their rank on their sleeve or collar. He had no idea what rank I was and assumed I had served for the last three decades or more. You just don't get guys like him in the Army without a draft.

Then I met my kids at 23rd and we went to Chinatown to shop at the street vendors. Lisa's senior project was a study of street vendors. She took me to a shop that had a basement storage area where a street vendor had taken her to show her the best stock she had. We walked back to the north on Broadway. Nigel and I got coffee and watched people go by while Lauren and Lisa shopped. We then took the Subway to Penn Station and cuaght a train to New Jersey. I have been trying to eat food I can't get in Iraq. Almost every day I buy bread from a bakery. Today it was NY Challah from Zaros. We at Chinese food in New Jersey (Chinese food at the DFAC is not very good.) then drove the 150 miles back to Lancaster singing along with a playlist of songs from Lauren's iPod:

Boom Boom Boom -- the outhere brothers
Spice up your life -- spice girls
Because you loved me -- Celene Dion (Very funny when sung by a 9-yr-old boy)
Back at one -- brian mcknight
Could you be loved -- bob marley
Baby baby -- Amy Grant
I know you want me (calle ocho) -- pitbull
Number one -- john legend (featuring Kanye west)
She hates me -- puddle of mud
The lion sleeps tonight -- lion king soundtrack
Let it rock -- kevin rudolph and lil wayne
Paper planes -- M.I.A.
Wake me up before you go go -- Wham!
Beautiful Girls (remix) -- sean kingston
Hello, I love you -- the doors
Get off of my cloud -- the rollingstones
Boom Boom Pow -- Black Eyed peas
Single ladies -- Beyonce
Welcome to the world -- kevin rudolph
Let's call it off -- drake
Get silly -- V.I.C.
Girl talk songs
New Soul -- yael nai m
1234 -- feist
Hot Revolver -- lil wayne and kevin rudolph

Father's Day doesn't get any better than this.

Rainy Day in America

Today I washed clothes, ran errands and also did nothing for an hour or so. It was raining. I did not want to ride the bike because I wanted it to be clean for the race tomorrow. I walked in the rain a little just to enjoy the feeling of rain. I heard it rains in the Fall in Iraq and the whole country turns into grimy mud. I am quite sure that is true and rain in Iraq is as miserable as sun in Iraq can be. But here every kind of weather is wonderful.

The kids and I ate pizza for dinner because even with the tons of food we get, you can't get real USA pizza in the DFAC.

Drive Toward the Sun

For the almost 200 people attending the memorial service for Carol Jo Crannell today, the directions to get from the service to the reception afterward included the line "drive toward the sun." The service was held in the auditorium of the Physics department at Catholic University in Washington DC. The service afterward was at the home Carol had lived in with her family for more than three decades in Silver Spring, Maryland. Silver Spring is northwest of Catholic U. so the directions took us through a short maze of DC streets before we turned north. It was 6pm when the service ended so driving west meant driving toward the sun (actually, as Carol would known well, the sun was not exactly west, but 15 degrees south of west at 6pm since it is Daylight Savings Time).

The service was a celebration of a life well lived by family, friends, teachers who worked with Carol on a NASA outreach program to schools, and colleagues from NASA Goddard. After the funeral for an infant child I attended earlier this week, it was good to be at a service for woman who lived her life well and fully. It is no small irony for me that the grief I have experienced during my first weeks of deployment is in America, not in Iraq.

Here's the short bio on the program for the service:

Carol Jo Argus grew up in Columbus, Ohio, the oldest of four children.  The nuns at her Catholic schools successfully encouraged her parents to support her academic endeavors.  She earned her B.A. from Miami University and a PhD from Stanford University, both in physics.  While a graduate student, she married Hall Crannell and had the first of her three daughters.

After graduate school, the family moved to Maryland where her house was always open to friends and filled with an abundance of pets. Carol worked for Goddard Space Flight Center as a solar astrophysicist, studying solar gamma rays and playing an instrumental role in the success of SUNBEAMS, a NASA teacher internship program.  She loved going to the balloon launches and seeing her payloads rise safely into the air.  

Carol was active in Girl Scouting her entire life, leading large camping trips and teaching other leaders outdoors skills.  She was a strong advocate of her local civic association, a clerk of course in her daughters’ summer swim league, and a regular blood donor.  Once her daughters grew up, she began square dancing with Hall, and the two of them managed to get at least one of her granddaughters hooked.

Carol is fondly remembered by her husband, her three siblings (Pam, Scott, and Connie), by her three daughters (Annalisa, Francesca, and Tasha), by her eight grandchildren (Rebecca, Lauren, Argus, Iolanthe, Lisa, Nigel, Anika, and Janelle), and by her many friends and colleagues.

Tour de Tallil Ali Air Base, Iraq

Rich Ruoff, bicycle race promoter extraordinaire has agreed to serve as promoter for the Tour de Tallil Ali Air Base, Iraq, on Saturday, September 5 at 0500. He already has the race up on his web site and will be putting the event on www.bikereg.com the place where bicycle racers around the country find and register for races. Rich wants to actually be on site for the race which is not going to happen, but it is fun to see a race in Iraq on his calendar of events.

I will be riding in one of Rich's road races on June 28, the day before I go back to Iraq. It is a very hilly race on country roads near Lancaster so my big goal will be to avoid being lapped by the winner. I have been riding at Tallil, but riding on flat roads does not get me in shape for hills.

Yesterday I rode a mile or so in the rain, another very strange experience for someone who has been living in Oklahoma, Kuwait and Iraq. I saw a couple of storms in Oklahoma, but they were over in hours. The rain here in Lancaster was off and on for two days. It is SO green here.

The Unit Circle

Today I went on a long shopping trip with my youngest daughter. She is off to college in the fall and has one course left to choose, the other three are freshman requirements at the University of Richmond. She either will take general chemistry or calculus. The mention of calculus lead her to say how the unit circle drove her nuts in her high school calculus course. "Why did we have to memorize all of those fractions of pi and the square root of two?" she said. It turns out her teacher did not explain why the unit circle is so useful. It's not that a circle with a radius of one ever occurs in real life, the point is that every other circle can be converted into the unit circle then all the calculations relating to it are divisible by one. And the sines and cosines relating to the position of any point on the circle read directly--they don't need to be factored. The unit circle above is the way she learned it: static, with key points to memorize.

But the unit circle is better understood live. When it moves, it makes sense immediately, as you can see here.

OK, enough geek stuff. The point of this post is just that talking about abstract ideas makes me happy, so these two weeks in America really are a rest from the concrete reality of carrying a weapon, walking on rocks and riding in sand. It's raining now in Lancaster. I am going outside to enjoy it.

Catching Up with a Lot of Friends

If you think driving and talking on a cell phone is an indication that the end of the world is at hand, stop reading here.

I drive and talk on the phone. I have been doing this awful thing since 1993 when I had a five-watt cell phone powered by a lead-acid battery that was as big as a lunch box. When I talk on the the phone on a highway, I drive slower and keep right. When I am not talking, I drive faster.

Anyway, I drove to the Wake for my friend's baby girl and talked to friends nearly all the way there and back--3 1/2 hours each way. I thought it would be good to be distracted rather than think too hard about how terrible it is to lose a child. The gathering at the funeral home was sad for everyone. I realized I had never been to a funeral for an infant. Little Candace looked more like a doll than a person, peaceful and perfect. Her father is a generally positive guy and was his usual affable self, putting others at ease and giving a kind reassuring word to the sad people around him. He knows the sadness will hit him tomorrow at the actual funeral, but today he is holding up well.

On the way back I called more friends and made plans for visits before I go back to Iraq. I still can't begin to think how difficult it is to deal with losing a child. I also remembered the last Echo Company family funeral I attended. The father of one of our soldiers died suddenly last summer. The funeral happened to be on our drill weekend. There were 70 soldiers at that drill. More than 50 attended the funeral service. I know if they were not 6000 miles away everyone in Echo would have been at the service and helping the family to recover from their loss.

Good Times, Bad Times

Today I had a wonderful day catching up with my co-workers and meeting my new boss (when I return).

I also got some bad news from Iraq. Another soldier from our unit went home a few days before I did. His daughter was just born and he got to be there. But the happy occasion turned to mourning when his new daughter died suddenly. It happened Saturday while I was traveling. The wake is tomorrow afternoon in Altoona PA about 3 hours away, so I should be able to attend. It's good that he could be home for his family, but so sad that his leave from Iraq would be marked with tragedy.

Home

At 5pm yesterday, my daughters picked me up at Harrisburg International Airport, just 57 hours after I showed up at the passenger terminal at Tallil Air Base. Since we gained 7 hours, the trip actually took 64 clock hours. But my leave did not start until one minute after midnight today, so I have only used 18 of the 360 hours (15 days) of leave.

When we got back to Lancaster from Harrisburg last night, we picked up my son Nigel then went out to dinner at Isaac's Restaurant & Deli, my favorite place to eat in Lancaster since they opened in 1983. All of the sandwiches are named after birds. My favorite sandwich is a Bird of Paradise:
An all-time favorite from our original menu! A combination of mushrooms, green olives, fresh lettuce and tomatoes, melted Swiss and Muenster cheeses on rye with mayo. 7.39
My kids each have a favorite sandwich so we ate at Isaac's then went to the Starbucks on Columbia Avenue. I got a free latte for coming back from Iraq. I'll get another one next year. We all talked and laughed till 10pm when I turned into a jet-lagged zombie and went to bed.

This morning, Nigel and I went to Dosie Dough a coffee shop and bakery near Franklin and Marshall College where my wife is a professor. We rode bikes. I had a croissant and a latte. We all walked to Church together. After Church I went to the Bike Line of Lancaster where my new bike was waiting for a test drive. The GT Peace 9 R is army green and will be stylin' in Iraq.

I rode 20 miles by myself then a dozen more with Lisa who wants to do a bunch of bicycle cross training while I am home. We'll be going to a New Orleans brass concert in the park tonight.
Tomorrow is Philadelphia.

Always, Always Volunteer

The last bit of advice my Dad gave me when I enlisted in 1972 was "Volunteer. Don't listen to those [other soldiers--expletives deleted]." So I did. In basic training when no one else's hand went up, I volunteered to be one of the Latrine Queens--the name given to those who clean the bathrooms. Jersey, one of the smart guys, also raised his hand for this job and smiled when he saw me volunteer also. I got hassled right away. My roommate, 'Bama, said "What in the Hell did you do that for Guss? Have you lost your damn mind since breakfast?" I shrugged. I did not feel smart at the time. Three days later I felt absolutely brilliant. Everyone except the latrine queens and the buffer crew went for a 10-mile, 4am road march in a 50-degree Texas February rain. Jersey and I had to stay back and clean the latrines for an inspection by some higher command.

When the soggy marchers got back they had to stay outside until the inspection was over. Jersey and I and the buffer team smiled and waved at the rest of the platoon. 'Bama later conceded that Yankees weren't so damned dumb after all.

So I have continued to volunteer. Yesterday when we got ready to load the buses to go to the airport in Kuwait, they asked for seven sergeants to be (I am not making this up) Pushers and Counters. The Counters count the soldiers getting on the bus and eventually on the plane. The Pushers keep them moving to get the buses and planes loaded and unloaded. I was a counter, so I counted to 160 three different times as everyone walked past me. I stood out in the sun longer than everyone else, but we were already out for a long time. When we got to the airport, I was stationed at the bottom of the ramp to count the soldiers as they boarded our DC-10 to America. But before I started my final count, the ground crew told the pushers, counters and the officer and NCO in charge of the plane to drop their bags on seats--at the front of the plane! It turns out the pushers and counters got the business class seats. In this old plane, the business class seats are not as good as new planes, but they WAY better than regular seats.

When I volunteered, a couple of sergeants standing behind said under their breaths almost together, "Ain't no f-in way. . ." Seemed like a good trade to me. I slept for almost half of the 15 hours we were in the air.

Just a note on nicknames. When I went through basic the first time the forty recruits in our platoon were from almost as many states, hence the state nicknames. 'Bama, my bunkmate in basic introduced himself as "Leonard Norwood from Sawyerville, Alabama, population 53. I had me a job down the road at an A&P store, but it closed down so here I am. Sawyerville is just down the state highway from Talledega, the biggest racetrack in the world. Did you know. . ." He went on like that for the rest of the basic. By the time I went home on leave after basic training, I had lost my Boston accent forever and spoke with a drawl. 'Bama, Jersey and I went to tech school at Lowry AF Base in Denver and remained buddies. A month later my Dad, my sister Jean and Jean's best friend Mary drove my car--a 1969 Torino Cobra--all the way to Denver. If I remember correctly Jersey wanted to be my brother-in-law as soon as he met Jean and 'Bama was hopelessly in love with Mary.
The last time I spoke to 'Bama he was on disability leave from the railroad and wanted me to come down and see a race at Talledega with him. He is married with grown kids, so he did not wait for Mary to come back to Denver.

Going Home--Day Two

I am still in Kuwait. In fact, I am still at the Air Force base where we arrived.
So after the 6-hour, 200-mile trip yesterday beginning at 0800, I have not moved.

But I did get up at 0500 to find the 24-hour chow hall is not quite open 24 hours and was actually closed till 0530. I could not wait for that and make my 0600 briefing, so I ate a turkey sub at Subway. At 0600 we had a 45-minute gathering to get our flight itineraries. We meet again at 1245 to go through customs outside (forecast high 118) in our uniforms (long sleeved so we don't get cold).

After we go through customs, we load on buses to go to the commercial airport. After that five-mile trip we will wait in tents (although these are air conditioned) until 830pm. At that point we will board the aircraft to the US which will stop somewhere between here and Atlanta for gas and arrive about 0830 Saturday morning. Then at Noon I will fly to Harrisburg, then home.

After this, a commercial flight to anywhere in the world is going to be a piece of cake. On the way back we do roughly the same thing, except losing time so it is longer on the clock. I can't wait.

(This post won't go up on the internet until we have arrived. I don't say anything about troop movements until they are over. --Neil)

Chaplains: Then and Now

During my first enlistment, the chaplains I met were mostly from mainline Protestant denominations including the kind of Baptists who go to seminaries as well as Catholic priests. A chaplain in the 1970s was, in my experience, a well-educated mid-30s and older guy who was well-read, but not scholarly, not very fit, and liked the company of soldiers.

One of our chaplains is exactly that, mainline denomination, pastor of a large church in a small town back home, struggles to stay fit and watch his weight, is affable and friendly. His sermons tend to exhortation and have no hard edges. He went to a denominational seminary, but did no post-graduate academic work.

But every other chaplain I have met so far would have been too strange for the 1970s Army. If the culture was all in a swirl outside the gates, the 1970s chaplains were the recruited in the 60s and were not campus radicals.

Before we left, the chaplain for our battalion was a short, intense Greek Orthodox priest who looked vaguely familiar when I met him. When he introduced, I got one of the biggest surprises of my first months back in the Army. Fifteen years ago, our Greek Orthodox chaplain was the assistant chaplain of Franklin and Marshall College. In matters of politics he on the Left, but he was called to serve with soldiers after 9/11 and had already been on one deployment. In fact he left our unit to go with the Stryker Brigade just a few months before we deployed.

The chaplain at the most recent contemporary Protestant service I attended raised his hands to praise the Lord while the rock band played up front. He preached on sin and called people who wanted to commit their lives to The Lord to come up to the front of the Church. In the 1970s the Evangelical pastors had to be rather circumspect about altar calls. This intense career chaplain, who looks like he could serve on the line with his armor troops, conducts his service just as I assume he would back home.

Another chaplain who I see in the DFAC and out on the bus stops is also an Evangelical. He is a guy who can identify with soldiers. One time I was sitting with him in the chow hall he was talking about how much he is looking forward to the next Dan Brown movie. He loved the DaVinci Code movie. He also liked the Matrix movies. He watches a lot of movies. He plays video games. Again, hard to imagine him serving in the 70s Army.

I have attended the Catholic service at 5pm the last two Sundays just to hear the homily by one of the Catholic priests. This chaplain loves New York. He was educated at Columbia, taught philosophy at Fordham, and after his beloved New York was attacked, decided to serve. He was deployed before and just volunteered to extend his current deployment for another year. He is a big, cheerful guy who looks more at home in camouflage than priestly vestments. (By the way, I have been to three different services with the priest wearing vestments. It still looks weird to me seeing those long white, or purple, red robes worn with combat boots.) While this chaplain preaches at the main base on Sunday, he is not on base during the week. He flies out to smaller bases in the surrounding area to do pastoral counseling at the forward bases.

In addition, there are Gospel services with lay ministers who preach. That is one thing that is exactly the same as the 1970s. When I was stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany, in the 1970s, the most lively service was the Sunday night Gospel service. It's the same here. Back then the minister was an sergeant first class from our tank battalion. Here he is a retired first sergeant who came back as a civilian contractor. The choir leader is a staff sergeant. She is on active duty.

The Journey Home Begins

It's getting close to 9pm so the temperature here in Kuwait is just dipping below 100 degrees. It was only 113 today when we arrived at 1pm, but the body armor and helmet we are required to wear for the flight from Iraq to Kuwait make it feel even warmer. An hour after we arrived we were allowed to turn the body armor in at a storage warehouse so we don't have to wear it here. In fact, I turned in my weapon yesterday so I am feeling like a very successful dieter!!! Those pounds just melted away (fr a couple of weeks anyway).

The entire trip from Iraq to Lancaster should take three days, four at the worst. It will take more than a day and maybe two days just to get from the front door of the passenger terminal at Tallil Ali Air Base to taking off in Kuwait--I will spend more than a day and maybe two traveling the first 200 miles from Iraq to Kuwait, then hopefully cover the remaining 6000-odd miles from Kuwait to Lancaster PA.

The trip really began at 9pm last night. I went to the Air Force passenger terminal to find out when my flight to Kuwait would leave. They said I had a report time of 815pm Thursday evening and I would fly out at 1115pm, arriving just after midnight. That plane was full with more than 50 soldiers on R&R leave. There was also a flight at 1130 this morning. I changed my mind five times about taking that one, then the ground crew reassured me I would not lose my seat on the night flight if the day flight had problems, so I took it.

For those of you who think commercial travel is a pain, here's my trip to date:
0800--My platoon sergeant drives me to the terminal in a maintenance truck. I wait in an air conditioned room for 40 minutes, then
0840--The Air Force clerk at the desk collects ID cards and makes up a flight manifest.
0855--We are called to the scale to get weighed with our gear and bags for the flight then we go outside to a tent to wait for our plane. The tent has a vent, but it is already 100 degrees and climbing and we are wearing our uniforms, so we all remain as still as possible and wait.
1045--The plane is 30 minutes away. We go outside and line up to be counted. Then we sit in a pallet storage area because it has shade. It is now 110 degrees.
1115--The plane lands, the cargo is unloaded--just one pallet and we line up again. This time we put on our 35-pound body armor, helmet and bags. We stand in the sun, then ten minutes later the loadmaster says there is manifested freight on the way. We have to wait. So we go back to the pallet shed. The tent is 20 feet from the pallet shed. The air-conditioned building is 30 feet away. We are not allowed in either one. So we sweat. The temp is creeping toward a high of 118.
1150--Pallet arrives. It gets loaded. We put on armor and line up again. Then we walk to the plane--a C-130 Hercules which is lucky for us. The plane is half full and we can slouch in the webbing seats. We must wear the body armor and helmet all the way to Kuwait. We sweat.
1240--We land in Kuwait. The frieght is unloaded and we wait on the plane for a bus. Since we are on the ground out of Iraq, we can take off the body armor. Not everyone does because if you take it off, you have to carry it and it is easier to carry on your back than in your hand. I leave it on. I am reading a new book of Orwell's essays called "All Art is Propaganda." The other folks on the plane are listening to IPods or waiting. No one is talking. We are all strangers and no one is happy.
1300--The bus arrives and we drive to the transient holding area. The bus is air conditioned--Ahhhhh. After a 20-minute bus ride, we arrive for in-processing in Kuwait. Because there are only seven soldiers on R&R leave, the initial inprocessing is quick. They tell us not to write on the bathroom walls or have sex in the tents then sign us into the base.
1330--We walk a quarter mile over rocks to storage warehouse for body armor. A very good natured young captain waits for me as the other soldiers walk to the warehouse. They are walking fast because they want to be rid of the armor. The bone spur in my heel is getting worse and I am walking slow. The captain asks if I am having trouble. I tell him about the bone spur and he seems releived it is not anything worse. I really need to get this thing fixed.
1345--We fill out all the papers and get rid of the body armor. Next we go back to the tent where started and fill out another form. Then we walk several hundred yards the other way and turn in those forms to the people who will arrange our travel.
1405--Now we get tents. Billeting office has three clerks. It takes 10 minutes to get tents for seven of us. Up to this point I was thinking I had screwed up by taking the early flight. Then I remembers that I would have been doing all this paperwork at 2am with more than 50 people instead of just 7. It would have been cooler, but it would have been the middle of the night. And since our report time if 6am, I would have gotten to the tent at 230 am, woken up everyone else in it, then slept very badly worrying about missing the 0600 briefing.

230pm--dropped my bag in the tent and went to the chow hall. Ate a sandwich, went to the Green Beans coffee place, drank a latte and read the newspaper. Then I went bakc to the tent and went to sleep.

620pm--Got up and went to dinner. Met a nice group of guys at the Post Chapel near the chow hall. Went to their Thursday night meeting for while, then got on line and started writing this post.

930pm--going to bed soon. More tomorrow when I find out my flight details.

SUVs are Status Symbols Here

Most of the thousands of soldiers on Tallil Ali Air Base walk or take buses or ride in the back of 5-ton trucks to get where they are going on a post that stretches across dozens of square miles of sand and rock. A few hundred soldiers and airmen ride bicycles. Senior maintenance soldiers get 'Gators: four-wheel-drive golf carts made by John Deere and other manufacturers.

Senior officers, sergeant majors, commanders, and many garrison staff soldiers get SUVs. For Explorers, Chevy Suburbans, GMC Yukons as well as full-size crew-cab pickup trucks by the big three American automakers. The SUVs are the real status symbols around post. SUVs fill the parking lot of the DFAC for each meal near the end of the dining hours when the senior officers eat.

The SUVs are either light silver or white--colors that reflect rather than absorb the heat of the Iraq summer. Hybrids and high-mileage cars may be the cars to own back at home--at least for those of us who live in cities, but here a white or silver SUV is the vehicle to drive.

KBR is Much More Than What is on the News

Before I was here in Iraq, my association with the initials KBR was with whatever bad news was reported about insider contract deals and some sort of shady arrangement that had Dick Cheney in the background like the Emperor in "Star Wars."

But here in Iraq, KBR are the initials on the red ID tag lanyards of the people that are behind all the good stuff for soldiers here at Tallil Ali Air Base. KBR people run the 24-hour House of Pain gym and make sure it is clean, cold water is available and all the various soldier-led classes are scheduled and supported. They run the weekly 5k race, they staff the cyber cafes, the free-phone rooms, the library, the rec centers, the DFACs, they fix the air conditioners, and now they are starting to leave.

In the month I have been here Brook, Jelena, and Steve among many other KBR people have helped me to find the people who run every activity the soldiers in my unit have asked about or wanted to do. The KBR folks are cheerful, helpful and really interested in making things as good as possible for soldiers. But as the KBR contracts expire and others come in to replace them, some of my favorite people are worried about their jobs. It will be a shame if the folks who most want to help soldiers are replaced and cut instead of retained. In the future I will not think of the contract lawyers at KBR, but the smiling faces who serve me food and set up Spin class.

The Silent Guitar Player on the Bridge

On the path between my trailer park home and the gym a 20-foot long wooden foot bridge spans a dry, rock-filled stream bed. The long-timers (who were here last year) say that during the fall rains, the dry stream beds actually fill with water. I've never seen it.

The last four nights as I cross the bridge coming back from the gym or coffee shop a tall (6-foot, 5-inch) soldier in PT uniform (gym clothes) has been standing on the bridge strumming a 12-string electric bass. He has no amplifier, he is just picking the strings.

Last night, curiosity got the better of me and I asked him why he was on the bridge. It turns out that his massive guitar weighs almost as much as body armor (35 pounds) and he supports the guitar on the bridge while he practices for a return to the stage in the fall.

One of our mechanics, a specialist, was the lead singer (if that's the right word) in a metal band before we deployed. He is a huge, bald guy in his late 20s who also kickboxes when he is not singing about eating dead babies or whatever metal songs are about.

But the big, bald dude on the bridge is a 45-year-old captain. He is also a disciple of Metallica, but it seems somehow stranger to me that a middle-aged officer in an active Army armor unit would be a metal performer, than a 27-year-old mechanic. When I wrote about the Gospel Rock Band yesterday, I did not mention that two of the five members will be gone in mid August. The Captain told me one of the chaplains asked him about playing in the Gospel rock band. The captain won't be singing Gospel. He told me he has a residence in Hell.

One of the things I like about being around soldiers is that they tend toward extremes. In a place like this, people don't equivocate. The soldiers that go to Church are there because they want to be. And the soldiers who hope for a home in Hell are ready to tell anyone who asks.

Choir Update--Home in a Week

To the list of choirs I wrote of earlier, I have to add the choir at today's contemporary service at Adder Chapel (from Anthrax to Adder--what's next?). Actually, it's no a choir, but a rock group in camouflage. The two lead singers play amplified acoustic guitars, they are backed up by an electric guitar, an electric bass and a full drum set. These guys really rocked too, they are from units all over the base. One of the singers is an infantry captain, the other is an engineer sergeant. All but the bass player are big guys, over six feet tall and 200 pounds. These are not skinny teenagers with a garage band. They sang contemporary hymns then a completely rock arrangement of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" that had me singing along at the top of my lungs.

The Chaplain, whom I met the day before at the DFAC, is a very straightforward evangelical who admires Billy Graham and has an altar call at the end of the service. He had his hands in the air while the band played--unusual at Chapel services except the Gospel service.

And in somewhat related news, if my flights go well, I should be listening to the Wheatland Presbyterian Church Choir one week from today. I get 15 days leave which for me starts when I land in Atlanta after leaving Tallil. This also means if it takes extra time to get back, it is not charged to me as leave. I will have at least 13 days at home, since the first and last day include getting to and from Atlanta.

We Get a Combat patch

As of 0900 yesterday morning, all the soldiers in our unit are authorized to wear a combat patch. This is a patch worn on the right sleeve and is the unit you served in combat with. The left sleeve is the patch for the unit to which you are currently assigned. So I and many of my fellow soldiers have the same patch on our left and right sleeves. If a soldier has been in combat with more than one unit, he or she can pick which unit is on the right sleeve.

Many people have multiple deployments and tend to put the coolest patch or their favorite unit on their right sleeve. A few of the mechanics in our unit have been deployed with 82nd or 101st Airborne and wear those patches instead of the our Keystone patch. When I went to my most recent Army training school, one of the instructors was a female generator mechanic who was taken from her unit in Afghanistan and deployed to another country which she could not even name with a Special Forces unit. She is entitled to wear a Green Beret patch--and did.


How proud are some soldiers of their combat patch. One of my teammates when I was on Green Mountain Cyclery of Ephrata was a soldier who had served in the 2nd Armored Division during the first Gulf War. He had a scale replica of the "Hell on Wheels" patch (Patton's division) tattooed on his right shoulder in exactly the spot where the combat patch would be on his uniform.


Our Keystone patch is all red when it is on the dress uniform. Because 28th Division units had so many casualties in previous wars, the red Keystone is also called the Bloody Bucket. It is only a historical reference now.

Riding in the Running Race

Photo by Jelena Bozic, Tallil Ali Air Base

Every Wednesday at 0600 is the “First Light 5k” race at the “House of Pain” gym. For almost a month now I have not been allowed to run because of a bone spur in my right heel. So while I can’t run, I have volunteered to be the “Pace Bike” for the weekly event. The course has six right turns and two lefts on double oval so every week for the first few weeks, someone would get lost. One new racer who claimed to be able to run under 18 minutes for the 5k got off course while in the lead, so the pace bike is actually useful. I also like being at the race since almost forty of Echo Company’s hundred soldiers run every week. The top runners in the company are training for the Army 10-miler in October. We will have a team. But the majority are training for a passing time or a better time on their two-mile run. In any case Echo Company is about 1/3 of the field most weeks, but is out of the prize categories.

The organizers—the base Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) office—give medals to first and second place in 10-year age groups from under 30 to 50+ and medals to the overall male and female winners. I got a medal in the only race I ran because that week the usual winner was on leave. The overall winner for the last three weeks is a 55-year-old warrant officer who runs between an 18-flat and 18:30 5k. So my medal was a matter of good timing. There is supposed to be a lieutenant who is currently on leave who runs a 17-minute 5k, but for now the old guy rules.

In Chapel Choirs Men are the Majority

SOME MEMBERS OF THE TALLIL GOSPEL CHOIR AND DANCE CHOIR

At first glance, chapel choirs look and sound like their civilian counterparts—except they are several octaves lower. Women are the majority in churches and choirs everywhere reflect that. But in the chapel choirs, we see all the variety of the civilian world, with men doing most of the singing.

At Fort Sill, the choir in the Anthrax Chapel for the protestant service was one young lieutenant with a guitar who sang a solo every week and provided the music for the hymns.

In Tallil, every faith community has a choir and they are as different as the denominations they represent. At the Sunday evening Catholic service, the choir was three men, one with a guitar, leading the singing for a service with almost 100 soldiers. At the contemporary Protestant service in the Air Force area, they had a 6-member choir with a keyboard and several other instruments and PowerPoint Hymns for a congregation of 25.

The traditional Protestant service in the Army chapel had a keyboard player and three singers and also had hymns on PowerPoint on a screen. The Sunday afternoon and evening Gospel services are the choir showstoppers. They have 30 men and 10 women backed up by a half-dozen drums and other instruments in front of a congregation of more than 100. A mostly male Gospel choir sounds like any other Gospel choir until they crescendo at the end of a song. Thirty male voices almost shouting shakes the walls of low, concrete Adder Chapel. In addition to the drums, clapping and singing of the main Gospel choir, the same group has a dance choir that performs at the beginning of the service. This choir is mostly women in black costumes with white gloves dancing to Gospel music and performing passages of Scripture.

One other thing that happens to those who attend multiple services at the Chapel is that all services are held in the same rooms at different times. So one week I heard the Gospel choir raise the roof and the next week listened to the three-man choir at the Catholic service in the very same room. It would certainly save Churches in America a lot of money of they had every Church in the neighborhood meet in one building at different times.

I hadn’t thought until this moment that I have gone from Anthrax to Adder, a deadly disease to a deadly snake. Army chapels may have good choirs, but they need help with their names.

The Chapel Menu is as Long as the Chow Hall Menu

Pro Deo et Patria is the Chaplain's motto

The Chapel here at Tallil can't cover every spiritual practice, no organization can, but they try. The first service on the Sunday morning schedule is Orthodox, I have not been to the service, but I believe the Romanian unit provides the priest. Next in rapid succession are traditional Protestant, Catholic, contemporary Protestant, Latter Day Saints, and then repeat services are held in the evening.

On Friday Muslim and Jewish services are available, followed by LDS and Jewish services on Saturday. Every day of the week there is Mass, intercessory prayer, choir practice, praise and worship service, Christianity 101, and other beginner Bible studies. The schedule is changing because a new unit is running the base. I am hoping to get one of the chaplains to start a mid-week Bible study for soldiers who are familiar with the Scriptures.

If the Chapel services are varied, the Chaplains and lay ministers cover a wider range. I'll write about some of them soon.

Boom, Boom, Yawn

We began the Memorial holiday weekend by being woken up at 3:54 am by a series of explosions. Rockets fell near the fence on our side of the base. After the blasts the sirens wailed and we all went out into the pre-dawn light to check in and be counted--100% roll call after an attack. Most everyone went straight back to bed inside our 12-foot blast walls, and everyone knew we were safe because once they fire, they have to hide or an Apache helicopter will get them.

The only complaint I heard was one of our platoon sergeants. He was looking forward to Spin Class (bicycling in the gym) and knew that by the time everyone was accounted for, the 0530 class would be cancelled.

Later, around 1100 hours, several of us were unloading shipping containers in the motor pool when we heard two big explosions about 600 meters away. The tall thin mushroom clouds in the relatively still air said these were big artillery or mortar shells. The first had a brown cloud--probably hit a dust pit, the second was white and thinner. It must have hit concrete.

As the clouds dissipated we decided to keep working until the sirens wailed. They never did. We found out later these were controlled explosions--they just forgot to tell us. Again, the only complaint was from two soldiers, one on his first deployment, one on his second, who did not want to be in a blast shelter in the heat.

Many proverbs say that stress brings out the true character of a person, whether good or bad. In a place like this, it's good to know I am with people who yawn at missile attacks and complain only about the inconvenience.

Food, Fiber, Friends and CS Lewis

Last week it became clear to me that the endless bounty of food at the DFAC (dining facility) was not providing me with enough fiber. So I went to the only store in town--the PX--and found that they sell every conceivable sugared snack, but no high fiber food. Coincidentally, I got an email from my 20-year veteran uncle asking if there is anything I need. I asked for a case of Grape Nuts cereal.

I was already eating the top five high-fiber foods on the web lists. Then I thought I could go on sick call. But that thought only lasted a second or so. I don't mind going on sick call for a bone spur or an acute illness, but the medical unit is mostly staffed by women in their 20s. So I did not want to go on sick call and explain my problem.

As usually happens when I think about human interactions for more than a minute, something from CS Lewis comes to mind. I remember reading in more than one of his essays that we are apt to judge a man as having a spiritual problem when he really just suffers from chronic indigestion. So rather than go on sick call, I asked for help from a nearly-50-year-old ex-Marine who sometimes sits in the DFAC and yells back at the TV news when "Liberals" are on. It turns out he has had digestive trouble for many years and had lots of good advice plus a huge stash of fiber supplements. And he was happy to share. I am going home in 11 days, so I will be able to go to a real store and get all the fiber that America has to offer, but in the meantime, I got by with a little help from my friend.

Tanks for the Memories

Shortly after joining Echo Company I realized that part of my suffering in 2009 would simply be showing up in the motor pool. The glacial pace of motor pools, the problems that can only be diagnosed by experienced mechanics, the whole fellowship-of-the-falling-apart-truck is something that excites me just as much as death-metal music, sitcoms, comedy movies, and zombie movies.

So I spoke to my squad leader already about the form 4100 evaluations we will be receiving in the fall, that's when Sergeants are evaluated for promotion to staff sergeant. I am already at the top grade of 63J so I will have to be retrained to be promoted, as an air conditioning mechanic, a wheel mechanic, or a generator mechanic.

Right.

So I had the bright idea of submitting my paperwork in my job specialty from before 19E--actually 19E30, tank commander/section leader. That way when we got back to the states I could revert to the job I had when I left in 1984, get familiar with the new tanks and finish out the final year of my enlistment working on a vehicle I get to shoot at least a couple of times per year.

Wrong.

An armor unit just moved in. I had a latte with one of their soldiers last night and ate dinner with two soldiers today. They both told me about a "chat" they had with their sergeant major saying tanks are being phased out in the Middle East and probably someday from the Army in general.

It makes sense. Tanks were invented in World War 1 as land battleships. They dominated land combat in World War 2, were massed to fight World War 3 in Europe, then in Viet Nam, Afghanistan (Soviet) and our wars, they are not exactly central.

So I'll have to think of something else. As tanks disappear from armor units, the soldiers who want to stay in armor will compete for fewer and fewer slots. So at least for me, by the time I get home, tanks will be on the way to being just memories.

Sensing the Sun as I Ride

Every time I ride I am aware of the sun. Whether the solar orb is low on a bright cold horizon in a Pennsylvania winter or the searing sphere straight up in the in the southern Iraq sky, the sun dominates my riding.

I have been thinking a lot about the sun with the passing of my mother-in-law. Her area of professional study—solar astronomy—helps me to focus my wandering thoughts as I ride alone around Tallil Ali Air Base. As soon as I get away from traffic, I review consciously what my unconscious already knows: it’s 6pm, the sun is in front of me, south is to the left, my shadow points back to the east, the shadow is long so sunset is an hour away, and so forth.

Because the earth orbits the sun on a tilted plane, the sun looks different on every part of the earth in every season. In Pennsylvania, the sun is never straight up in the sky. Even at noon on June 21 (the longest day) the sun is 15 degrees below vertical passing through due east and due west almost two hours after sunrise and two hours before sunset. Also in Pennsylvania and across the northern latitudes, the length of days vary dramatically over the course of a year, from more than 16 hours in mid June to just over eight hours in mid-December. In the north the sun creates long shadows, hundreds of feet long on bright days near dusk and dawn.

In Iraq, just ten degrees of longitude south, the sun looks very different. Here the sun is almost (but not quite) straight up on the sky at noon. But there is an odd respite from the blazing sun at dawn and dusk. In most of the US, the sky is bright (in a clear sky) shortly after it clears the horizon. Here the sun is obscured until it has been up almost an hour and for the last hour of the day. The heat of the day starts an hour after dawn and begins to subside before sundown because the air is so full of dust that the sun almost disappears and becomes just an orange glow an hour before it sets and is hidden for the first hour of the day.

The effect is enhanced further because we are on the eastern end of a wide time zone. The sun rises before 5 am and officially sets by 7 pm. So the sky gets suddenly dimmer at 6pm before dark just after 7pm. Because we trained at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, before coming here, the body clock effect was even greater. Fort Sill is at the western end of a time zone at roughly the same longitude. The day is the same length, but in mid-April as we left Fort Sill, sunrise was after 7 am and sunset was well after 8 pm. When we landed in Kuwait, the day was the same length but started before 5am and ended before 7 pm.

When I traveled more the sudden change is the sun was even more dramatic. I once traveled Edmonton, Alberta, in July. On a Saturday evening at 7pm I started a 5000-foot climb up to a lake in the Rockies west of Edmonton. At 50 degrees of longitude in July, the sun did not set until after 11, long after I climbed to the lake and rolled back down to the rental van. I visited Singapore several times. Just two degrees north of the equator, the sun is the same year round. The sky is dark until just before dawn then in just 15 minutes the sun is bright and fully visible, going straight up till noon then dropping stright back down—and disappearing just as quickly at night—no long Pennsylvania sunsets in Singapore.

South of equator is the weirdest riding of all. When I rode in Australia and South American I could not get used to the sun crossing the northern sky. If it is Noon in Australia and the sun is on my right shoulder, I am riding WEST. That is just wrong. I could get lost in an empty parking lot in the southern hemisphere just because the sun is on the wrong side of the sky.

The other association I have with the sun is as a source of light and light’s place as the ultimate reference of all physical reality. When the Apostle John wrote about light he could not have known that 20th century physics would show that the speed of light is one of the fundamental constants of the universe--the one that determines the ultimate reality of space, time and energy. Several years ago a read a book by a Cornell physicist (and agnostic) David Mermin called "It's About Time" which explains relativity physics very well and showed me why light is so central to to faith--it really is the symbol and the substance of physical reality and the closest thing in our daily experience to physical reality.

I love the sun in all its complicated glory and in the spiritual glory it symbolizes. Now it's time ot get my uniform on and go to the motor pool.

More on Staying in Touch

In an earlier post I talked about how much easier it is to be in touch with home than it was in the days before email when phone calls were expensive. The mechanics of keeping in touch depend on the base, but here are my preferred methods.
1. SKYPE. Skype is an internet phone service that allows video to video communication with other Skype users as well as direct dial to land line and cell phones. It costs about $100 per year for unlimited Skype to Skype calls whether video or not. I don't use the video very often here because we have limited internet bandwidth and the video eats up all the bandwidth I have--and then some. But the voice to voice is pretty reliable and effectively free. I have called all over America and Europe (from Germany to San Diego) in the three week we have been here for about $10 in phone service charges. Most of the calls are free. The average is a penny or two per minute. I call from my room, so it's convenient and fairly reliable.
2. Every base here has trailers (CHUs) with a dozen phones on each wall. These AT&T calling centers allow phonecard and credit card calls to America. The phone card can be as low as 20 cents per minute. The great thing about the AT&T phones is they are clear and reliable. When I really want to talk without interruption or repeating words, I walk over to the AT&T call center. Also, AT&T cards make great gifts for soldiers--they work everywhere and are cheap and fast to mail--just in case you were looking to buy a soldier a gift.
3. There are call centers with free phones on post, computer centers that have a 4-cent-per minute internet phone service called SPAWAR, that you can use from call centers. The free phones are time limited and go away without warning. I haven't tried SPAWAR because I am happy with Skype.

The Neighbors Might Be Moving

Right across the street from the Coalition DFAC (Dining Facility) is the Romanian Army barracks and motor pool. This group of our allies has named their facility Camp Dracula more for us and the Brits than themselves. I ride past the sign a couple of times a day (at least) and smile. Camp Dracula is one of many decorated blast walls around Tallil. And the rumors say the Romanians will be going home soon. Too bad. I will miss Camp Dracula.

If there are a few dozen decorated blast walls here, there are hundreds and hundreds in Kuwait. Every unit that goes through Kuwait in 2 or 3 weeks tries to paint a blast wall in a "We were here" gesture. I was saving many shots of the best blast walls in Kuwait because I thought I would be writing about the blast wall our unit decorated. The sad story of that is the change in plans and a late start meant our soldiers did not have time to finish the blast wall. Among the whole battalion it was five Echo Company soldiers who attempted to finish the blast wall art. They may be sent back to finish it or they may finish it as we leave Iraq. But in the meantime, here are several examples of the highest expression of this folklore/art.

Then and Now: Sergeant Sensitive

Echo Company is a maintenance support unit based in Central Pennsylvania and composed to a large extent of soldiers who are also mechanics. For the deployment the Army filled our ranks with other National Guard soldiers literally from across the nation. I could not have written this post before West Coast soldiers joined our unit. First a disclaimer: Sergeant Sensitive is more than one person, but none of those persons are female. The female NCOs in our unit, as you already know, are some of the best soldiers at PT and on the ranges and the ones who stay in know they must be in charge--and they are. As far as I have ever heard, they have no mixed feelings about the job of a soldier. THEN: During my first enlistment, Sergeant Sensitive was inevitable given the times and the draft. Because of the draft there were men in the Army who clearly did not belong there. Because of the times, those men were likely to be devotees of New Age spirituality, peace and brotherhood. In the 70s, especially the early 70s before the draftees had all left the system, I would run into a smart young sergeant who was trying to do his job in a cooperative way. “We should all be able to get along. We are all on the same team.” Since I was an agnostic at the time, I noticed by their manner of speaking that almost all of these men were believers, but had rejected some traditional faith from their childhood. The “Give Peace a Chance” mentality does not mesh with the creeds and doctrine of orthodox religion. They communed with God in Nature, the old-fashioned God who had rules and standards and was the head of an absolute monarchy was way too Old School. 2007: That was then. We are now eight years into the War on Terror and more than three decades away from the end of the draft. For a few years after September 11, 2001, there could have been soldiers who enlisted thinking there had not been a war for a while. But when I re-enlisted in 2007 I assumed that by now no one could be in the military and be unclear that being a soldier meant being a soldier in combat. Back in the 1970s people might have thought an Age of Aquarius could be dawning, but no one could think that way now—or so I thought. And while I was in central Pennsylvania, my assumption was correct. No soldier I met gave any indication that “Give Peace a Chance” was his anthem. (Just a reminder for the neutral pronoun crowd: I am using “his” correctly. Sgt. Sensitive is never a woman.) NOW: When we went to Fort Sill and soldiers from the West Coast joined our ranks. Soon I met Sergeant Sensitive. The first place I met him was on the rifle range. We were getting ready to go to the firing line and qualify with rifles. Sgt. Sensitive had 40 rounds of ammo in two magazines. He was getting ready to knock down 23 or more targets with those 40 rounds to show he was qualified as a rifleman. He came from a laid-back unit which he liked very much and landed in the company that does the most combat training in battalion. He was getting pushed hard to be a combat leader. But to be Sgt. Sensitive is to be convinced there is a "better way" than the Army way. He said, "They think there is no other way than yelling. They could, like, cooperate. I mean we can all work together. . ." In another incarnation, I met sergeant sensitive riding a rented bike at Fort Sill. He was happily out communing with nature. We had a five-minute conversation during which "like Dude" occurred more times than I can count. You could think, "So what?" These guys are National Guard, they are not making military careers, and it's not like we are front line troops anyway. But the random gods of the Army reach down and move soldiers like so many chess pieces. After a year of hearing we were going to Balad, here we are in Tallil. Some of us are rebuilding battered buildings, some of us are fixing vehicles. But others of us are on security detail. The soldiers on the detail are picked for various reasons, but they are not consulted about their feelings and what if sergeant sensitive is a team leader on alert status for guarding the fence? Any sergeant at any time could be the commander of a vehicle with a gun on top. If that gunner is hurt, the vehicle commander has to put another gunner up in the place that is going to be the first aiming point for an enemy. That decision, who goes next when things go bad can't be made cooperatively. In seconds, somebody has to get up in that turret. It will be an order, not a consultation. We practice telling soldiers what to do in the motor pool and on work crews and during PT to get them used to obeying and keep us in the business of keeping the soldiers moving when and where they need to. Of course, sergeant sensitive can be East Coast also. Two weeks ago, I wanted to put one of our best guys on a security detail in place of a guy who was not enthusiastic about it. I told the first sergeant I was thinking like a civilian. I wanted the best soldier from our unit to be on duty at a higher headquarters. Ten minutes later I had a loud argument with the indifferent soldier's squad leader and I changed my mind. Security is a rotten detail and the kid who screwed up should be sent back to do it right. That's the Army way. I was sergeant sensitive and decided to go with the Army way. Now I just have to be sure to turn the switch back to civilian in February.

Graduation Update

As noted in the Saturday post, the picture I had of Lisa without a broken nose was not current. You saw the current picture of Lisa with a broken nose from her final soccer game of the year. Here is her senior picture without the broken nose. She looks much better without white tape holding her nose in place.

I should have video from the graduation in a week or two. Lisa's whole class did a "shout out" to me since I missed graduation. Lisa and a few of her classmates are "Lifers" at Lancaster Country Day School--they attended LCDS since kindergarten. So I have known some of the kids in the video since they were fingerpainting.

Weather at Tallil Ali Air Base

If you want to know what the temperature is here at Tallil, the only weather service I know of that actually lists Tallil is the Weather Underground. He is a link to the Tallil forecast. Now if you want to see the temp here or the chance of rain (zero for quite a while), you can get it here.

Biggest Tourist Site in Region--Closed for a Decade

The Ziggurat of Ur, the biggest tourist attraction in the region is closed until further notice--meaning possibly for a decade. We just missed seeing it. The last tour was on April 23. The next day the site was turned over to the Iraqi Army for renovation. The chaplain's office said it really might be five to ten years before it's open again.

So we won't get to see the inside of it. But many of us see it almost every day. The Ziggurat of Ur is literally just outside the wire near the northeast corner of Tallil Ali Air Base. Our motor pool is just a kilometer from the Ziggurat and the buses that take soldiers to the motor pool pass by that section of fence on their normal route. Personally, I seldom see it because the road near that section of fence is among the worst--pitted, lumpy, bumpy--paved roads on the entire base, so I ride a longer way around to avoid those bumps.

The Ziggurat is a monument to the hometown of Abraham--the Biblical patriarch of Israel, and one of the greatest prophets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Start Your Day with an Enormous Breakfast

The saying here goes that soldiers return from deployment fit or fat. At the major bases like Tallil Ali Air Base, our new home, the proverb is likely to be true because of the facilities. Within a quarter mile of my CHU is a 24-hour gym. Another gym is less than a mile away. Across the street from the gym is the “Grab and Go” Dining Facility--sandwiches and cereal from 0630 to 0900, sandwiches, fruit and snacks from 1100 to 1400.

Less than a mile from my CHU and just a few hundred yards from the Living Area where most Echo soldiers live is the largest DFAC (dining facility) on base. Inside are seats for hundreds of soldiers and airmen and four lines with grills serving both main meal and snack food. After the main lines, there are two salad bars with dozens of choices. In addition there is a cold sandwich bar, a hot sandwich bar, a healthy line with Caesar salads and fresh cut fruit. There is also a dessert bar and two hot tables serving ethnic food or potatoes with several toppings. The other two dining facilities have most of the same food, just fewer lines and a smaller space. I will go into some detail about what is served for lunch, dinner, snack line and midnight meal in later posts.

So what’s breakfast? At the four lines you can get omelets or eggs to order at each of the four grills at the end of each line. Each line serves bacon, sausage, turkey bacon or turkey sausage, Texas Hash (I have not had it, looks like potatoes, sausage and peppers.) scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs and vegetables, grits, oatmeal, oatmeal with raisins, fried potatoes, biscuits and gravy.

Not enough to eat on the main line? The salad bar has fresh fruit, sometimes peeled kiwi and oranges, apples, bananas and other fruit. Then there are raisins, applesauce, nuts, and canned fruit. In place of the hot sandwich and potato bars are waffle and pancake bars with hot strawberries, blueberries and cherries. You can also get made-to-order waffles, toast, doughnuts and coffee cake.

In the back are refrigerators with milk, five or six kinds of juices in juice boxes, brand name sodas, then there is coffee, more juice and tea.

This morning I went to the South side of the base at a smaller DFAC where they don't have omelets or eggs to order--just scrambled eggs. I survived. I had French toast with strawberries, raisin bran cereal, two fruit juices, and a biscuit. I never eat that much at home. Some days I have all that I just named plus and omelet and bacon.

I have lost five or six pounds since I got here. I don't know how. I'll write about the other four meals later.

Proud Dad: My Youngest Daughter Graduates, Plays Hurt

You've been warned by the title. If you don't want to here me brag about my kids, stop reading now.

Both of my kids play hurt. (Where do they get that?? I try to teach them safety first!!) For Lisa, her latest injury almost meant graduating with an bandage X holding her broken nose in place. Earlier this year, Lauren, Lisa's older sister almost missed a soccer tournament because she got a nasty concussion playing indoor soccer while she was home on Christmas break. Lauren is one of the two starting goalkeepers for Juniata College Women's Soccer Team.



My youngest daughter Lisa graduated from Lancaster Country Day School today. I spoke with her just after graduation and heard about the aftermath of her last soccer game of the senior season. Lisa plays striker and gets many goals on headballs. In the last game of her senior season she went for a headball right in front of the goal and slammed her nose into an opposing players head. Lisa bled all over her uniform and had to go to the sidelines to get cleaned up--the rules say you can't play with blood on the uniform.

She went back in, scored the only goal for her team (with her foot) and finished the game. More than a week later she learned she had a broken nose that needed to be reset. She got her nose set and taped and finished the last two weeks of classes. She for the bandages off the day before graduation, so her grad pictures won't have a bandage X on her face.

While I was getting ready to leave for deployment, Lauren dove for a ball and put her head into the metal post of the smaller-sized indoor soccer goal. She finished the game but had to rest to the point she was barely allowed to walk to class and could not work out at all. She recovered in time for the tournament and her team was the overall tournament winner.

This fall Lauren will be back in the goal for Juniata for her junior year. Lisa will be running D-1 Cross Country for the University of Richmond. She is the first female athlete in LCDS history to play Division One sports and one of just a who have ever gone on to NCAA Division 1 sports.

The deployment will be 1/3 over in a week and I have already missed a lot major events in the lives of my daughters and the rest of my family. If all goes well I will be home in mid-June for my mother-in-law's Memorial service and spend time with my family and friends. In some ways the time is passing quickly, but in others, it's already a long year.


Lisa uninjured


Lauren uninjured

Presbyterian Promoted

My best friend here in Iraq is a fellow Presbyterian who rejoined the Army at an advanced age as a Specialist. Yesterday, at just 49 years old, he was promoted to sergeant. Assuming he is not shipped off to another base, we may get a chance to be roommates.

We can't be roomies right away because my roommate is off on a temporary assignment. It would be impolite to change rooms on him while he was gone, and more importantly, while he is a good roommate normally, he is a great roommate now! I have the room to myself for 23 more days.

When we do end up roommates, I am sure some will hang a sign on saying "Library--BE QUIET!!" Two old guys who actually read books and don't play loud music should be quarantined so they don't disturb the other inmates.

This Little Piggie. . .

In the Army, as in a bar, any casual conversation can turn suddenly to who is right, who is wrong and what does this or that rule really mean. Recently I was eating with several other sergeants at dinner. For a while the conversation was about promotions and the arcane rules that govern how National Guard soldiers get promoted. 

With that topic exhausted, one of the sergeants said she was going to get some food for a soldier who was in bed because he just had an ingrown toenail removed. The soldier in question is a genial guy in his early 40s who shops at the XXL rack. So a dispute began about what to get him to eat. "Get a salad and that kind of stuff," said one. Another said, "He needs more than that." 

After more speculation about his dietary needs, someone said the operation was on the soldier's Ring Toe. "You know, like the ring finger, fourth one, you count from the thumb." Another sergeant said there were no rules with toes. Someone called him an idiot. Then they started figuring out which "Piggie" had the hangnail removed. Which led the same group of sergeants to begin arguing about which Piggie was which. I was laughing so hard I thought I would lose my dinner. 

Then one of the female sergeants noted that the third piggie, corresponding to the middle finger and toe got the roast beef and could say F-you to all the rest of the piggies. Then she smacked the table and said, "Who comes up with this shit anyway. Who makes up a rhyme about Piggies." I don't remember what we talked about after that, nor do I remember what the soldier with the sore Piggie got for dinner. But they weren't serving roast beef that night.

Riding with the Oven Door Open

I try to ride at dawn when it is below 90 degrees or near dusk when the temperature drops below 100, but the last two days, I had to ride a few miles in the middle of the day. Today at 1pm it was 115, yesterday it was 117 degrees.

On a hot day in Pennsylvania (at least what I thought was hot last year--between 95 and 100 degrees) I could ride 17 to 20 mph on a flat road and cool down a little. Uphill I was going to drip sweat and downhill would be very cool. Here there are no hills at all, so the high speed breeze is the best I can hope for. It works in the morning or in the evening when the sun is low in the sky, but the last two days, riding at midday, the air felt like I was riding past an open oven.

A light headwind kicked up, no more than 10 mph, but that felt like I was riding behind a heater blower. The good thing was this evening's ride, when the temp dropped to 100, I was sweating on my 10-mile loop of the base, but the air felt like air, not oven blast.

There is no humidity to speak of here and I suppose the temp would feel worse if it was humid, but 115 degrees is hot--dry heat or not.

Marriage and Romance in the Army

For most soldiers "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" is the best we can do for romance in the Army. A large group of us are in some kind of committed relationship, another large group has no relationship and is not likely to discover true love among the other soldiers and civilians assigned to our base. And since we are not allowed off base, the potential candidates for Love seekers are all here on Tallil Ali Air Base. If my deployment to Germany in the 70s is any indication, the romances that flare to life among the soldiers here will burn out just as quickly.

So who does have romance on a deployment to Iraq? As it turns out the small minority of married couples (6 that I know of) among the 600 soldiers in our unit have relationships that at least allow for the possibility of real romance. They get to live together in one of the CHUs I described a few days ago. In fact, three of the couples live in the same CHU in three adjoining rooms. This is a great mercy to everyone involved. As I mentioned in several other ways, in this Socialist empire we inhabit, envy is the fastest way to corrode relationships. These couples are the dozen people among 600 of us who can have sex on a regular basis. For the rest of us, sex and alcohol can only be enjoyed during the 15 days we are on Rest and Recreation leave during this year.

The married couples here include a pair of pilots and a pair of aircraft maintenance sergeants (she outranks him in both cases) a pilot married to a crew chief and two clerks (he outranks her in these couples), plus two sergeants who I believe are mechanics and are the same rank. I asked three of the five couples (both members of the couple were present when I asked) how they felt about the other soldiers looking at them and wishing they had the same arrangement. The three women--an officer, a sergeant first class and a specialist--all answered as if from a script. They made sacrifices to be in the Army. It's not easy to be married to another soldier. If someone else wants the privilege, let them make the sacrifice. No wavering from the women.

The men were more varied. The warrant officer shrugged and smirked. He could deal with it. The young sergeant could see the problem, but was willing to take the hassle. The staff sergeant who had deployed before said he wished they ended up in tents (meaning no living together). He saw envy as a big problem--one he could deal with, but he could also give up the privilege without a big fight.

At Fort Sill and in Kuwait, the married couples were not allowed to live together. So except for the 4-day pass, the married couples were just like the rest of us for the first three months. Except that they could talk face to face. So they still got the kind of time together that most married couples say they never get enough of--time to just talk.

This whole situation is new to me. In the 1970s Army, there were no arrangements for couples to live together in combat barracks and very few soldiers married to each other. Couples in camouflage still look somewhat strange to me.

Linguistics Update

While I was thinking and talking about our CHUs, I noticed another Army pronoun I do not remember from the 70s: Bitch. I do not mean the act of complaining or a derogatory reference to a woman, those uses are no different than the civilian usage. But when I cataloqued the use of Shit as a pronoun, I did not notice there is an upper size limit on the use of that word.

When a soldier refers to a truck, or a building, or other very large object, he will often say "This bitch is ready to paint" referring to a recently repaired truck or "This bitch has a busted air conditioner" referring to a CHU without the most important creature comfort. So there is a line somewhere between a duffel bag and a Deuce-and-a-half truck where the item referred to is no longer "that shit" but "this bitch."

Home Sweet (Trailer) Home

My youngest daughter Lisa is graduating from Lancaster Country Day School in two weeks. Her older sister Lauren graduated two years ago. A few years ago, the school underwent renovations so my daughters and all their fellow students had some classes in temporary classrooms next to the buildings (trailers). But the students were not allowed to say trailers. These metal-sided buildings were "learning cottages."

Since moving to Iraq, we have had a huge upgrade from 70 roommates in a tent in Kuwait to 2-man rooms for sergeants and junior officers, three-man rooms for enlisted men, and one-man rooms for the senior officers. Here's the basic building:

The Army needs an acronym for everything, so these 30-foot long, eight-foot wide housing units that can be transported on a truck are not trailers, they are Containerized Housing Units (CHU), pronounced "Choo." Most everyone calls them CHUs. When dozens of CHUs are surrounded by 12-foot-high blast walls with latrine CHUs and Shower CHUs in the middle, the result is called a Living Area (LA). There are ten LAs on Tallil. Members of our unit live in most of these living areas numbered from LA1 to LA10. A few of us make jokes about living in trailer parks and putting cars up on cement blocks in the yard, but most people use the acronyms.

Here is an LA on another base. Ours is similar.

I'll try to get some photos from here soon.

Inside a CHU we each get a bed, an end table, and a wall locker. Some soldiers are already finding refrigerators and TVs. As of Saturday night, I have temporarily have the not-available-at-any-price luxury of my own room for one month. My roommate got temporarily reassigned to another base. He will not be gone long enough to take all his gear or reassign his bed, so I am alone for 30 days or so. When he left he said, "Enjoy the library while I'm gone." You can just sit in here and listen to nothing. Which is not exactly true. Since he is so careful to put on headphones to listen to Gangsta Rap or watch movies, I seldom listened to anything in the room. But with the room to myself, I can listen to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" the BBC World Service, several New Yorker podcasts and Distillations from my work. But mostly, it's quiet in my trailer, I mean CHU.

Flat Out of Luck

My bulletproof Gatorskin tires turned out to have a weak spot: the sidewall. I rolled between two blast barriers to stop at the Base Exchange in the Air Force area and hear the tell-tale hissing that meant I would be walking home. I have two tires and three tubes, so I could change the flat--except my tire tools are somewhere in Oklahoma as it turns out.

But my luck got better almost immediately. I brought the bike to my room and walked to chow before it closed. At chow was another soldier who just got a bike from home but no pump. I have a floor pump. He used my pump and loaned me a spoon so we will both be on the road tomorrow.

My oldest daughter Lauren is home from college so I called her and asked her to send me spoons and another tire and tube, so I should be able to stay on the road even if the gravel here claims another tire.

Today, I installed printer drivers on four maintenance computers, but our commander and one of our platoon sergeants flew in last night. We may have a lot more to do next week.

Doing Nothing, 7 Days a Week

Those of you who read detective novels may have noticed a dog that isn't barking in my recent posts. It has been almost a month since I wrote about us doing anything. That is not because we are on a Top Secret mission. It is the opposite. As you know our assignment was changed just before we left and long after our bags and baggage had been sent on to Camp Cupcake. So instead of moving in where another unit was moving out and taking over their assignment, we are starting from scratch in a place that was not quite set up for us. So we are building a motor pool in a few unused buildings that are not exactly suited for what we do.

So we are painting, building shelves and tables, wiring buildings for telecom and computers, and generally cleaning out dust-filled unused spaces. Since we are in a war zone, we can't actually do nothing. We have to be ready for emergencies, so we are on duty seven days a week, rotating days off in shifts.

When a big unit like ours changes course, the support people like us have to wait for equipment to arrive and start needing maintenance before we have work. So we clean, paint, pull security duty, and try to get ready for when the rest of the unit needs us. Until then, we will be busy doing nothing, seven days a week.

What the PT Test Doesn't Measure

I will be starting remedial PT (Physical Training) again next week for the soldiers who failed the last PT Test and need to get ready for the next one. In Iraq, more than in Oklahoma, the gym is one of the few things to do so I am able to divide the group into two groups:
1. The self-motivated ones who know what they need to work on, have a workout partner and have committed to a plan to pass the test.
2. Those who need some level of push or they will stay as motionless as possible, usually in front of some sort of video entertainment.

For group one I already have five individual plans of action and will check in regularly. For group two, I will be taking over a SPIN class on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday of each week at 0530. The less motivated will join me in the SPIN class pedaling for an hour bright and early on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Our entire company does a 5k race each Wednesday morning and individual squads do PT Monday and Friday morning early.

THE PT TEST ISN'T EVERYTHING. . .
It is my job to help get these soldiers ready to pass the PT test, which I think is very important. But over the last three months I have noticed that the PT test does not necessarily predict who will be the best soldier, especially for tough, dirty jobs. There are certain jobs for which I ask for Group 1 soldiers who have failed or barely passed the PT test. When we load and unload and hundreds of duffel bags; when we have to carry dozens of machine guns, barrels and tripods; whenever there is a job that requires lots of muscle and little speed, I am looking for some of the big guys who struggle to reach their required time on the two-mile run or the required number of sit-ups, but can lift lots of weight easily and will work for hours.

The PT test is a good measure of fitness, but not such a good measure of brute strength or willingness to work long hours. And there are many times in this manual labor job where the race is neither to the swift nor to the agile but to the big guy who can barely run two miles in 17 minutes but can bench press 350 pounds.

. . .BUT IT IS IMPORTANT
One more note on the Group 2 soldiers who bitch about PT, many of whom need to eat less in addition to working out more: These same guys watch a lot of war movies and really don't seem to see the connection between fitness and being a soldier. In fact, when 70 of us lived in one tent and there were no secrets anywhere, I started to notice that the guys who hated PT were the ones who tried to look "bad" in the group photos. Young soldiers are perpetually taking photos of each other, like all of their generation. I noticed the same guys who shirk every dirty job and grumble about PT were the ones who had their weapons prominent in the photos they were in. They like the look and idea of being a soldier. Maybe they somehow believe that if the worst happens they will have a Hollywood transformation into movie-hero fighting machines.

My guess is they will just be out of breath.

Achmed the Dead Terrorist

Every place soldiers gather, whether official or unofficial meetings, if there is a video screen and few minutes, Achmed the Dead Terrorist is likely to be on that screen. If you have not seen this character by puppeteer/comedian Jeff Dunham, enjoy. If the link does not work, just go to You Tube and search for Achmed the Dead Terrorist.

Bike Line to the Rescue from 6000 Miles Away

Some avid bicyclists really love bicycles. The love them as machines, love their design and engineering, love them as objects.
Not me.
In fact when I started racing Joan Jett's song "I Hate Myself for Loving You" was still a hit. I started listening to that song to get psyched for those first races. I like going fast, I like competing, but I see the bike as the necessary and occasionally as an instrument of torture. The song seemed perfect for my relationship with my bike.
So while I can do some work on a bike, I don't work on my bikes if Bike Line of Lancaster is open. They know what they are doing and the bike gets fixed properly.
But there is no Bike Line of Tallil, Iraq, so three days ago when I bent a spoke and knocked my wheel out of true, I called up Bike Line to tell me how best to fix the bike taking no chances on breaking the spoke--which would take ten days to get here in the mail.
Jeremiah from Bike Line told me which spokes to adjust and by how much and what to look for to keep from breaking the wheel or the spokes. It worked. The wheel is nearly straight and I rode on the bumpy roads and gravel here without incident.
It is clear that the road bike I brought for Camp Cupcake is not the right bike for the rock-strewn sand pile I am in now.
Since the only bikes I can buy here are $150 beaters, Bill and Jeremiah found me a single-speed mountain bike at a reasonable price which I should have in a couple of weeks. It has 29-inch wheels and wide knobby tires which should be much better for riding on sand and gravel.
The bike is a GT PEACE 9R. I'm sure it will be pretty strange riding around a combat air base with a weapon on my back and a bike that says Peace on the seat tube.

By the way--I bent the spoke because I jumped on the bike to run a quick errand just slung the rifle on my back with wrapping another strap around it. A pedestrin jumped in front of me. I stopped short and the barrel swung into the front wheel.
Barrel 1
Spoke 0