Meditation and Military Thinking

One of the very odd things about beginning meditation and yoga late in life is how they both tie back into and touch the life I lived before. 

Both practices are concerned with inner peace, which would not seem to connect with either my years as a soldier or my years as a competitor. 

But in the last year, the connections pop up in my practice of meditation and yoga, and I smile. 

In my beginner yoga classes we did several balance poses: tree, airplane, and others.  The key to doing these well is Drishti: focusing on a single point throughout the pose. 

No problem for me.  From bike racing, when I am climbing a long hill needing to maintain 95% of max heart rate, but not more, I focus on a point as high as I can see on the climb. I am going there. All of my effort is to get there, as smoothly as I can.

From firing a rifle, being able to focus, to be firmly grounded, my breath in control, is Drishti and puts me on target. 

Today's meditation was on attention and awareness.  Awareness is being able to perceive what is in my environment. Attention is focusing on one particular thing in my environment, even for a moment.  When I am on guard or security duty, I maintain awareness of the area around me with all my senses. When I sense something that is a threat or out of place, I put all my attention on that spot, even for a moment. 

Two people read the same book, watch the same movie, walk the same street and have a very different experience.  Meditation and yoga give me a peaceful perception of some very hostile environments from my life. And I feel joy.

The Funeral Oration of Pericles

I am re-reading Pericles in a book titled "How to Think About War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy."

There is more to the book than the "Funeral Oration of Pericles" but re-reading that speech made me aware, yet again, of what it means to be a patriot.

Some excerpts:

Such was the end of these men; they were worthy of Athens, and the living need not desire to have a more heroic spirit, although they may pray for a less fatal issue. The value of such a spirit is not to be expressed in words. Any one can discourse to you for ever about the advantages of a brave defense, which you know already. 

[They] freely gave their lives to her as the fairest offering which they could present.  The sacrifice which they collectively made was individually repaid to them; for they received again each one for himself a praise which grows not old, and the noblest of all tombs, I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives, and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in word and deed. For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, written not on stone but in the hearts of men. 

Make them your examples, and, esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness. 

To a man of spirit, cowardice and disaster coming together are far more bitter than death striking him unperceived at a time when he is full of courage and animated by the general hope.

To you who are the sons and brothers of the departed, I see that the struggle to emulate them will be an arduous one. For all men praise the dead, and, however preeminent your virtue may be, I do not say even to approach them, and avoid living their rivals and detractors, but when a man is out of the way, the honor and goodwill which he receives is unalloyed. 

For where the rewards of virtue are greatest, there the noblest citizens are enlisted in the service of the state. And now, when you have duly lamented, every one his own dead, you may depart.

Chinook Helicopter Lifting a 105mm Howitzer, Part 2

Seven more views of lifting a 105mm howitzer with a CH-47 Chinook helicopter.

A Chinook Helicopter Lifting a 105mm Howitzer, Part 1

This sequence is the end of the process. I will post some more with details of the hook up. Photos were taken at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa.

 Hanging on the bottom of the forward door guiding the pilot.

The Price of Leadership: An excerpt from "Master and Commander"

In Patrick O’Brian’s book“Master and Commander” the sixth chapter begins with the ship’s doctor on land thinking about how men age.  After college, in my early 30s, I decided that the price of taking power was far too high, so I determined to be a journeyman at writing rather than a leader.  Dr. Mathurin’s reflections fit my own experience and make me glad of my choice.  Mathurin is thinking about what happens to men as they age and become absorbed by their profession and set on a path by the cumulative effect of their choices. He sees middle age, around 40, as where the line is crossed and is talking specifically about a mid-career Lieutenant, James Dillon:

“It appears to me a critical time for him…a time that will settle him in that particular course he will never leave again, but will persevere in for the rest of his life.  It has often seemed to me that towards this period [middle age] … men strike out their permanent characters; or have those characters struck into them. Merriment, roaring high spirits before this: then some chance concatenation, or some hidden predilection (or rather inherent bias) working through, and the man is in the road he cannot leave but must go on, making it deeper and deeper (a groove or channel), until he is lost in his mere character—persona—no longer human, but an accretion of qualities belonging to this character.  

James Dillon was a delightful being. Now he is closing in. It is odd—will I say hear-breaking?—how cheerfulness goes: gaiety of mind, natural free-springing joy. Authority is the great enemy—the assumption of authority. I know few men over fifty that seem to me entirely human: virtually none who has long exercised authority. The senior post-captains here…Shriveled men (shriveled in essence: not, alas, in belly). Pomp, an unwholesome diet…pleasure…at too high a price, like lying with a peppered paramour. Yet Lord Nelson, by (Captain) Jack Aubrey’s account, is as direct and unaffected and amiable a man as could be wished. So, indeed, in most ways is Jack Aubrey himself; though a certain careless arrogancy of power appears at times. His cheerfulness at all events is still with him.  

How long will it last? What woman, political cause, disappointment, wound, disease, untoward child, defeat, what strange surprising accident will take it all away? But I am concerned for James Dillon: he is as mercurial as he ever was—moreso—only now it is all ten octaves lower and in a darker key; and sometimes I am afraid in a black humour he will do himself a mischief. – page 202-3.

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Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman: War and Peace set in the 20th Century

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“Stalingrad” by Vasily Grossman opens with the sentence:

“On 29 April 1942 Benito Mussolini’s train pulled into Salzburg station, now hung with both Italian and German flags.”

In the first two chapters of this thousand-page novel are a description of a meeting between Adolph Hitler and the Italian fascist dictator. Mussolini is the older of the two, but the junior partner. Mussolini notes the signs of age and exhaustion in the 53-year-old Hitler. Hitler notes the decline in square-jawed Italian who is approaching his 60^th year.

Hitler describes his plans for a post-war Nazi-dominated Europe.  As he does, Mussolini sees Hitler as vain and stupid. Mussolini knows he is the smarter of the two, but Hitler has such overwhelming numbers in men and machines, that he can only accept his role as the junior partner. 

Hitler believes one great thrust into Russia will put him in control of all of Europe. Britain will capitulate, America will stay away, and he will be able to concentrate on the new world he created. 

Nothing turned out as Hitler planned.

Grossman is a wonderful storyteller.  This novel in two volumes is nearly 2,000 pages, “War and Peace” set in the 20^th Century centered on Stalingrad.  I read second volume “Life and Fate” in 2015.  The first volume was just published in English translation. 

Grossman was a Russian war correspondent throughout the Second World War. Russians everywhere read his dispatches from the front. 

That storytelling ability pulls the reader in, keeping the vast tale personal and close.  After showing the plans of Hitler through the jealous eyes of Mussolini, the next few chapters follow Vavilov, a father in his forties who gets a notice to report for military service the next morning. His son is already in the Army. Vavilov looks with love around his hut and does what he can to make sure his wife and family can survive the next winter without him.

Next we are at a dinner party in Stalingrad. The Nazi armies are still far off, but relentlessly advancing.  The group of professional workers, engineers, doctors, academics, speculate about what will happen to Stalingrad, to Russia, to themselves. 

Then we switch again to following a woman who is an industrial chemist checking for pollution in Soviet factories.  Just Tolstoy moved from ordinary life to war and back, Grossman draws a panorama of the battle for Stalingrad.

At the center of the story is the first mass attack on the city by the Nazis which begins with hundreds of bombers dropping more than a thousand tons of bombs, including fire bombs on the city.  Before I read the book, I thought mass fire-bombing raids began with the British attack on Hamburg.  The Germans turned Stalingrad into an inferno, incinerating thousands who were not killed by high explosives.

As the German ground attack nears the Volga River on the east side of the city and looks as if it will crush all resistance.  The Russians stop the Germans and counterattack. One of the long sad stories within the novel follows one battalion holding back a German attack to the last defender. 

I loved “Life and Fate” and hope to re-read it next year, now that I have finished the fist volume of this 1,800-page tale of the battle that was the beginning of the end of the Nazi attack on Russia.

Old Soldier: New Ignition

I just finished walking two miles because I rented a car with a pushbutton ignition--and I dropped the key!

I rented a 2019 Mitsubishi SUV to bring my son home for the 4th holiday, then to visit his sister Lauren and Godparents Stanley and Terry Morton and in Richmond.

Today I took some recycling to the drop-off point before returning the SUV. As I left the center, I dropped the keys, but the ignition was running so I drove away. I stopped a mile away to an Asian grocery store and the car would not restart. No key.

I knew where the key was, so I called the recycling center. They have a phone with a real answering machine. While I was leaving the message, the manager picked up, we made a couple of jokes about keys, and I walked the rest of the way.

As I returned, the only parked car on the side of the street where I was parked was my rental car. The street sweeper was 50 feet away. I jumped in the the car and took off before I got a $25 ticket.

After that, I bought pickled ginger and went home. Now I am going to return the rental car.