When I was a spry buck sergeant attending PLDC at Ft. Drum, I made the mistake of asking a genuine question and being funny. My SGL at the time was a wise Polish man named (Jumble of letters that don’t belong together)Ski. I asked him a very simple question. Why do my nipples hurt after a long run. He said “I don’t know sergeant, but we will learn together from the 500 word essay I want to see by COB.” So what began as a humorous query, fully formed as what you see here today. Enjoy.

“Nipples and the People who have them”   So there I was, nipples bleeding…lying in excruciating pain, screaming for a medic. Has this ever happened to you? Nipple injuries are a serious threat to ALL warriors (Rank non-specific) and should be taken seriously. Always take precaution when dealing with running in cold weather. Nipple PMCS should be conducted routinely and thoroughly. Any soldier that wears and Army PT shirt is at risk.

Sometimes, when an individual runs in Army PT’s, nipples become painfully chaffed. Nursing mothers sometime soak them in Saline, which is good for pain alleviation and tissue re-growth. When the Army PT shirt rubs at a high rate of giddy-up, chafing begins. This process can happen over time, or all at once.  When an object such as sandpaper or an Army PT shirt, which is pretty much the same thing, rubs on a sensitive area like nipples, swelling, pain, and tenderness can occur.

It has been challenged that, Bloody Nipple Syndrome (BNS) can happen to anyone. BNS is what some experts call “Rub Trauma” and has been seen everywhere from TMC’s to civilian ER’s.  Even the most decorated soldier in the US Army, Audie Murphy, has suffered BNS. When SSG Murphy stormed the German machine gun nest in WWI one of his lesser known injuries was in fact BNS. Battlefield doctors back then treated these wounds in what now would be referred to as barbaric. They would poor alcohol directly on the wound.

Prevention is key in deterring chaffed nipples. It falls on the individual to ensure their nipples are taken care of. You only have one set, so take care of the ones you have. Some soldiers use Band-Aids when available to add a layer of extra protection from T-shirt to skin contact. Most leaders view BNS as a weakness, but it is a serious threat to the overall readiness to the Army and the soldiers who serve. Combat injuries from BNS are slowly coming to light. Technology in prosthetic nipple replacement is developing rapidly to meet the high demand of injuries.

Some historians credit the Spartan victories at Thermopylae against countless enemies to proper planning and execution. It is constantly overlooked that they also battled another enemy, BNS, and were victorious mostly due to their lack of shirts. Even one most successful military commanders Napoleon is rumored to have lost a nipple in the Battle of Lodi. That is the rumored reason why he was always painted with his hand in his jacket as to never forget nipple importance. In closing I cannot stress the importance of nipple care and conservation. Make sure that you, as a leader, make your soldiers are aware of one of the fastest growing epidemic in the US Army. Combat ignorance at all cost, don’t let this happen to you or your soldiers. Always remember: Take care of your nipples, and they will take care of you.

My father, Al, served in WW2 from 1943 until 1946. It took me several years to learn the most interesting details about his experiences. I gleaned a lot of it from my Dad when he was alive, and a great more from a member of his unit, who I tracked down in Arizona (that source passed away back in 2016). We corresponded several times, and he confirmed much of what I knew, and filled in a whole lot more. In a nutshell.... here is My Dad's War.

After being drafted in 1943 and completing infantry training at Fort Benning, GA he was separated from his unit ("Involuntarily volunteered" as he put it) and attached to the 1st Convalescent Hospital, and was trained as a surgical technician/nurse. (As an aside, the unit he was with in Ft. Benning wound up going to Europe and getting decimated in the Battle of the Bulge). The hospital unit formed and trained in Hawaii until early 1944, when they shipped out. They first landed in Guadalcanal (already retaken two years earlier), and then the Battle of Hollandia in New Guinea in April 1944. He stayed there, being "volunteered" to serve as a field medic for a couple of weeks because of manpower shortages. He did not like that at all but never really talked about that stint. I suspect it was pretty tough. He stayed in New Guinea, which he called the "biggest shithole in the Pacific - nothing but rain, heat, mud and bugs", until October, when his unit was suddenly thrown onto LST-606 (a big troop landing ship) and joined a flotilla of over 500 ships. Turns out, they were part of the retaking of the island of Leyte, and they were heading directly into the Battle of Leyte Gulf, considered to be the largest naval battle in history. And it was to be the first time the Japanese ever used "kamikazes" in force. All the US boys were packed onto the decks of the ships, and watched as the kamikazes starting falling from the sky all around them. There was so much AA fire in the air (from 500+ US ships) that most of the Jap planes came down in literally pieces...just shot up completely into lumps of steel. A troop ship just behind them was hit and exploded, killing many soldiers and sailors in a flash that my dad said could be felt on his ship. Finally, they landed on the beach, and had to start unloading the hospital equipment on the beach...while being strafed by the occasional Jap plane that would fly up the beach at 200 mph shooting the hell out of everything. They dug foxholes...and had NO weapons; they were a medical unit! Although the beach had been taken, and the battles were inland, there were lots of Jap snipers around, some of who would sneak into the boy's foxholes at night, and slit their throats. The next day, their commander went to MacArthur's headquarters (it was a couple of miles up the beach), and asked for rifles. They got six. Yes. SIX. For a medical unit of 240 men! As the officer left with the rifles.... he actually heard MacArthur screaming at someone about why that medical unit was there at all. They were the 1st Convalescent Hospital...they were supposed to arrive THIRTY days after the Leyte Campaign started, not THREE!!! So, it was a complete SNAFU – they were not even supposed to be there. Ultimately, they safely set up the hospital and by VE day, had cared for 17,973 soldiers. (The number is in the Unit Citation that they all received). Dad remained there after the war in order to care for the Philippine civilians and Japanese prisoners that remained. He returned home in Spring of 1946 and passed away in April 2013 at 87 years old and was buried under a flag, to the sound of taps, in a beautiful, somber military funeral. RIP Dad. 31367661

This story goes back to 84-85 when I did my national service. Since I had dropped out of school my dad convinced me to return to my home country and do my national service "to have it done" as he put it.

Now if you are a national living outside my country you have to "volunteer" and I was one of 7 volunteers that year and by far the youngest.

So there I was stationed outside the capital with no friends in a "strange" country. I didn't complain though i made new friends in my unit and once every other month or so I'd take that train 6 hours to visit my old grandma.

The only real down side was that when every one clocked of on friday for the weekend i had nowhere to go and it would get very lonely lets face it an 18 year old alone i the barracs, with no money and little to do except read etc. God it was boring!

Anyway we had an officer kadett (if thats what its called) in an other unit that tock his work all to serious, ie he shaved his head, screamed att people, if you ever have been in the army, you know the type of person.

Anyway. One Saturday i had managed to actually meet some friends on friday evening and they had goten me quite drunk and i didn't make it back to the barracs before the first morning bus ie about 7:30 sunday and a slept all day and did not wake up before late Sunday and hurried to get to the mess hall (i think it is called in English) before it closed. I was extremely hung over and equality as hungry.

So rushing in my army greens through the snow, hands in pockets i hurried to make it in time i was stopped by the (by then infamous) Kadett.

He stopped me and enquired why my hands were in my pockets and "If i was looking for something"

I dont know what came over me but a answerd Yes and when he enquired "what"? I have him the finger.

Well, all hell broke lose and to cut a long story short i would be confined to my barracs for the next 2 weekends and the kadett would stay behind and make sure i stayed and reflected on the seriousnes of my crime.

This news off course spread like wildfire through the whole battalion, me, the quiet 18 year old "volunteer" had given the kadett the finger and even the kitchen staff that had seen me every weekend for about 6 mouths tock pity on me and come friday they had actually baked a whole bag of cookies for me.

So 1800 hours Friday comes around and I turn up at the Kadetts barracs and there he is actually cleaning his rifle (i kid you not) and he tells me just to sitt down and wait for him, so i sit down eat a cookie and watch him clean hos rifle for about half an hour after which i offer him a cookie, at which he gets really angry.

He then goes on at me for for a good ten minutes ending with something like "a fitting punishment and probably wishing i was with my girlfriend", I ate another cookie, offered him one then said something like "not really and how I was a volunteer from abroad and spent most weekends in the barracs anyway and i was just happy not to be alone" then I asked him if he'd like to play chess later.

At first nothing of this seemed to register then he asked me to clarify and I repeated what I had said and offer him another cookie. You could literally se the gears turning in his head.

He turned first pale then red as he realized that I'd be there anyway and the only one actually punished was himself.

He stormed out of the "weapons room" (for lack of a better name) and i heard him phoning my captain from his office, I could not really hear what was said but after a bit he returned and informed me that i was no longer confined to barracs and the punishment was "cancelled" after which he left.

Come Monday my captain laughed so hard when when he saw me that we arrived late for sniper practice.

I never talked to the Kadett again and it looked like he activity avoided me for the next 6 mouths.

This took place in 2004 not long after getting back to Ft. Campbell, KY from Iraq. I was an 11B. Having been gone a year my beautiful wife and I got right to work fucking ourselves stupid, of course.

Now, I've had an occasional medical condition since I was 13 called hematospermia, or quite literally, blood in semen. It doesn't hurt, causes no performance issues, and actually feels even better than a regular orgasm. I can feel them coming from further away and they're even deeper and more intense, somehow.

It usually happens for a week or two, once or twice a year, but actually hasn't happened now for a few years. And not the entire load would have blood in it, it's always the last few spurts.

I've gotten checked out by doctors a few times throughout my life for this. Imagine being 13 years old, freaking out about it, and waking up your dad to tell him you were beating off and there was blood in your load. They’ve never found a cause for my symptoms so when it happens I'm just like, whatever.

Years later when I asked my PA at the VA about it she said one possible cause is a burst capillary and that may be why it feels better as it might build up pressure that suddenly gets released when it bursts. So I'm going with that, I guess.

Anyhoo, this hadn't happened yet with my wife and I. We dated for 2 months then eloped and got married about a month before I left. (We went to highschool together so knew each other beforehand.)

So when it did happen my wife didn't freak out or anything but she was concerned and urged me to get checked out again just to make sure it wasn't something more serious. I ended up going to see this Army urologist. He was a Major and a body builder so he was massive.

After the usual work up checking things out, turn your head a cough and all that jazz he said "turn around, drop your trousers, and grab the table." When I kind of hesitated he said "look, you'll be in the worst position in the Army, but I'll have the worst view." So at least he had a sense of humor that lightened the mood a bit.

MK3 (E-4) Bones was in trouble, deep trouble, the kind of trouble that ends a career. A few weeks earlier Bones had been voluntold that he was going to participate in Operation Golden Flow. Operation Golden Flow was the informal name for the Coast Guard’s drug screening program that the Coast Guard ran looking for Coasties engaged in the use of recreational pharmaceuticals. Operation Golden Flow was initiated by the most despised Commandant of the Coast Guard to date, Paul Yost.

Now, I for one was in the majority who did not like Commandant Yost. Cmdt. Yost was noted for a number of bone-headed ideas, such as the very short lived mounting of Harpoon anti-ship missiles on high endurance cutters and floating SAR stations. Also, a very short lived program. However, on this issue I was and am in agreement. If the Coast Guard was going to be a police agency in the “War on Drugs” then it better set the example.

As I said before, Bones had given a sample of urine in accordance with the Coast Guard drug screen program. The sample had been split into two samples with Bones as a documented witness. One sample was retained in a locked refrigerator at the unit, known as “The Piss Locker” and the other sample had been sent to the contract laboratory for testing. If the first sample that was sent to the laboratory for testing came back positive for unauthorized drugs, then the second sample would be sent to the lab for testing. If the second sample also tested positive for drugs, then the service member would be very quickly processed out of the Coast Guard.

For a number of Coasties who were early in their first enlistment failing a drug screen was an easy way out of the military. So, it was not unusual to see an E-2 or an E-3 fail a drug test. I did see a Seaman Apprentice who had simply had enough of the Coast Guard and one day walked into the CO’s office pulled out a fattie, lit it and yes Bill Clinton, he did inhale.

Bones’s first sample came back positive for drugs and Captain Mac (O-6) the commanding officer did not want a dirty Coasties in his command and immediately began the documentation to boot Bones out of the service. The rub for Bones was that he wanted a full 20 year career in the Coast Guard and nothing less. So, Bones did something unusual for someone who failed a drug screen. He fought it.

The first thing that Bones did was read from cover to cover the Commandants Instruction for service member drug screening. Bones also went into overdrive on researching items that would cause a false positive on a drug screen. The poppy seeds on a bagel for breakfast, a piece of Druian fruit, and a chaser of tonic water are all items that can result in a false positive on a drug screen. This, of course, is not a complete list.

In the meantime Capt Mac and the administrative Warrant Officer (CWO-4) Walrus, charged ahead with the separation paperwork.

During Bones’ study of the Commandants Instructions he came across the section that detailed that no actions were to be undertaken until results of the second sample were known. So, Bones, in writing, to Captain Mac, demanded that the separation process be stopped and the second sample sent to the lab in accordance with the Instructions.

Now Dear Gentle Reader, we reach the marrow of our story. Captain Mac took note of Bones' demand and sent the second sample of Bones' urine to the lab, or at least Captain Mac wanted to send the second sample to the lab. However, the reserve Lt (0-3) who was in charge of the Piss Locker had done some house cleaning and had flushed Bone’s second sample down the toilet not long after the initial gathering of the bodily liquids.

Can you say…mistake…I knew you could.

Still Captain Mac persisted in continuing the separation process, second sample be damned. This left Bones only one alternative. Bones did something that no commissioned officer in the Coast Guard wants an enlisted man to ever do. Bones got a lawyer. A civilian lawyer, a lawyer who specialized in drug screening programs and was a retired military attorney. A retired Coast Guard lawyer.

Oh yes, Dear Gentle Reader, things are about to get juicy.

Since booting someone out for the service for failing a drug test is one of the issues that the Coast Guard can move at warp speed, time was of the essence, and Bones’ lawyer moved at lawyer speed, which is multitudes faster than warp speed. The day Bones had hired his lawyer, his mouthpiece was in Captain Mac’s office with a letter, but not just any old letter. It was a cease and desist letter, delivered in person to Captain Mac with a legal service copy sent via certified mail to the 11th District Commander, Captain Mac’s boss.

Can you say…Oh shit!…I knew you could.

Bones’ separation process came to an instant halt. Within the week CWO4 Walrus was holding an all-hands training in the common area of MSD Concord. The subject: The Commandant's Policy on illegal drugs and the Commandant’s Instructions on drug testing procedures. At the end of the training period with all hands present CWO4 Walrus took a swipe at Bones for standing up for himself with the comment, “You embarrassed the command”. Bone once more stood up for himself and dryly replied, “No sir, the command embarrassed itself”.

The MSD Series, Part Seven…The Day I Stopped Worrying About Petty Stuff

Long time lurker, first time (probably only time) poster.

I've never served, but both of my grandfathers fought in World War II. Growing up, I loved hearing their stories; I could listen to them for hours on end. A few years before he passed in 2016, my paternal grandfather decided to dictate his memoirs of his time in uniform as well as he could remember, which were transcribed by my sister. I've had the original kicking around for years. I feel it needs to be shared, as very few people are left who can tell firsthand accounts of these times.

Apologies if anything doesn't meet community standards; I'm copying the document wholesale, preserving any spelling or grammatical errors, as it's a connection to the man who spoke those words. I edited for PERSEC, but these events are over 80 years old, and everyone involved have long since passed.

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After Pearl Harbor on June 13, 1942 I enlisted in the Army Air Force. I was in college until I was called up in October 1942. They sent me to Fort Snelling in St. Paul, Minnesota. There I was fitted with a uniform that was three sizes too big. After about two weeks of indoctrination, I was shipped to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri.

There the training really started. Get up early in the morning, make your bed, stand by for inspection and march to the mess hall for breakfast. Every place you went was at double time or triple time. Nothing was done at a walk. After breakfast, double time to your next assignment. Either P.E. or the rifle range, then to lunch, double time to your next project, double time to the mess hall, double time in the mess hall. Then to bed in a half tent. The tent had a wood floor. Wood walls half way up then screen the rest of the way. It was winter and you slept with all of your clothes on. It was so cold the water froze in the bucket next to the stove which was in the center of the tent. Our bunks were three tiers high. It was so cold, we all called the post “Pneumonia Gulch.” One memorable occurrence happened, we ate our mess (food) out of comparted metal trays. They were cleaned in a big dish washer. They used very strong soap to clean them. One night the dish washer broke down and the dishes did not get clean. Every one got diarrhea. All night long you could hear the guys running toward the john. You knew what had happened when they quit running. There was a long line in front of each john. Those who didn’t get there in time just walked into the shower. I didn’t have that trouble, I slept on the top bunk. When I jumped down, I just walked to the shower. No reason to run. We stayed at the gulch for about a month and then we were shipped by train to Manhattan College in Manhattan Kansas.

We marched from the train to the gym where we were welcomed by the commander. The troops were coughing so loud we couldn’t hear him. Everyone was sent to the dispensary for medication. After a couple of days of recuperation, we went back to the old routine. Double time to class, etc. They used to say, “If you drop your pencil, you missed six weeks of education.” After two months of classes, P.E., marching and one short trip on a Piper Cub, they put us on a train and shipped us to San Antonio, Texas.

San Antonio is the only place I’ve ever been where it rained mud. We were marched (double time) to the barracks where we would live until they decided what to do with us. The base was divided by a white strip down the middle. One side was Army and the other was Air Force. It didn’t take long to get in the old routine. Study, march, P.E. day after day after day. They tried to pound everything in your head and take the pounds off your body. After what seemed like a year, we were given tests. Those who passed got to step across the white line to become Army Air Force cadets. Same uniform, different hats. Now the pressure was put on us. One test after another to weed out the doubtful cadets. If you passed the final you were a physical and mental marvel, ready to move on. The tests we took were to decide if you would become a pilot, a bombardier or a navigator. I passed with high marks in all three. First choice - navigator - was all filled up. Second choice - bombardier - was also all filled up, so I took pilot training. They put me in heavy bombardment because of my size. They shipped us to Uvalde, Texas.

There I was assigned to a crew of four with one instructor. What a thrill. The plane we flew was a PT 19 low winged open cockpit two seater. The pilot could talk to us, but we could not talk back. After eight hours of instruction, my teacher said to me, “Take off, circle the field and try not to kill yourself.” I was now officially a bonafide pilot. I had just soloed. I became a pretty good pilot. I didn’t find out later that my instructor bet money on me. We were taught how to make a short field landing. This is where you come in slow over a fence, cut your power and drop it in as close to the fence as possible. The first time I tried it, everything went along perfectly unit I tried to push the throttle and the engine just quit. I made a dead stick landing. My instructor was very proud of me. The next time I tried this type of landing was at night. The fence was a rope with a streamer tied on it. It was on a dirt field and raised a lot of dust. This gave you a false landing height. I did a good job. I took out the rope, flags and poles. Boy, was he mad. I don’t know how much he lost on me. We used to take a plane up by ourselves and chase the flocks of ducks through the beautiful cumulus clouds. I guess I did all right in primary training, because they advanced me to secondary training.

The field was at Waco, Texas. The plane a low-winged monoplane, two seater (covered) with a 345 HP engine. We got a new instructor, who got us acquainted with the beast. I think it was the only plane I was a little afraid of it. I could not make the plane loop the loop. I thought this would wash me out of the air force, but for some reason when he sat in the rear seat during testing, I had no trouble at all. I did have one incident that was going to wash me out for sure. On the front instrumental panel, written in big letters - Do Not Advance Your Throttle And Pump The Wobble Pump. If you did this, it would put too much gas in the engine. Well, I did it. When I clicked the switch to start the engine, it exploded and blew the engine off and caught fire. As quick as I could I got out of the cockpit, I ran down the wing and jumped. As soon as I hit the ground, there was a Major waiting for me. He said, “Did you advance your throttle and pump the wobble pump?” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “follow me.” I wrote lots of reports and for a while I thought I would have to buy the plane. They let me stay in, but I had to march many punishment tours.

Part of the basic training was to fly solo from point to point. The cities were the points. You flew to one, to the next and back home again. Somewhere on the second leg, I got lost. I did as we were instructed; follow the highways. I guess I picked the wrong one. After a lot of time I found I was getting low on gas. I looked for a place to land and saw a large airport next to a city. It was Fort Worth. I didn’t want to try to get in their traffic pattern. Not with all the commercial flights that were landing. I looked around and found a small private runway which I landed on. It was like a cow pasture full of chuck holes. I taxied up to their makeshift hanger and was met by the owner. He said to me, “where the hell did you come from?” I explained my situation and he said, “come over to the house and we will call your base and let them know you are okay.” I talked to the captain at our base and he told me to stay where I was until they came to get me. The people at the small airport were very nice to me. They fed me supper, gave me a bed to sleep in and fed me breakfast. After a short wait, another BT-13 landed and out stepped a Captain. I got a good chewing out and was told to follow him on take off. Everything went fine until on our way home I tried to fly in formation with him. He kept turning away from me so I quit. When we landed at our home base, he got out and came over to my plane. Again, I got chewed out. “Who the hell do you think you are? You don’t fly formation with any one until you are almost thru with Advanced Training.” He was right.

After teaching us everything they could, they moved us to another base in Waco, Texas for advanced training. This was in a very slow, low winged, twin engine plane that would hold four people. Here they taught us formation flying and many other things. Upon completion of advanced training, they made me a Second Lieutenant and sent me home on furlough. No one knew I was coming home. I got off the train and took a cab to my house. The only person home was my dad. He was absolutely speechless. After many hugs and lots of talking I asked where mom was. He said she was at work. I borrowed the car and drove to where she worked. It was on the second floor of a children’s clothing store. When I took the elevator and then the doors open, she was behind the counter. She took one look and screamed, “my baby!” After many hugs and tears, I took the car and drove to where my honey lived. What a joyful reunion. We spent two wonderful weeks together before I had to return to Texas.

We were based just next to Fort Worth Airport and were introduced to the B-24 Heavy Bomber. What a change: the plane we flew in advance had a wing span of about 35 feet and two small engines. The B-24 had a wing span of 106 feet with four powerful engines. We had lots of classes on the B-24 before they took us up for the first time, a pilot, engineer and three students. What a thrill, they let me land the plane on our first flight. We had an excellent instructor, very thorough and strict. He taught me a lot of things I had to use when I got in combat. After three months of training, I was given a few days off before reporting to my next base. I called my folks and told them I could meet them in Chicago. Much to my surprise, they brought my honey, L.F., along with them. We had three wonderful days together before I had to catch a train to Walla Walla, Washington.

It was a base in the desert of Eastern Washington surrounded by mountain peaks. What a hell hole. We lost a few crews in those mountains. At Walla Walla I picked up my crew. E.J., age 22, from Oregon. He was our bombardier. J.L., age 20, from St. Louis. He was the copilot. C.K., age 18, from Minnesota. He was the navigator. E.C, age 19, from Texas. Top Gunner. B.L., age 19, from New Mexico. Belly Gunner. H.M., age 19, from Oklahoma. Nose Gunner. H.G., age 19, from New York. Waist Gunner. B.S., age 18, from Nevada. Tail Gunner. B.M., age 18, from New York. Radioman, and waist gunner. It was a good crew. Never any arguments between them. We were trained at Walla Walla to fly formation, making bomb runs, and machine gun, 50 Caliber runs at targets on the ground. We also flew long distant flights between cities. We never had any trouble except on one night flight over the mountains. All of a sudden one propellor ran wild. We had to feather the prop and fly on three engines. After a short period of time, we tried to restart the engine. It started okay except it caught fire. We had flame shooting out fifteen feet behind the engine. We finally got it out and headed back to our base. On the final approach to land, it caught fire again. In order to keep the flames from getting into the engine, I brought the plane in at high speed. I dropped the plane about ten feet when landing. The shock put out the flame but we had to really ride the brakes to stop. When we turned into our parking spot, the brake drums were red hot. We opened the bomb bay and the engineer got out first and came back in fast and yelled, “get the hell out of here!” We all exited and found the reason: the hard landing had burst the gas tanks in the wings and gas was running all over. The fire department arrived pronto and washed everything down quick. We found out later that someone had sabotaged the plane, the B-24 has vents on top of the wings some one had stuffed rags in them.

We stayed at Walla Walla for about four months. Long enough so they thought we were ready to be shipped overseas. The day before we left, we were notified that the co pilot’s mother was very sick and they sent him home on emergency leave. They gave me another co pilot to take his place. He was trained as a fighter pilot and was he pissed off. I had to teach him how to fly a B-24. We were shipped from Walla Walla to Hamilton Field in California. There we were put on a four engine transport and flew to Hawaii, and then flew to New Guinea. we became members of the 13th Air Force, 307th bomb group, 371st squadron. A temporary stopping place. They put us in tents to wait for our time to go to the front. Of course, we had lots of time to do nothing. We started to throw our bayonets at trees across the road from our tents. It was just my luck. A major came by in a jeep, got out and yelled “who threw that knife?” Of course, I had to tell him. I was put on K.P. for a week. I guess I was the only officer to be put on K.P. The cooks wouldn’t let me do anything. I sure did eat good.

We made one formation practice run on a rice field before we were shipped to a forward base. The name of the island was Noemfoor A small Island, about ten miles in diameter with two white coral runways about two miles long. We were to bomb the Phillippines, Borneo, Celebes and shipping. Moving from one base to another is a big undertaking. Planes, mechanics, tools, food, trucks, etc. but the only thing we were concerned about was finding a place to sleep. We found a nice spot among the palm trees and built ourselves a nice tent with wood floors, cots and mosquito nets and a bomb shelter. Now all we had to do was wait for flying orders. They finally came and were we in for a surprise. The island is about five miles off the equator and it rained every night. We got our flying orders three days after the move. Of course, it was still raining when we were ready to take off. Before you can take off you have to test the power in each engine. One of mine was on the low side, so I pulled out of line to let a mechanic look at it. It was minor thing, easily fixed so we took off to try to catch the squadron. We never did find them so we decided to bomb the secondary target. With all the looking around for the squadron and going for the secondary target, we started to get low on fuel. The Marines had just conquered an air strip on one of the islands, so we landed and filled up on gas. How could we know we would have to land on the same island on our next mission? When we took off to fly to our home base, we didn’t know the navigator was navigating by radio compass. We could not find our base. The compass was following the air mass thunder head clouds. We missed our base and flew to the New Guinea coastline. We checked the map for our location and headed back to the sea to find our base. We couldn’t find it, so we turned around and headed back to sea again. We did this three times and it was starting to get dark, so we headed back to New Guinea to bail out over the coast line. The bomb bays were open. The crew were ready to bail out when the bombardier yelled, “there is a B-25 below us!” I dove down next to him and the radioman contacted him with his strobe light and we got in radio contact with him. We told him we were lost and to take us to his base. By now it was dark and raining and we had to follow his wing lights. We saw his base and heard him call the tower, “clear the runway. I’ve got a B-24 on my tail.” It was quite a landing. Steel mats, raining and a runway about 200 feet wide. I had a 110 foot wingspan. We got down safe. I called the tower and asked them to call our home field and let them know that we were okay. The message never got through. This we didn’t know until the next day. They had a hard time turning the plane around for takeoff. When we got airborne, there was this little island. It looked like a jewel with two long white air strips. When we landed, the crew chief came over and said, “where the hell have you guys been?” I told him we had been flying all night looking for the island. He knew it wasn’t true because the plane couldn’t carry enough fuel. After landing we rushed to our sleeping area and found they had started to take all our stuff. We had to hunt through the whole camp to find our bed, clothing, etc. Everybody knew it you were gone over night, you were not coming back. Our next mission was three days later and it was a rough one.

***** News Article & Letter *****

M.G.H. and his 371st crew were part of the 307th Bomb Group formation that, on November 8, 1944, bombed the Japanese Alicante Airdrome on Negros Island in the Central Philippines. It was, incidentally, the crews second mission with the 307th.

The following letter was written by pilot M.G.H. to his brother, R.D.H., nearly two months after that mission. Through written under wartime censorship conditions, the letter provides a vivid picture of World War II Pacific theater aerial combat. Of special interest to us of the 307th: the Air Force has no record of any other battle-damaged heavy bomber being landed on auto pilot as described in this letter. A tribute to pilots M.G.H. and Lacy and the entire crew and another “First” for the 307th!

"It all happened one day on a raid on the Philippines. We had a good takeoff, nice flying weather all the way to the target, and a nice group assembly. We were in pretty nice formation when we headed out over the target. We could have been tighter I know now. We were right over the target when one of the gunners reported that there were fighters off at 3 o’clock. [Ed Note: The crew was unaware that the scheduled fighter cover had been turned back by the weather] At the same time the top turret gunner said “fighters coming in at 9 o’clock high”. {Ed Note: Nose gunner H.M. remembers “the zeros seemed to be coming out of the sun at first and then all hell broke loose, Jap zeroes everywhere as we fought them off”.} They started counting them. I thought they’d never stop. There were 15 on the right and 12 on the left. They came up in two straight lines and peeled off into the formation. If you’ve never seen a fighter coming at you let me tell you it’s not a very pleasant sight. They look like they are winking at you only they are winking death. We fought them off with good results for about 11 minutes before anything happened. We still had all our bombs because the target was obscured with clouds and we had to make two runs on that target. Thank God there was no anti-air craft guns."

"Getting back to the fighters. I was in formation where I belonged when I happened to glance at the ship directly in front of me. His No. 4 engine was on fire so I called him up and told him so. He feathered the engine and slowed up because of 3 engines. I also slowed up to cover his tail. All this time the formation was pulling away from us. Then a thing happened which I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget. His right wing folded upward from the No. 4 engine to the tip. The flame practically burned the wing in two. He did a slow half roll and turned over on his back. That was the last I saw of him. My belly gunner saw him go down. He thinks one man got out of the ship when he rolled over and dropped under us. There we were a half mile behind the formation just like a sitting duck. The Japs sure knew it because they all jumped us at once. We had 8 fighters come in from the nose at one time and 3 from the tail. All you could do was sit there and pray and hope the gunners would fight them off. They did a grand job. {ED Note: B.L. in his ball turret heard someone call out a zero at 5 o’clock. He located the fighter, gave him several long bursts and was told that the fighter went down.] I firewalled my throttles and prop governors. I was pulling about 2700 RPM and 53 inches which I finally caught up to the formation. I didn’t quite get there in time. The Japs pulled a coordinated attack on the tail and B.S., the tail gunner couldn’t take care of them both. He turned one away but the other one got us. He put 7-20 mm shells through the right side and tail of the ship. The tail gunner had his right arm almost blown off by the blast of one shell. He was cut to hell but he crawled out of the turret under his own power and then he fainted."

"At the same time he got hit, the engineer and radioman were hit. [Ed Note: Radio operator/waist gunner B.M. did not see, feel or hear the shells that seriously wounded him and H.G., the other waist gunner. He has no ideal how long they have been “out of it”. He remembered only picking himself up off the deck and seeing H.G. doing the same thing. He also noticed B.S., the tail gunner, crawl from his turret and lie down on the deck.] The engineer had about 20 pieces of shrapnel in him but he still carried on. He crawled over the tail gunner and crawled into the tail turret. All he could do was sit there and track because the shells had exploded both ammunition tracks to the tail. He stayed there for 30 minutes. All this time the radioman, shot thru his legs, stood at the waist windows and alternately fired the guns. He stayed there for an hour. This all happened in about a half-minute’s time. The navigator was on the cat walk waiting for the bombs to drop. When they did he took off his flak suit and parachute and Mae West and walked across the cat walk with the bomb bay doors wide open. We were 10,000 feet up. The guy sure had a lot of guts. He’s just a kid, 19 to be exact and he really got a shock when he went into the waist. There was blood all over and the tail end of the ship was just full of holes from the waist windows back. He did a damn god job. He bandaged the tail gunner up. "

"By the time he finished with him, the bombardier came back and bandaged up the engineer. The radioman wouldn’t let anyone touch him as long as there were fighters around. The Japs stayed with us as for 20 minutes before they finally went home. I had to stay in formation for an hour and a half hour before I could go back to waist safely."

"Brother, it was really a horrible sight. The engineer and radioman were both blinded by their own blood and the tail gunner was unconscious...I went back to look at him when I happened to glance at the right side of the ship. Thank God the B-24 has dual rudders and aileron cables because I had been flying for half an hour with only half my controls. A 20mm had made a direct hit on all the cables on the right. (Look at a B-24 sometime and see what I mean.) I tore up to the front and put it on automatic pilot which has separate cables for each control surface."

***** End News Article & Letter *****

That’s about all there is to my story except that the time I spent going home was the longest time I ever spent in my whole life. I had to follow another ship home because my navigator was busy tending to the tail gunner. [Ed Note: Top turret gunner E.C. reports that after it proved impossible to repair the control cables, the two pilots experimented with the autopilot knobs to see if it would be possible to use it to land the plane.} We finally made it and they cleared the whole strip for me. I came in on a straight-in approach and made the landing on automatic pilot. It was pretty good from what the crew said. [Ed Note: E.C. says that on landing “they twisted the knobs a little at a time and brought that old plane in for a perfect landing.”] They had a crash truck and a couple of ambulances waiting for us. The tail gunner didn’t have a chance. He had two pieces of shrapnel penetrate this heart. We buried him the next day.

After the second mission I had three new crew members. We had about a week off before we had to fly again. It was much safer. We now had fighter cover on the rest of our missions. The missions at times were boring. We took off 30 seconds apart and flew by ourselves to the target area. About 30 minutes from the target the lead plane would fly in a big circle with a large strobe light in has tail. The whole squadron (24 planes) would join up with him. Everyone knew their location. When all planes were in position, we headed out over the target, with fighter escort dropped our bombs and flew back to the rendevous point where we split up and didn’t see another plane until we were in the traffic pattern for landing. We stayed on the island of Noemdoor for about four months when they moved us to the island of Morotai. The base where we had to land on our first two missions. From Morotai, we bombed the Celebes, Borneo, Halmahera, Palau and all the islands in the Philippines, plus the Japanese naval fleet. Our missions ranged from three hours to sixteen hours. When we weren’t flying, we played basket ball, swam in the ocean, went to movies and ate.

On one mission we were sent to bomb the Jap fleet. We had to leave early in the morning, loaded with 8000lbs of armor piecing bombs. We were instructed to fly to another island, land with a full bomb load, gas up, take off and bomb the fleet. It didn’t work out that way. When we were on final approach, flying through a heavy cloud cover our instruments tumbled. I switched to needle, ball, and air speed. No problem. I didn’t know that the mechanic that we had with us was on his last mission. He got excited, reached down between the pilots and pulls the salvo lever. He dropped the full bomb load at 500 feet. Thank God the bombs went out with their safety wires still attached or I would not be here today.

Our shortest mission was against the Island of Halmahera. The same island we were based on. They had fighter planes and anti aircraft guns. They were in our traffic pattern. We would take off, climb to 25,000 ft., drop our bombs and fly back to our base. One of the types of entertainment was going fishing with the natives. The boats were canoes with outriggers. The natives took about three boats and let us use one. We would go out to their fishing area and one man in our boat would sit up in front with a cigar, light the 12" fuse on a 3" TNT bomb and throw it in the ocean. As soon as the bomb went off, the natives would dive in and pick up the stunned fish and put them in their boats and head for shore. Of course they could paddle faster than we could. They would get to shore, grab the biggest fish and run up in the trees. We got tired of furnishing the bombs and getting the fish they didn’t want. So one day we hooked an outboard motor to the outrigger, covered it and went fishing. When the last bomb we had blew, they headed for the beach. We uncovered the motor and were waiting for them when they got to the shore. We took the biggest fish. They were mad. They never went fishing with us again. I used to go down to the flight line and help the mechanics work on the engines. I wasn’t supposed to but I did. One day after working at the flight lines, I was walking thru the mechanics area. They were having a drink and invited me in. When I told them I never had a drink they didn’t believe me and dared me to have one, so I did.. About five drinks later I got up, walked to their fox hole, threw up and headed to my quarters. They said I hit every palm tree on the way back. I hit the sack and slept the clock around. They woke me up to attend the briefing for the next mission. I was sitting in the back row when the flight surgeon came by and asked he how I felt. I told him, “not so good.” He felt my forehead and said, “you’re going to the hospital right now!” I had come down with a case of malaria. After a week of recovery, I was back to flying.

After about twenty missions, they sent us to Sydney, Australia for a week of rest and relaxation. That’s where I learned that scotch is a very good drink. We played poker almost every night, so I guess I was lucky. I had over $700 when I went on rest leave. Naturally I had to buy my honey something. I found a furrier and bought her enough beautiful Wallaby furs to make her a beautiful coat. I also bought her a beautiful purse. I watched when they wrapped them. Then I took them to the post office and mailed them. When I got home L.F. showed me the furs. Somebody (the dirty crooks) had a connection with the post office. The furs were full of holes ( not the ones I picked) and they swapped purses! They knew we wouldn’t be back, so into the garbage they went.

Periodically they would send us to Northern Australia to pick up new B-24's and fly them back to the war zone. The runway was about 3,000 feet long and I got careless. Instead of going to the end of the runway, I just swung the plane on the runway and hit the throttles. All of a sudden all I could see were trees. The only thing that saved me from cracking up was a red knob between the pilots seats. Give it a twist and turbo super charges kick in. The extra power was just enough to clear the trees. When I landed I found leaves and branches in the bomb bays and engine nacelles. From then on I was a very careful pilot.

Most of the rest of the missions were milk runs. No enemy fighters, but we had to worry about anti aircraft fire on our high altitude flights. One of the most memorable flights was over Manilla. The two crew members who had been wounded joined us for their first mission since they were wounded. It was a high altitude flight, 25,000 feet. We were flying in a tight formation, they were watching thru the waist window when the plane next to us was hit by a 90 millimeter shell right in the ball turret where it blew up. The gunner was killed instantly and fell out of the plane, but on the way out his flight suit caught on something sharp. It seemed like hours that he hung there, twisting in the wind until he finally broke loose. Both gunners saw this. When we landed they both came to me and said they couldn’t fly anymore. I took them to the flight surgeon and had them sent home on combat fatigue. Their stint in the service lasted two missions. They both received the flying cross metal for their actions when we were all shot up.

We had many memorable flights. The longest flight was 16 hours. This was a photo recon mission. We took off at dawn to fly to Borneo, cross over and fly all around Borneo looking for enemy air fields. As we approached the coast we saw a ship close to the shore. They were unloading cargo. So we made a big circle, opened the bomb bays and dropped two 500 pound bombs. The bombardier let out a yell, “I got him!” It was loaded with ammunition. The explosion almost came up to our altitude. From there, we crossed over Borneo, went down the west coast to the tip and turned north to search the east coast. On the way, we found an airbase. Two Jap Zeros took off after us. They must have been chicken because they never made any passes at us. They flew above us and dropped phosphorus bombs on us. They exploded above us and showered us with long white streamers of burning phosphorus. The object was to have us fly thru them and catch our engines on fire. We were lucky, they missed. We turned the plane around and dropped four bombs right in the center cross of the two runways. We never did know where the fighters landed. We continued up the east coast of Borneo to head for home. Suddenly the Bombardier yelled, “there’s a life raft below us!” We circled down and found an eight foot life raft with six men in it. They were all motioning that they were hungry and thirsty. We dropped them all of our water, food, life rafts and radio and we were still six hours from our base. Thank God we had no trouble getting home. We visited the survivors in the hospital after they were picked up by a submarine. They had floated for six more days after we found them. When we landed it was dark. Three days later, I led a full squadron of planes back to the airstrip we found and put it out of business for good.

Many things happened to me. One mission over Manila at high altitude, we were bucking a head wind, dropped our bombs and headed home. About an hour from our base we lost an engine. It ran out of gas. We turned on the cross feed pump, which pumps gas into all the engines, restarted the engine and watched the gas gauges. When we finally saw our field, the gauges showed empty. We got in the traffic pattern. On the down wind leg (parallel to the runway) we lost an engine. On the crosswind leg, we lost another engine. We feathered the prop, turned on the final approach, lost the third engine and landed the plane on one engine and taxied to the revetment area and shut off the last engine. The next morning the bombardier went down when they refilled the gas tanks. We had 26 gallons of gas left when we landed.

Some of our missions were against Japanese troops. The first flight would drop 500 pound bombs on their barracks, then the second flight would drop Napalm bombs and burn everything to the ground. We made bombing runs on almost every island in the Phillippines. We made bombing runs on Mindanaro for the invasion of the island by Marines. There were hundreds of ships and landing crafts waiting for the signal to start. We bombed many targets on the way to Manila, which was finally captured. It was to be the last base we were moved to. The war was over as far as the need for the B-24. All long range bombing was taken over by the B-29 bomber. It could fly longer and carry more bomb loads. While waiting for orders for the trip home, I flew B-24's that had been banged up in combat. It finally dawned on me that it wasn’t worth the extra $50 for flying time. Our orders finally came. We were to fly home on commercial airlines, but knowing the service, at the last minute we were put on a troop transport ship. It took us thirty days of zig-zagging to reach the United States. One day from San Francisco, it was decided the ship needed some repairs. So away we go. South, thru the Panama Canal, up the east coast to Newport News, we were disembarked and sent by train all the way across the country to Hamilton Field, just outside of San Francisco where I was given a thirty day leave. I took the train home. I spent the leave and returned to Hamilton Field where I was discharged. I was home with my sweetheart when they dropped the atomic bomb.

Six months after I got home, I was married to the girl who waited so long for me to come home. Out of a crew of ten, eight men are still alive. One was killed in combat and another died five years after we got home from a burst appendix. We had an all crew reunion in 1977 in Texas on South Padre Island where we found out the full 307 Bomb Group had a reunion every two years. We attended many reunions all over the United States. This year, 2007, the crew met again in Texas on the same island, same hotel. Everybody looked good; maybe a little older. We have plans to meet in San Francisco next year. It has been quite an adventure, but I wouldn’t want to do it again. FORTY TWO MISSIONS WERE ENOUGH.

1st Lt. M.G.H.

So it was getting close to my last commands AMI (annual military inspection). As many of you know, the lead up to a command inspection is a pain but it is necessary. However in my command there was no preparation whatsoever. Our CO was being groomed for a high position in Washington so he was constantly gone and our XO and CMC (command master chief) were no where to be found. The week of our inspection comes around and 90% of our programs were either off track or need attention. If I remember correctly we came in at second to worst. Which I always wondered if the other command was on fire to do worse.

The inspectors told us we would have a second chance in 6 months to fix our issues and get a passing mark.

6 months go by and nothing has changed. The entire triad was focused on everything but the inspection. For my part I made sure for both inspections that my programs were on point.

Second inspection comes around and surprise we did worse. Fast forward a month or so my command was doing a mando fun day where if you go golfing you can get off work. I hate golf so I decided to work. I get in and my chief called me to his office and told me to call everyone in. It didn't matter if they were already pregaming. Were had quarters in a hour. I get my shop in and the entire command formed up outside of the hangar. A 2 or 3 star admiral walks up to the podium and informs us that our entire triad had been fired that morning and we were getting a new interim CO that day. He then looked directly at the E-7 and up and told them that this was their fault.

I got out a few months later but from what I heard, this torpedoed all 3 careers.

This is the story of a sergeant (me) who took care of his E-4 mafioso, so they would remember to take care of him in the field.

My wise old platoon sergeant took me aside and told me to do this. He never steered me wrong, so I did as I was told and assured my guys that this would turn out well. My section of soldiers are Armament Dawgs, first and foremost. Some branches know us as ammo loaders, ordinance handlers, or weapons mechanics. To be a Dawg, takes significant skill, schooling, and a get things done attitude above and beyond the normal soldier. It’s not uncommon to see a Dawg walking down a flight line with two 60 pound ammo cans on his shoulders, while discussing nuclear physics and philosophy with the Dawg next to him, who’s also carrying ammo. We also get into trouble when we are bored. It’s like leaving a pit bull in a library without a bone to chew or a tire to drag around.

I volunteered my section for the baggage detail on a L-1011 flight (old wide-body passenger jet) from Fort Benning, Georgia to Eagle Base, Bosnia. All bags were heavy duffel bags and we worked our tails off to get loaded quickly, not so quickly that we would have to join everyone else standing in line waiting to get on the plane at the appointed time.

Anyone in the military knows what ‘hurry up and wait’ is. Well, movements of large scale meant leaders like to build in lots of time to make sure nothing gets forgotten. We rolled up after a late breakfast and waited for the plane to arrive a few minutes later. It was 09:00.

Meanwhile, hundreds of troops were standing in line, having arrived prior to 07:00, going through roll call after roll call, shuffling along at about two feet per hour in the August heat.

The bags rolled up to the plane five minutes after we did. We decided everyone would work about 15 minutes per position, take 5, and then we would rotate to another spot on the line. We quickly had the baggage hold loaded, but left the final trailer with our own bags for last. We then set about exploring the upstairs portion of the aircraft. The crew had not arrived, so we poked around to find the best seats, the best legroom, and if there was any alcohol left for us to pilfer (no luck).

13:00. The crew arrived, we made friends quickly, and they helped us settle in to the spots in ‘business class’ we chose. They had the manifest, so they knew how many empty seats we would have. The head FA gave us some yellow ‘out of order’ tape and showed us how to block off the seats around us.

A busybody officer showed up and asked us who assigned us to the front of the aircraft. The flight crew quickly turned him away and said the baggage detail has priority for seats over everyone else- airline policy. He swore his detail was going to unload the plane… I smiled and said he was welcome to do so, as long as our commander knew it was what he wanted. It didn’t matter to the flight crew, his detail ended up boarding last, so they could get off first and start unloading quickly.

14:30 departure. The flight was uneventful, we rested up spread out on our ‘broken’ seats. Somewhere over the Atlantic, one by one we drifted to the midship elevator to the hold where the food and beverages were stored, and shared a bottle of vodka that magically appeared. One of our guys may have even joined the Mile High Club with a flight attendant down there, but that’s his story to tell. If you choose to believe him… that’s on you.

Edit: Wow, seriously thank you to everyone for all your support with this I’m blown away and really grateful to every single one of you! To add a bit of context as some have asked, my issue ended up being a severely herniated disc on my L5-S1, initially just touching my and irritating my sciatic nerve in my left side, but at this point my doctors think there could possibly be actual damage to the nerve they’re not fully sure. I separated back in September ‘23 and I’m hopefully gonna shoot for some higher VA ratings here soon :)

Hi all, this has taken me a bit of time to work up the courage and talk about, but I really needed to talk about this in a place with other people who might be able to understand. I know this wasn’t combat related or probably even severe enough to count as “trauma”, but it still follows me to this day and I’m struggling to move past it all.

I was a Nuclear Electronics Tech on a carrier for my time in the Navy, and I had a really awesome time. Chiefs were hit or miss, and officers were surprisingly pretty awesome, all things considered. The nuclear community has a lot of pressure and stress associated with it, and I knew that going in. It didn’t make it easy, nor did it make the hard times less painful, but the fun times were truly awesome and I made so many friends along the way.

Around about 2 years on board the ship, we had a GQ drill that lasted a little longer than anticipated. The person I was supposed to be relieving for watch was forced to remain there until the drill was over, so their watch was extended a couple of hours. Knowing this, I was antsy to get there and take over, so as soon as Yoke was set I booked it in the direction of the plant. I was stopped promptly by my LPO, who said that I had to lift some hatches that had been missed when initially setting Yoke, and that I couldn’t relieve until I had done so. Pressed for time, and thinking it wouldn’t be incredibly difficult, I attempted to lift a hatch by myself, which resulted in me feeling an immense pain in my back followed by me dropping the hatch and heading immediately to medical. At the time, they gave me a pretty typical response of ibuprofen and some LLD, but I could feel something was wrong. Over time, the pain and electricity down my left side became worse and worse until I couldn’t even move up and down the ladderwells without risking falling down. Multiple times, I had fallen down ladderwells and had to be called away as an emergency to medical. I thank every deity ever prayed to that I made it through every fall with no head or brain injuries.

This continues for a few months, only for my pain to continue worsening and my ability to perform my job becoming impossible. I couldn’t make it anywhere safely and life on the ship was becoming torture for my body. It was at this time where I started to notice the attitudes of the people in my division begin to shift. As my condition worsened, I noticed the people around me begin to become frustrated. At first, I totally understood their frustration—hell, I was frustrated that I couldn’t do what I loved anymore. But after a while, there was a shift from frustration towards the situation to anger towards me. I was receiving comments like “I don’t understand why you can’t just go down the stairs”, and “It’s pretty convenient you can’t work anymore, you’re really screwing us all with this.” As the months passed, and medical become more and more unhelpful, my division was almost completely against me, isolating me and essentially refusing to interact with me. The loneliness was new and terrifying to me, as I was so used to having a kind of brotherhood with these people not that long ago.

Then came the last few weeks I had on the ship.

The MEDBOSS that had been previously handling my case retired from the Navy during this time, and the person who I believe with all my heart saved my life took over temporarily until the new MEDBOSS could make it on board. This man was the only doctor in the entire Navy who listened to me, and took my pain seriously. He developed a legitimate plan to find out what was wrong with me, and he was kind the whole way through. One night, after normal working hours, the unqualified people in the division who were behind on qualifications had to perform 2 extra hours of study time as a punishment. I was in this group due to my injuries and not being able to perform practical portions of my quals. I was confused as to why no one was where “plus hours”, as we called them, normally were. I asked around, and found out that they were being held down in the plant spaces from now on. I went to my supervisor and asked if I could please be signed in because I couldn’t make it down to the plant safely. His expression immediately soured and he simply told me that if I didn’t go down to the plant to perform the hours, I would have to talk to our Senior Chief, which was HEAVILY implied to mean at the time that I would be walking straight into a DRB. This was the first time I had felt legitimately trapped and terrified on this ship. I didn’t know what to do, so I asked him if I could get help down the stairs at least in order to make it to the sign-in binder. He agreed to that, so two newer people essentially had to take on my full weight in order for me to make it down. Once down in there, I was able to sit down and read some technical manuals to prepare for some qualifications, but I was soon told that my divisional office wanted to see me. At this point, there was no one around me to ask for help back up, and I was told they needed me NOW. So the only option I felt I had was to attempt to go up by myself, which went as well as one might imagine. I fell backwards, essentially flipping down the ladder, and smacked the back of my head on the airflow meter mounted on the wall behind me. Now, from this moment to me waking up in medical I don’t remember any details. I was told that I was carried up and out into a wheelchair, but I have no memory of this. A full trauma exam was done on me, and I was deemed to be okay enough to be released into the care of none other than my Senior Chief, my DLCPO. I was carefully led back to my rack, and I slept for a good while, having an SIQ chit to allow for rest.

This was when everything went south VERY fast.

As soon as I could walk again, I spoke with the acting MEDBOSS, and he said that he was recommending me for LIMDU immediately. He felt, as I did, that me being on ship in itself was incredibly dangerous for me, and that I needed help they couldn’t provide with the equipment they had. Now, here comes the problem. While this process was being started, I didn’t have a chit for being LLD or SIQ, because the doctor assumed that the very fact I was being recommended for LIMDU would be enough to let people know not to task me with anything outside of my physical capabilities. This, however, didn’t seem to vibe with my chain of command, and as soon as I informed them of what was happening they demanded to see a piece of paper detailing what I couldn’t do. It was their belief that if I didn’t have proof then I was fully fit and was simply malingering. It took some time and explaining, but I eventually got MEDBOSS to write a temporary chit, and it was after handing my Senior Chief a copy that he demanded to see me in his office. I followed, and he then proceeded to sit me down and tell me that he knew I wasn’t hurt. That I didn’t seem in pain, and that other people had claimed I was performing actions that proved somehow or someway that I was lying. He then proceeded to discuss my then unborn daughter and said quote “Is this how you want her to handle all her problems? By lying?” I was furious at this point, but also absolutely terrified. We were out at sea, and I had absolutely nothing and no one to confide in aside from my doctor.

It was then my Senior Chief said the last words I ever heard from him, which was telling me to go to my rack until I left the ship. Not quite understanding what he meant, I asked for clarification. He told me that I was to stay in my rack until receiving notice that I was flying off the ship, and that I was not to leave under any circumstance. My heart immediately dropped. I knew I wasn’t leaving for at least another week, maybe longer, and laying in bed for long periods of time made my back hurt worse than standing did. I wish I could explain why I didn’t defend myself or say anything back, but the best answer I have is that I was scared. I was downright terrified the entire time and I had legitimately never felt so alone. My pregnant wife was back home, and that was the only, and I mean the ONLY reason I still wanted to be alive at that point. My thoughts got so dark at times that they still haunt me before I go to sleep to this day.

After getting into my rack, it was 7 days. 7 days of barely any food, the only bit of which I was able to get by asking the one person who still believed me if he could get me something, anything from the vending machine so I could eat. For 7 days it was darkness, red lights, migraines, vomiting, pain, and cheese danishes. Before I go to sleep most nights I can still smell the metal from the pipes above me, feel the vibration of the main engines pushing the ship, and feel the worn out mattress below me. Every time that I attempted to get up and out of my rack, one of the LPO’s was always right there, frightening me right back in.

I was woken up after the 7th day, and told that I had some sort of safety brief for flying off the ship to attend, but it was not until I received a call from the office giving that brief that I found out I was flying of the ship in 10 MINUTES from then. I quickly shoved everything I had in my bags and used every bit of adrenaline I had to get myself up the stairs and to the correct office. From there, I flew off and left the ship behind. Much more happened after and there were some details that I’m sure got lost in the weeds, but I seriously thank you for letting me talk about this. Like I said, this experience stays with me even now and I’m trying to move past as best as I can. I know that I didn’t see combat, and that I was only in for 5 years, but the effect this experience had and still has on me really can’t be understated.

On a more positive note, I have a beautiful family, with a daughter who has made me the proudest father on the planet every single day, and a wife who is the single most supportive and loving woman on this earth. I have a job I love going to every day and that I am legitimately good at. I am appreciated and I feel happy. I never thought I would get here but I am and I’m so grateful. I hope if you’re reading this that you have an absolutely incredible day, and once again thank you for allowing me to share.

This is a very short story that has never been published on r/MilitaryStories, but has appeared as a comment and parallel anecdote in comment section a couple or three times.

Alligator

I swear, all these Navy stories make me claustrophobic. So many people, so little space, so many issues. So many NCOs utterly oblivious to what tired, helpless, fed-up sailors, who were perfectly capable of strangling a man with a crescent wrench, might be mulling on something that seems like a provocation. Sounds like prison sometimes.

Patrolling in jungle bush country may seem like a place that might make you claustrophobic, but it isn't. It's woodsy and busy with creatures trying to find dinner and plants looking for better sunlight.

Everyone moved his bowels outside the perimeter. You could get away from humans, and have a restful and relieving experience among the trees and ants, who know nothing about your life, and couldn't care less. Occasionally, my grunts had issues, but there was usually some room to air them.

But not always. I remember once when we set up in an abandoned rubber-tree plantation that was busy turning back into jungle. We had logged off a clearing earlier in the day, then moved into the rubber. I guess mail came. I didn't get any.

But Alligator did. He was a short, muscular Louisiana guy, hence the nickname, because who is gonna call him "Louise"? Not me. Squad Leader, older than most of us, maybe 25.

I was coming back to the perimeter after answering a call of nature, when I met Alligator - minus his helmet and ruck, but otherwise in full battle-rattle, M16, grenades, the works. He was stabbing a rubber tree with his bayonet. The bayonet was dull, but he was getting in up to about the part of the blade that tapered to the point. He'd been working that tree some - it was bleeding rubberbands.

I came over and looked at what he was doing - added two and two and got four on the first try. This was going to be tricky, maybe dangerous. I chose my words carefully.

"Hi Gator. Bad mail?"

"Yes sir." He commenced to stab the tree again.

"Need to talk?" I asked.

"No sir."

"Roger that. Platoon Sergeant know you're out here?"

"No sir."

"Should I tell him you're out here?"

He gave me a look... He was still holding the knife. Long pause while he pondered the utility of my mortality. "Yes Sir. Might be a good idea."

It was. I notified his Platoon Sergeant, and when they both came back into the perimeter, whatever that was, it was over.

But such things need room. Can't imagine a man in that kind of mood crowded in with other men, nowhere to go. I'm surprised you Navy guys don't lose more officers.

In the early 90's when I was in the Army, I was in a group OB/GYN appointment at Schofield Barracks. There were about a dozen of us.

We sat in a circle with our files on our laps while being asked individually if we had herpes, genital warts, other STDs, how many abortions, etc. The questions for each of us were 5-10 minutes.

Sometime during my "interrogation" I stopped trying to correct the interviewer before my medical file grew any larger. By the end of my interview my notes contained a lot of information, including that I had three children. (I still do not have children.)

I left before the pelvic exams began (I have no idea if this, too, was done as a group). I went to see my Commander. I told him what was happening and that it wasn't right.

He told me this is the Army. Take it or leave it.

I said your wife's gynecological history is very interesting. Do you mind if I share it?

Obviously that was the end of my meeting with him.

When I originally posted this, y'all quickly made it one of my most upvoted pieces ever. I don't I know why. So it's being reposted now that it is two years old, because you all enjoyed it. I also realized that some of this isn't in the book and needs to be. So that's cool. As always, presented with light edits.

I'm going to preface this as an author and a mod: "NO SHIT, THERE I WAS." All I can say is the Army was incredibly dysfunctional in the 80's and 90's. Buckle up, this is going to be the absolute stupidest fucking thing you will read in a while.

Ok, for those who don't know in the US or outside of the US, the US military policy known as "Don't ask, Don't Tell" (also known as DADT) was the official Clinton Administration position regarding the "controversial" issue of gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the military. I don't believe it addressed transexuals. In any case, it basically said you can't be "out" about your sexuality if you are anything but straight, and if you are "in" the closet about your non-straight sexuality, you can't be kicked out. Your chain of command can't ask whose genitalia you prefer, and you shouldn't tell them.

That didn't go into effect until 1993, after I was out of the military. Prior to that, if you were identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual you were out. Period. You COULD NOT serve. You were a "distraction" or some sort of morale problem. Being trans in the military wasn't even a thing then I don't think. In reality, the only distraction you were was to the bigots. THAT was the problem. Too many puritanical values left in America.

There is your background. What does that have to do with our Jedi? I want you to have the mentality of the period.

I detest bullies. Actually, I fucking HATE bullies. That includes racists and such. As a teacher today, I go off on kids who engage in any bullying and do my best to show them the harm it causes. I was bullied from grade school on up. It made me suicidal and homicidal as a kid, and made me depressed and unsure of myself as an adult. Being bullied also has the other effect - it makes you have issues with controlling your temper. You feel the need to lash out to protect yourself, and that manifests at times and in ways that are NOT appropriate at all.

But as a junior and senior in high school, I had enough to an extent. I decided getting hit wasn't so bad after my little brother stomped the shit out of me one day in a fight. And I started standing up. Initially, it was just by my size. I'm 6'4" and a bit over 200. I came out on top in the only fight that mattered my senior year, but lost most of the rest I got in before that in earlier years. I was afraid to fight back for a long time. Lol. But after a while, I found it was easier to just turn it around on people.

So here we are in 1989. I'm in my first unit at Ft. Bliss, TX. And I fucking HATE it. I have mentioned in other stories it was a TRADOC (Training and Doctrine Command) as opposed to FORSCOM (Forces Command) Army installation. That meant that I spent WAY more time doing parades and retirement ceremonies than I did actual training and such. TRADOC was for administrative type stuff. Nothing heroic happens in a TRADOC unit. FORSCOM units were the warfighters. The heroes! HOO-RAH!. But Ft. Bliss was a TRADOC post. And it sucked. I mean, here we were in the Cold War era. I didn't join for this shit. This was around May/June of 1989, so the Iron Curtain hadn't fallen yet. I still figured WWIII with the Soviets was the horizon.

So after months of bumming around Ft. Bliss, El Paso and Juarez, I'm kind of depressed because I don't see a way out until the Army moves me. And they weren't moving ANYONE out of our unit unless they were going to a school. This was before I got the idea to call DA directly and request transfer to Korea, which I did later and worked.

NARRATOR: What the fuck does this have to do with bullies?

I'm glad you asked, Morgan Freeman.

(Everyone, we had to pay A LOT to get Morgan Freeman to make that brief cameo, so please donate to our GoFundMe.)

One of the shit heads who transferred from my Basic and AIT group was a guy I'll call "Dyson." Because he was just an empty-headed piece of shit with nothing between his ears but vacuum. The best part was he married a dumb, grossly overweight, and severely ugly 20 year old woman whose given name on her birth certificate was "Cookie." Lol. Stupid name, and certainly not something I'd want to eat.

But Dyson was a bully. A short, overweight guy with muscles who struggled to make tape each month. But he was a kid from the streets and was quick to throw hands. And I can't fight for shit despite my size. AND the drill sergeants in AIT for some reason gave him an early promotion despite the fact he finished in the bottom 10% of the class. (Never did figure that one out.) He thought he was hot shit because of the promotion and the fact he was married and living in quarters and not the barracks. That is how little his world was.

Dyson started calling me "gay" one day, then did it every chance he got. I'm gay this. Faggot that. Whatever. The few times I told him to fuck off he postured for a fight, and I'm not catching an Article 15 over this fucker. I've been in plenty of fights and lost most of them. Fuck it. Ya gotta be tough if yer gonna be stupid. It's not that I'm afraid to fight, I'm just not willing to fight when I've got something like a possible career on the line. And I intended to be an NCO in the Army and have a long career. Catching an Article 15 or even a Court Martial wouldn't help things at all, so I backed down every time and let him think he "won."

So anyway, I decide since I'm not willing to fight Dyson, I just turn it around on him. He is stupid, and this will confuse him. The next time he called me gay, I said " You are so dumb. I'm bisexual. There is a difference." He took a minute, then walked off. It became my patter to him and his two cronies.

After a couple weeks of this, I get pulled into the platoon daddy's office after the evening formation. And I'm being hammered with questions from a few NCOs and the platoon leader. Dyson says you are bisexual. Is it true? How long have you been "this way?" Etc. I tried to explain I was being a smart ass to deflect a bully, but they seemed eager to "kick out a fag." Yeah, someone said it.

So, I promptly got sent off to mental health. The lovely E3 behind the desk turned out to be the one I would later marry. I saw her three times a week for a couple of months as part of group therapy for guys where were getting discharged and saw a Captain for weekly session. Because now that I'm labeled as bisexual during an era where gays/bisexuals can't possibly serve in the military, I'm out. They are processing me. I had a dramatic call with my parents about it, but I'm not sharing that because it was both beautiful and horrific. Sorry y'all. I'm just not sure I can be that honest.

I try though.

Linda, the E3, was very nice, very pretty, tall, and charismatic - and very unhappy in her marriage. Her husband didn't work and got high all day. She was desperate for something new and I was stupid so I gave it to her. It all ended horribly. If someone will cheat on an ex, they will cheat on you, but I was young and didn't see it. I was infatuated, so she must be, right? Good God do I cringe when I look at 19 year old me.

Saying she slept with half of El Paso/Ft. Bliss isn't an understatement. At one point, she was dating an entire amateur rock band while I was in Korea. She wasn't a full on headshrinker because she was enlisted, so she ran these therapy groups as her primary duty. Secondary was her "marriage counseling" for soldiers having trouble. And as I found out later, part of her "therapy" was to fuck damn near every guy she was alone with. Because she was a good looking woman, it wasn't hard to make that happen. Thankfully I never got a STI. By her own admission and from things I heard from friends, I know it is true. She told me all of it over the course of months in conversations and letters. She didn't contest the divorce, although she did her best to fuck me over on the way out.

Anyway, it thankfully ended with no kids and no financial obligations on my part, although I couldn't end it until after Desert Storm a couple of years later.

My regular "therapy" for the horrific curse of my supposed bisexuality was with the female Captain who was an actual shrink. She wasn't a whole lot better than my crazy ex. She seemed giddily fascinated with the idea that she had some newly awakened bisexual dude in her office. She kept asking me weird questions. How am I going to meet dudes? Do I prefer men over women? How will I approach dating men? I don't know, maybe somehow all of that was relevant, but it felt weird as fuck. Because:

I kept telling her, "I AM NOT BISEXUAL!" She wasn't having it. I was sent to her for a reason. Everyone in my unit knows I'm bi or gay according to her. By now the rumor has spread and I'm being openly ostracized by a lot of the unit, except a few friends, namely my drinking crew, who had seen me with numerous women in bars and such.

So after a couple months of this, and my discharge getting closer, (and I don't remember how) I realized I could call and request a change of station. I could leave this TRADOC hell with a bully who was causing a discharge that would fuck my life up! But not if I was getting discharged.

The next session, I almost tell the captain that I'm seeing for my "bisexuality issue" that I'm fucking my soon to be ex-wife who works across the all. Except she is married, and adultery is a big deal in the military. if Linda wasn't married, it would still be a problem as fucking someone providing for your mental health is a big no-no as well. So instead, I convince this captain that I am a confused virgin, I finally got laid with "some girl" and I am now 100% straight. Pussy is the best. I am definitely NOT gay or bi-sexual. She asked a few follow up questions and I mentioned the hookers on Dyer Street in El Paso. That was distasteful enough that she "closed the case" and pronounced me "cured."

At that time, being gay/bisexual was still considered a mental illness in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) that shrinks used. So I could be "cured." If you are LGBTQ and are reading this - I know that is bullshit. That was just the thinking at the time. There are still a lot of people who believe you can be "cured." I'm sorry you face that shit. Conversion camps are bullshit. Being LGBTQ is NOT a choice. You conservatives need to deal with that.

The end result was that they shut down the discharge proceedings. That captain's report was enough to say that I was a good and loyal soldier for the state.

Maybe that is when I started questioning my conservative upbringing.

I called DA (Department of the Army) and got my transfer to Korea. And that was that. A couple of months later I was in a FORSCOM post on the DMZ in Korea facing down the real enemies to freedom. I finished out my four years. I've written about that. And about getting hurt in a stupid accident after the fighting was over and losing everything.

But almost getting kicked out for not actually being bisexual? That's gotta be some kinda thing. I'm glad the military has progressed, and now lets everyone serve. (And I'm going to be political as hell and mention if you vote Trump in November you are voting for brave LGBTQ folks to not be allowed to serve.) I don't care who you do or do not care to sleep with. Can you pull a trigger? Can you pull me out of a foxhole? Can you help me pull a broken torsion bar and put in a new one? Can you lead me through a forest to the extract point? Do you as a senior NCO or officer know how to shut the fuck up and listen to junior enlisted when they are all saying the same thing?

Then I have your fucking back. Period, full stop. Skin color, gender and sexuality don't mean a fucking thing when someone is shooting at you, and it shouldn't mean a fucking thing anyway. EVER. For any reason. We are all one race, and the ONLY way we survive and advance is if realize that.

You would think folks who were trained to kill each other would be wise enough to realize that. Don't be a bigot.

Love you folks.

#OneLove 22ADay Slava Ukraini! Heróyam sláva!

If you’re not training or at war, it’s anyone’s guess what your day will be like as an infantryman. It was mostly repetitive and mundane tasks. Cleaning weapons, refresher classes, physical training, equipment layouts, ruck marches. Safety briefings. Mopping floors.

For a short period of time, my squad was assigned to be the honor guard detail. We spent a couple weeks practicing. It’s more difficult than you’d think; it takes a lot of practice to get everyone to fire the rifle volley in sync. Folding the flag properly is a nightmare. I was the only one that shot left-handed, so initially I was instructed to carry my weapon with my right hand for the sake of uniformity. It didn’t take long for my clumsiness saw me demoted to bugler.

If you put in time as an Infantry NCO, you should qualify for a special education certificate.

I couldn’t handle doing port arms with my right hand on short notice, so learning how to bugle felt like a tall order. “No problem, killer.”

It turns out, the Army has a bugle shaped speaker that can be wedged into a bugle to play taps while some Joe pretends to play the instrument. This side towards enemy.

We attended one funeral as the honor guard and there was a full bird Colonel in attendance. I was an E-1, in my dress uniform, in a ceremonial situation, with a field grade officer that is in mourning watching on. This is as uncomfortable for me as it gets. I hated wearing my dress uniform. Everything on there must be precise and perfect and it puts a million things on you for someone to nitpick. It’s a nightmare for someone with ADHD.

I had already acquitted myself so poorly that my job was to just stand there and look pretty. If the speaker doesn’t fall out of the bugle when I raise it to my dumb face, then I’m okay.

After the funeral concluded, the honor guard stood by the casket and attendees came to greet and thank us for coming. The Colonel didn’t get up from his seat, he waited while the civilians passed through, and I could feel his eyes on me the entire time. Finally, after the line had emptied the Colonel stands up and makes a b-line straight for me—I’m shook.

“That was the best rendition of taps I’ve ever heard, son. You are a master of your instrument, thank you.” the Colonel said while shaking my hand.

“Thank you, sir.” I beamed with pride. I was a bigger phony than the bugle!

An NCO showing a private how to bullshit his way through a task well enough that a field grade officer can’t tell the difference. Is there a more quintessential Army experience than that?

This happened in February / 2015, when I just enlisted into Brazilian Marines Corps (aka Fuzileiros Navais) and was under the internship period. During this period you are confined into a military base for 4 months with no contact with the outside world whatsoever.

The first month is the worst one, everyday you will basically do physical exercises and military drills as much as possible while having very little sleep (4 to 2 hours of sleep, some days with no sleep at all), in order to make those who are not fit for being a marine give up.

Just for context. Our platoon was the one with the most amount of drill sergeants who were from special operations groups, and one of them was a recently formed Commandos, called Sgt Henrique.
I can say that he was a really creepy dude, and almost everyone was a bit scared of him (including the other drill sgts).

One night, Sgt Henrique (the drill sgt in charge of our platoon that night) was in a really sadistic mood and decided to punish our platoon for god knows why (a common occurrence) and put everyone to do all sorts of physical exercises on rain during almost the whole night, with no sleep whatsoever.
Well, let's say that night really impacted our platoon mentally, and lots of recruits gave up and asked to go home after that.

The following the day during the morning something really weird happened right after the breakfast, we arrived at our company area and we were in formation waiting the sgt to give us the orders. Then recruit 4213 suddenly started screaming a lot of stuff at the top of his lungs.
"LETS RUN PLATOON!!! LET'S VIBRATE!!! NOOOW!! LET'S GOOO!!"
absolute silence...
Everybody was looking at each other trying to understand what was happening.
SGT Henrique: "WHO IS SAYING THAT? COME HERE NOW!"
The recruit 4213 ran in the direction of the drill sgt screaming really hard.
"RECRUIT MARINE 4213 SERGEANT!! LET'S RUN NOW!! LET'S VIBRATE!!"
I remember that SGT Henrique looked at him with a mix of fear and contempt (I know it's hard to imagine that lol).
Then 4213 grabbed the SGT by the arms while screaming: ''LET'S GO SGT!! NOOOW!!!"
SGT Henrique: "GET YOUR HANDS OUT OF ME!"
"NO SGT!!! I WILL NOT!! WE WILL VIBRATE NOW!! LET'S RUN PLATOOON!!" while shaking him aggressively.
The other drills sgts showed up and grabbed 4213 by the arms and moved him to some room to calm him down.

After that, he was not with our platoon anymore, he was in the same bedroom as the drills sgts if I'm not wrong. Well, the night came and I was hanging around with the other guys when one of the recruits screamed my number: "4262!! Where are you?? SGT Henrique wants to talk with you now!!"
"ME??? WTF DUDE, WHAT I DID??"
"I don't know man, but you better go talk to him fast"
Everybody looked at me as if I was about to be tortured or executed.
So I have gone to his bedroom, thinking about what I did wrong. Knocked on the door and presented myself properly.
"RECRUIT MARINE 4262, ASKING PERMISSION TO ENTER THE ROOM" he abruptly opened the door and got out.
"No need to enter, let me talk something with you in private."
he continued, "Well, as you may have noticed, one of your colleagues had a little problem today.
I asked one of the recruits who were his closest friend, and they told me is you"
I actually was not, but since our platoon was organized in order of height and we were close in height a lot of times I was close to him, so I think someone concluded that we were friends bc of that.
"Well, I need you to do me a favor. Take him to the nursery, I told the nurses about his situation and they are expecting you there. Your friend is looking a bit down, so try to comfort him, ok?"
So I took him to the nursery, he looked really sad. I tried to talk to him a bit while we were waiting to enter. Tried to motivate him, tell that he will return to our platoon soon, that it is just a matter of time and things like that. Sadly, that was not the case.

After some days, SGT Henrique called me again asked me to visit him on the nursery to comfort him and see how he is, so when I was there 4213 told me that he was disconnected from the recruitment process bc of his mental breakdown. He still looked sad but was telling me that next year he will try again and that he will never give up on his dream. Well, after some weeks he was sent home and I never of heard of him anymore, I really hope that he made it in the next year or that he at least found a better a path in life for him.

Once, Lance Corporal Schmuckatelli was tasked with guiding a vehicle in reverse. When the driver felt resistance and questioned if they had hit something, Schmuckatelli, in a display of remarkable obliviousness, didn't bother to check, assuring everything was clear he instructed the driver to give it some gas. His carelessness led to a diesel tank being ruptured. Amid the scramble to manage the hazardous spill, Schmuckatelli had the nerve to inquire about our lunch break.

On another occasion, Schmuckatelli was sent to fetch gasoline for a water pump generator. From our vantage point atop the water tank, we watched him meander to the fuel storage and wander about confused. He then emptied his water bottle to fill it with gasoline. It wasn't that he was too lazy to carry the 5 gallon can, he wasn’t thinking of delivering the gasoline to us in the water bottle, instead, he walked to the center of the motor pool, poured the gasoline onto the ground, and ignited it with his lighter. He had not given any consideration to the gasoline on his hands and the bottle, or the fact that it was 135 degrees outside. The vaporized gasoline exploded, setting his hands ablaze, he dropped the bottle as he ran away causing a secondary explosion of flames. Someone managed to extinguish the flames but he suffered severe burns to his hands. When questioned about his actions, he claimed he was trying to discern if the fuel was diesel or gasoline, apparently unable to read the label on the can. Our Staff Sergeant, upon hearing Schmuckatelli's admission of pain, screamed in his stupid fucking face “Good, I’m glad it hurts Schmuckatelli!”.

Schmuckatelli, now nicknamed Mittens due to his bandages, also happened to be my roommate. Despite our shared living quarters, he was thankfully reassigned to another platoon after burning his hands and was relieved of his weapon. Our schedules rarely overlapped, so our paths seldom crossed. Returning from a grueling 48-hour convoy, eager for rest, I was frustrated to learn Mittens had been sent to Germany after a breakdown, leaving me the task of clearing out his belongings from our container with a very unhappy Sergeant from headquarters.

In Iraq, our living conditions included two-man containers, with communal bathrooms a significant distance away. Exhausted and dehydrated from the relentless heat every day, we opted for convenience over comfort, using bottles instead of making the trek to the restrooms at night. We’d dispose of the bottles in the morning.

Mittens had taken a different route. When I moved his bunk, I discovered his bizarre stash of urine bottles hidden underneath. It was a disturbing collection, around a dozen one-liter bottles, each telling the tale of time through the sediment settled at the bottom. I found myself oddly captivated by the transition from the fresh samples to the older bottles, with sharp stratification. It was an unexpected, albeit gross, science lesson on urine's long-term breakdown. Unfortunately, I suspect, the sergeant who accompanied me wasn’t sharing my fascination. I stood there completely at peace as he berated me, somehow Mitten’s unsanitary hoarding was my fault.

Posted on reddit umpty-thump years ago. I can't find the original:

Night Flight

Set the Scene

The interior of a jet plane flying north-northwest through a black night. Not a military plane, a commercial one. And not the commercial jets they have now. This was the good stuff. Big seats, leg room, air-conditioning. It was 1968, and the airlines were still trying to sell the luxury of flying. But not on that night.

Arranged among the 200 or so seats were about 150 GIs in khaki and in various stages of blissful sleep. All the overhead lights were out except one or two, you could hear the sound of snoring under the whining roar of a flying jet. Stewardesses wandered the aisle occasionally administering blankets or pillows to restless sleepers.

R&R was one of the things that Vietnam didn’t make difficult. You just put in for it. Then you spent about two weeks arguing with shrapnel. "WTF, man! I got R&R! Hold your water until I get back! We’ll talk about it then."

Then suddenly you are lifted out of wherever you are. I have no memory of how I got to Danang dressed in khakis and getting on a civilian airline. None. I’m not even sure it was Danang. But by military standards it was easy-peasy. The next thing you know, I’m in Sydney.

Brass Hatted

They offered a variety of destinations. Hawaii for the married guys. The rest of us could go to Bangkok or Taipei or some other SE Asian ports. Or Sydney. During Basic Training I had a sad experience with a working girl in Juarez, so I was leery of the Asian R&R stops.

(For the record, I was totally wrong. It is possible for prostitution to be reasonably humane and a win-win situation for everybody. But you know, I was an officer, and I knew everything, so I stuck my head up my ass and went to Sydney.)

Sydney was America five years ago. I had run away from the quintessential war of the 60s straight into the 50s Frank Sinatra nightmare. Nightclubs, martinis, girls in Mad Men hairdos. Didn’t matter. Turns out I had developed a fascination for on-demand hot water and indoor plumbing. Was fine. Like going to your older brother’s prom. I managed.

Proud Birds with the Anonymous Tails

Now we must speak of stewardesses. I know they are now “stewards”, but that’s the way it was then, so that’s the way I’m going to tell it.

For a while in the early 60s Stewardesses were like love-goddesses. The airlines marketed them like playboy bunnies - they were kind of the ultimate girlfriend. I know all these things in retrospect because after I got out of the Army I lived with them.

I got married to a lady who had a high school friend who was a stewardess in LA. Whenever my wife’s friend came into town, she’d come over to our small apartment and veg out for the whole layover.

It turns out you don’t just get one stewardess - they come in flocks. Pretty soon we had an apartment full of ‘em on a regular basis. I was the envy of all the single men in our apartment building. For no good reason. I was totally off-limits. It’s a girlfriend thing.

So some three years after my night flight back to reality, I learned about what fun it is to be a sex goddess. The LA hot-tub wars. The lying. The illusion of money. The hidden wife and kids. A man’s word was his bond - James Bond. Too much drinking. Too many broken promises. Too many mornings after.

Still, it was a good way for a young woman to get the hell out of Dodge, or even the whole goddamned state of Kansas. The airlines let you fly anywhere. A small-town girl could see the world.

And if she got tired of all the party-party bullshit, she could always opt for the military flights out of Vietnam. The airlines had pooled resources to offer commercial service to the war zone. They used their own jets painted with a military subcontractor’s colors. Senior stewardesses could get a pay boost, see Asia, and take a break from stewardess-world by flying on these proud birds with the anonymous tails.

I knew none of this in 1968.

Night Flight

I was awake. I was on the way "home," still kind of buzzed from my five days away from the war.

The trouble with Sydney was that all you got was five days. It turns out Sydney hookers are just as (if not more) undesirable as the Juarez ladies. The first day there I had met a young city girl working in some office in Sydney. I had spent three of my five days petitioning her and pointing at my watch. For sure, Taipei. That’s the way to go.

But it had worked out, and a fun, if hurried, time was had by all. I was happy. She was nice. I felt grown-up, worldly. I was sitting there glowing, thinking of my Australian girlfriend. The logistics of the Australia part was worrying, but we had a moment there. She cried when I left. So what about us?

I was rehearsing Bogart lines in my head, “We’ll always have Sydney.” Didn’t sound right. I had her address. She had mine. We’ll see. I was really mellow.

Suddenly a stewardess sat down beside me. She was gorgeous, but older, y’know - maybe 28? Out of my reach. Besides, I had a girlfriend.

She smiled at me. I can imagine what she saw. A boy really, in khakis two sizes too large, incongruously a lieutenant, and glowing, happy. I must have been adorable.

She asked about my R&R and gradually winkled the whole story out of me. She seemed both charmed and amused. I’m sure it didn’t help that I was all “Yes ma’am” and “No ma’am.” ‘cause my parents taught me to be polite, especially to older ladies I didn’t know real well.

White Knuckles

Then the conversation changed. I’m just going to write it out here as if I remember it word-for-word. I don’t. But this is what we said:

“Tell me something,” she said. “I’ve been doing these flights for a while now. When the guys get on, they’re all completely tense, wired up. They white-knuckle it through the takeoff, which gets a cheer. They white-knuckle right up to the time the pilot announces that we’re leaving Vietnamese airspace, which gets another cheer.

"About that time, you’d think they’d relax, but they don’t. They’re nice, but they’re all worried through the whole flight. Even when we land. Even when they get off the plane.

“Then on the way back...” She waved a hand at the sleeping, snoring soldiers dossed out and smiling. “They do this.

“Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” she asked. “Shouldn’t they relax that moment when they’re safely out of Vietnamese airspace? Shouldn’t they be all tense going back? They’re going back to a war! Why are they so calm? Why are you so calm?”

True Stories

Huh. I guess what she said made perfect sense from her point of view. I thought about it a bit.

“Uh, ma’am. When you get in country, everything scares you because you don’t know what’s going on, and mostly because the guys who have been there a while try to scare you with war stories and stuff. They want to get you up to speed. They also like to mess with FNGs.”

She stopped me. “FNGs?”

Oh crap. I’m gonna have to talk dirty to this nice lady. “Fuckin’ New Guys, ma’am.” She seemed to want the real poop. Okay. “Anyway, after a while you get settled in and you know what’s what, but sooner or later bang!, and you realize that you shouldn’t get comfortable at all. Someone out there is trying to kill you.

“So you tighten up. Most of the problem is shrapnel. If someone is going to shoot at you, you can shoot back. Shrapnel happens everywhere to everyone. Shrapnel is what hits you in the back when you’re shooting at the enemy in front of you. Shrapnel happens when you feel safe, when you’re inside the wire, when you’re not ready.

“My job is to dispense shrapnel. It’s hard to control. I aim for the enemy, and so far I have never hit one of our guys. But that happens. I lost a friend to 'friendly' shrapnel. It’s something we all have to learn to live with.

Fuck It

“And we do. Eventually, you learn how to say ‘Fuck it,' and mean it. Fuck it. Fuck it if it’s my turn. Can’t be thinking about these things all the time. Time to get up and go somewhere in the middle of a mortar attack? Fuck it. Let’s go.”

She was staring at me. I think the whole adorable-thing had shifted on her - some cute newborn baby talking earnestly about abortion. So I tried to cheer her up.“So you get that way, and it works! You’re fine. You learn to ignore the stuff that’s too far away to matter. Missed me! Try again, buddy. Even the close impacts are over by the time you hear them. If it’s something that matters to you, you would’ve known it by now. So Fuck It.

“Then R&R happens, and it gets closer and closer, and you imagine how it’ll be, so much nicer’n here! And the shrapnel starts to bother you again. It makes you mad. You wonder why it just can’t take a day off, maybe a week off until you can get on that plane. It’s just so unfair! Every incoming round, no matter how far away, makes you jump, like there’s a burglar in the house trying to steal your stuff. You get mad and twitchy. Somebody - not sure who - is messin’ with you.

“By the time you get on the plane, you can’t stop. Maybe a rocket will hit the plane. Maybe shrapnel will hit it on takeoff. Maybe the NVA snuck an anti-aircraft missile all the way down the Ho Chi Minh Trail just to shoot my personal jet to R&R out of the sky before I could even get a chance to talk to a female person!”

"Home"

I laughed. She smiled. Not the same smile she had when she sat down.

“So we’re going back now, ma’am. We got our R&R. Maybe the shrapnel will get us now, but we had our fun. Fuck it. Might as well get some sack time before we get home. We’re used to it.”

She looked at me for a long time. I could see what I said made sense to her. She made a face like she had to sneeze or something, and excused herself - then hurried off on urgent stewardess business, I guess.

I went back to thinking about my new girlfriend. What about us? I had made a girl cry! We’ll ALWAYS have Sydney. No. We’ll always HAVE Sydney? Naw...

I must’ve dropped off at some point. When I woke, I discovered someone had put a blanket on me while I slept.

Below is a small segment from my memoirs that covers my time at the Army Training Regiment (ATR) Pirbright in 2011. ATR Pirbrigt is one of two places for basic training for all regular British Army soldiers joining trade roles (MP/Signals/MI/Eng etc). Pirbright is a 14-week boot camp, and then trades go to their respective schools for trade training. Infantry soldiers attend one longer course at Infantry Traning School Catterick (ITC(C)).

---

Physical Training, known as PT in the military is where a lot of mental development gets put into practice and it was the most transactional aspect of all training. A Physical Training Instructor – PTI – had one voice and you did what they said, and you did it with haste. Failure to comply immediately, or without the perceived right attitude meant pain. You'd all be doing burpees on the crash mat, crawling all over the hard gym floor on your knees or running laps of the field and rolling in the sand. This was perfect for the ‘can’t fight the system’ obedience that makes soldiers malleable, and less resistant to authority.

From the moment you arrive outside the gym, you are in trouble. A PTI would come over to the Platoon to take the nominal roll by barking our names. When your name came you would spring into attention and bellow “YES STAFF”. If you didn’t do it quick, or loud, push-ups for the rest of the nominal roll. If you look at the PTI funny, push-ups. If you move, push-ups. Adam in my section, who was a bodybuilder before joining, brought extra attention to himself by existing. He was chided, even taken to the side so the PTIs could flock around him shouting in his face "Do you think your fucking strong, big man? Do you think you're bigger than the PTIs?"

He was, and the extra push-ups made him bigger.

PT came in a variety of flavours. There was a good old platoon run, where the fit people had fun whilst the less fit people died. They dripped behind the squad in a trail of breadcrumbs as we powered through the forest. We also had circuits, which is cross-fit in civilian speak. Here, we all played the dangerous game of working hard when you think you are being watched and slacking off when you thought you weren’t. The third flavour of PT was a Tactical Advance to Battle known as a tab, yomp or weighted march. Putting ten or fifteen or twenty kilograms into a bag called a bergen and, whilst wearing boots, marching very fast as a squad. Halfway between a run and a march - the worst place to be. Tabbing is amazing for physical fitness, and horrible at the same time. I had never had pain equivalent to the day after our first five-mile tab in Pirbright. I lay on the bed the next morning with a grim delight at how hard I had pushed myself to pass this minor challenge, and how much my legs hurt because of it.

All the PTIs had thick arms, thick necks and gelled hair with tribal tattoos. The majority of them were Parachute Regiment or airborne Artillery or Signals. All from either Liverpool, Newcastle or the Midlands. The exception was a Gurkha, who would shout at us in thick broken English-Nepalese, knowing full well we didn’t understand him. But this was part of the game too. He was the only PTI who would get Nwachukwu’s name correct, which I’m sure as the only black guy in the platoon, made him feel included. We had one famous PT session that was overseen by the Officer Commanding (OC). It was the second time outside the week five commander’s room inspection we had met Maj Harrison. It was odd, as though our grandad had joined us for a run in the park. He wasn’t even that much older than some of the trainees. But he was a recently combat-experienced major – which was the highest rank we really met in Pirbright in person. He brought with him a polite calmness to the session, which stifled the PTIs. They spoke to us humanely in a way that hadn't before, and they made sure we were happy and uninjured; we warmed up and warmed down for once. When the OC left a PTI had a frank conversation with a few of us:

“Did you like the session today boys?”

“Yes Staff.”

“It was different yea?”

“Yes Staff”

“You know why we beast you though, right? You understand?"

“Yes Staff, we understand Staff.”

We did, but we didn't.

As I aged in service, I would learn to understand how the system worked, and the psychology behind the curtain. Constant physical and mental exhaustion combined with aggression changes you. You find your limits, and others’ limits, it brings a team closer and develops willpower. It may not be the best way to do these things, but militaries all over the world work their soldiers hard in similar ways. Understanding this made things simpler, but not easier.

TLDR: >!Clouds can stop satellite communications!<

The back story -

My last deployment to Iraq, as the OIC (Officer in Charge) of the S-6 (communications) section of a US Army Parachute Infantry battalion. Our parent unit was charged to continue drawing down US force presence in the Anbar district as the deployment was the final iteration of Operation Iraqi Freedom before the start of Operation New Dawn. Communications requirements were minimal, as our battalion headquarters was co-located on the same small base as the brigade headquarters, and a fiber optic network connected both HQs on the base along with the battalion's subordinate companies. Due to the limited needs, our unit received ZERO specialty communications systems or training prior to deployment.

Of course, the brigade commander wasn't interested in pulling back into the base and continuing the draw down, as that is boring, especially for Airborne infantrymen. So, our units were deployed back out into the district with what little communications gear we had. I managed to get a few lightweight satellite communications packages and sent my communications Soldiers to Baghdad for a short course on operating those systems before sending them out into the field with our units.

Here's the fun part -

One outstation was unable to reliably connect to our network across the satellite infrastructure. The outstation would connect briefly and then disconnect, over and over and over.

I called my Soldier there (we had satellite phones which used a different satellite system) to try and diagnose the problem. The Soldier told me that every time clouds crossed over his area, the satellite system would disconnect. I contacted the contracted field technician (these guys were employed by the company who made the satellite system and were deployed into country, but spent the majority of their time in Baghdad) to discuss. He told me it was impossible for clouds to prevent connectivity but I insisted he go to the site and help my Soldier figure out what was wrong.

Turns out the satellite system's balun was failing so the satellite dish wasn't connecting at full power. So it didn't have enough power to push through the clouds. Now you now how a cloud can stop a satellite transmission.

So this happened back in the 80's. I had attended a school, back then, that was several months long located about an hour north of San Francisco. I was stationed on the east coast. The original plan for my return home was that the day after graduation, I was to ride the govt provided school bus for that hour long trip to San Francisco International Airport, sit around at the airport several hours, then catch a flight, stop at several cities to catch a couple connecting flights, seemingly touring all four corners of the US, terminating with a red eye flight back to home plate. It would take around 24 hours to get home. After all, nothing is too good for our boys using the cheapest flights! It didn't turn out that way.

First, about an hour before our graduation, a CG HH-3F showed up. Have I mentioned that the Coast Guard aviation community is small? I found myself mixing with the crew where I found out the pilot was one of the better pilots from a previous station whom I loved to fly with. His nickname was Wild Bill and he had been promoted since my time with him and was now the #3 in command at Air Station San Francisco.

After we caught up, he asked how I was getting to the airport. After I explained I'd be touring the US on the way home, he said they were due to take off 1 hour after the graduation ended, but if I could pack my stuff and be at the helo pad, I could fly down with them. Lets see, I thought. Travel for 24 hours home starting with an hour or so on a school bus, or fly home with Wild Bill on the H3. I immediately said you're on.

You never seen someone haul ass like I did after the graduation and I made it with about 15 minutes to spare. I was rewarded with the best low level tour of the area between Petaluma and the airport, including the Golden Gate Bridge and city of San Fran one could hope for. Plus I was in San Fran way early. Upon arriving at the air station, Wild Bill had to run and I was left to my own devices.

My first call went to Eastern Airlines so I could hopefully get a flight earlier. Unfortunately, nothing was available that afternoon or evening, but they could get me an earlier flight the next day, albeit, I'd still be taking the grand tour of the US. The flight left at Oh Dark Thirty the next morning. I took it.

I was graciously offered a ride across the airport the next morning and a bunk in the bunkroom that night by the air station watch captain. I was all set and ended up at the airport in great spirits the next morning. I found a bar that was opened and had a Bloody Mary or 2 before the flight for breakfast. Life was grand... right up until the flight was delayed - mechanical. So I had a larger breakfast of another Bloody May or 2... or 3.

The flight was finally called and boarded. It was pretty apparent that the vast majority of the passengers were not happy about being delayed. I didn't care. I was on the govt's dime. 2 hours later we boarded. I wondered where I would miss a connection and be stuck for the night. About 2 hours later, we reboarded. It was real apparent that my fellow passengers were not happy campers... at all.

So, back to the bar.

About an hour later we reboarded again. And my fellow passenger's moods had not improved. After being pushed back from the gate, we stopped. We sat, and sat awhile longer. At some point the captain came on the intercom and announced that the mechanical issue had not been fixed and we were waiting to be pushed back to the gate to deplane and the flight was canceled. Please go to Customer Services and your flights will be rebooked. I thought the passengers would revolt the way they were acting. Me? Im thinking another night where I could actually visit San Fran? On the govt's dime? Im all in!

As everyone lined up at Customer Services I went to the end of the line since I was hoping to stay the night. At that point I wasn't feeling much pain, if any. I couldn't care less. I started cracking jokes for the next two hours as I waited, having everyone around me in stitches. We were having a good old time while at the desk people were yelling and raising a ruckus. As my crowd dwindled I listened as the last 5 or 6 people got upset with the poor gal who was telling them everything was booked for the rest of the day and she could get them out tomorrow. Then get yelled at. I never heard of so many mothers, fathers, and grandparents being sick, ill, and dying all at the same time!

Finally it was my turn at the desk in the now empty area. First thing I told that gal was that there wasnt enough money in the world for me to do her job. And smiled. Her answer first didn't shock me and made me smile, then floored me. It went something like this. She said she's been watching me have a good time and making people laugh for 2 hours, but unfortunately, everything was sold out to the east coast. Except for one seat that would be leaving in an hour or so, that was first class on a direct flight. Would I like it?

She smilingly listen to me explain I was flying government and couldn't possibly pay for the upgrade. She countered that it would be Eastern's pleasure to give me that seat, and thank you again for having a great attitude. I said I couldn't possibly accept that. She frowned. I quickly said ARE YOU KIDDING? Thank you!

I didn't get to visit San Fran that night but that was the first time that I flew First Class and got to do it cross country flying west to east! And I still got home much earlier than originally planned. It was quite the day!

Thanks for reading and see you next time!

During my stint with the Marines, we were entrenched in a field operation lasting a month, dedicating the tail end of it to simulated skirmishes against the other half of our battalion. Our temporary battlefield was uniquely situated, backing onto a small beach, while our adversaries were stationed further inland, nestled at the base of a formidable cliff.

Tasked with reconnaissance, my comrade and I were to stealthily maneuver along the ridge, our mission to pinpoint the enemy's location from the cliff's edge and engage them from a position of safety if viable.

As we edged along the ridge, a peculiar sight caught our attention: a fence, roughly 15 feet from us, delineating the base's boundary. Beyond it lay a sprawling collection of refuse and discarded garments, signaling the presence of a homeless encampment. In the distance, the sight of a Carl's Jr. stirred within us a longing for anything but the monotonous MREs that had been our sustenance.

Upon reaching our vantage point at the cliff, it became evident that actionable intelligence was scant, and there were no opportunities for engagement, leading us to retrace our steps.

With a blend of jest and audacity, I proposed to my buddy a bold mission: I would scale the fence, don the abandoned apparel to blend in, and embark on a quest for Carl's Jr. My friend's disbelief quickly turned into amusement as I began to disrobe, leaving him to conceal himself in the bushes with our weaponry and my Marine uniform.

Adorned in the forsaken clothes, which were far from fresh, save for a pair of surprisingly decent dress shoes, I made my way to the Carl's Jr. My clean shaven appearance did not go unnoticed by Marines present, yet, fortunately, they chose to withhold any comments or actions. Successfully acquiring our meals and beverages, I returned to the fence where my buddy and I passed the food and drinks over, ensuring their safe delivery.

I immediately began bathing in hand sanitizer I before slipping back into my Marine attire.

As we settled on the ridge, relishing our Carl's Jr. under the fading sunlight, our moment of tranquility was abruptly shattered by the astonished voice of our platoon sergeant, accompanied by a few of our comrades. His exclamation, "What the fuck!" echoed our stealthy dining spot, his anger palpable over my unauthorized exit from the base during an operation while supposedly in uniform—a significant infraction.

In my defense, I explained the unconventional method of my escapade, detailing how I had stripped down and donned the attire of a presumed homeless person to secure our meal. The sergeant, astounded yet somewhat amused by the audacity of my actions, turned to one of our most junior Marines, handed him his credit card, and instructed him to replicate my mission for more food.

Having finished our food, not wanting to get caught if these jokers bungled it, I asked if we could be dismissed. We were permitted to depart, only to return to a base that was winding down from the maneuver. A company formation was called, yet our platoon sergeant and those involved in the earlier incident were conspicuously absent.

The first sergeant, visibly irate, demanded I escort him on a lengthy trek back to our camp in search of the missing Marines. Throughout, I discreetly attempted to dissipate the lingering scent of my burger as I belched, hoping to avoid further scrutiny. By the time we arrived, it was dark, and i suggested the platoon may have already returned by an alternate route, my quick thinking suggested as much, narrowly averting suspicion.

However, the tale of my audacious Carl's Jr. run did not remain a mere anecdote among us. It was brought to the fore during a deployment "gong" show, where I was compelled to share the details of that day before the entire company. While the Company Commander found delight in the story, the first sergeant's disdain for me was unmistakable, his prior grievances with my conduct only magnified by the deception of that day. This incident, though not directly leading to my demotion, played into a narrative of misconduct that eventually saw me facing consequences for a separate instance of "malicious compliance."

While deployed, I often thought about it as a marathon. A long race to the finish line : Home.

You spend days and weeks tensed, tired and worried about combat, food, sleep and weapons readiness. You live and breath this heavy rhythm.

Of course, your new family, the Army, takes care of training you so that everything you do becomes a second nature. They take you out of your civilian mold and force you into your new Army one. Being worried is part of your nature and you do not even realize the toll it takes on you.

As a platoon, we condition ourselves the months before a deployment. We talk less with our families, we kind of ramp up the stress like we want to get used to it. It is not done on purpose but it is done each time. You prepare yourselves to become tough men again. The warrior culture now takes priority on your usual self. Squad leaders are good at making you angry. Angry soldiers are good soldiers in the field. Angry soldiers want to go out there and send hate outside the wire.

My platoon had a dense deployments schedule. A few weeks of rest and we were back at it again. Getting back to training facilities and uncomfortable situations. They kept us on our toes for years. For years, we were angry and ready.

We had our share of failures and victories. We had our share of fallen comrades. Our leaders kept us ready. Our leaders pushed us forward, always. A marathon where you don't feel your legs anymore. You just run and pain is part of you. It pushes you forward.

You get back home and you reach what you think is the finish line. It is not.

Some of my brothers finished their time in the Army.

Where does the emotions and thoughts you built up and suppressed are supposed to go now ? No more wars to fight, no more adrenaline.

Their finish line is not the one they thought it would be. Now they fight their war with themselves.

Recently, some of my brothers lost their war. They decided that they would never reach the finish line. The pain was not pushing them forward. They stopped running.

They decided to end it.

Now, I have lost more brothers to suicide than war.

I do not feel much nowadays. I am not sad. I think my mind has learned how to shield itself. Honestly, I do not remember how to be sad or when was the last time I was sad. Maybe I am sad but I don't remember it felt like that.

They should have run longer. Nothing is forever.

It is alright. We will run for you now. That is what brothers do.

To my brothers in arms that are gone, be sure of one thing:

The rest of us will keep running.

I had been qualified as a dual engine helicopter rescue air crewman in the HH3F program with the Coast Guard. When I got transferred to my next duty station, there were only single engine helicopters. The HH-52a aircraft can launch with a single pilot and a single air crewman. Therefore, they train the air crewmen to be able to take over the aircraft and fly to it. should it become necessary. It is the first thing they teach to the new air crewman In qualifying them on that air frame type.

It was on that particular training mission this Occurrence took place. It was a beautiful morning and I was scheduled to go out on the training mission with aircraft number 1450. We launched at approximately 0845 after a briefing on the mission. The pilot and I climbed into the cockpit, and he started the engine. While we were still in the air traffic control zone we were told to stay under 300 feet above sea level to avoid collisions with departing aircraft from the active runways of the international airport. While still north of Yerba Buena, Island, and the bay bridge, the pilot asked me if I wanted to take over the aircraft. I said yes, he briefed me on procedures for slowing down forward flight. He reminded me not to retard the throttle, but instead to pull back slightly on the cyclic. I told him I was a mechanic, I knew how to control the aircraft. He turned the aircraft over to me. I initiated a couple of gentle banks, lowered the aircraft slightly, then came back up to 300 feet on the heading that had been designated. Things seem to be going smoothly. Suddenly the engine shut off, I checked to make sure I had not accidentally retarded the throttle since it is located on the collective. The othrottle was in the full open position. At that time I announced engine failure.

The pilot quickly resumed control of the aircraft. I got on the radios and announced the emergency. I got 5 calls out on 5 different radios to let anyone listening know that 1450 was going down with 3 souls on board. I also hit the IFF which lights up the aircraft on the air traffic control system radar. The entire event seemed to take forever to complete. The next thing I knew we were hitting the water of San Francisco Bay. The wave we generated exceeded the height of the cockpit and I watched it go into the engine intake. I remember thinking I was going to have to change the engine. As we bobbed back up I asked the pilot if we needed to deploy the sea anchor or set the sea dough since I didn’t know the water depth in that area. I also reached back and deployed the on board floatation device. Once things calmed down and we were stable in the water, a second helicopter arrived to check on us. A small boat from Yerba Buena Island was dispatched to tow us back to the air station. We got back to the base in the early afternoon. There was a TV news crew waiting for us. I just ignored them. We were sent to the medics to be checked for injuries. After that we were debriefed.

The following morning the same pilot and I flew out again to continue my familiarization with cockpit procedures. Different air crewman went with us. The senior chief who had been on the autorotation had declared that “women were bad luck “ and refused to go up again. He had never been down in his career of approximately 20 years of flight until he autorotated with me. I told him fine stay out of my aircraft since I was the air crewman and crew chief.   Never had a problem thereafter on any subsequent flights.  That first one was exciting though. 

The pilot wrote me up for my performance during that autorotation saying I responded with extreme professionalism and proficiency.

My first duty station was a small post overseas, a company of ammo humpers. Our post itself was quite large due to the depot but the main post was just a few streets. All of the married personnel lived off post, either on a larger base or off post housing, most living 30 minutes to an hour away.

Our unit would often get called late in the week and the ammo humpers would have to work during the weekend sometimes, so there was an on-call rotation for the mechanics. It wasn't often that we had to attend to vehicles on the weekend but it happened from time to time. Most of the time any vehicle that was having issues was swapped out and we only needed to go out if a vehicle couldn't make it back to the motor pool. After formations, many of the mechanics that had been there a while would immediately go to the barracks and crack a beer, chugging half of it down. I just assumed that they were heavy drinkers, not really my problem. After two months in I discovered the reason for this.

I had been in my room for maybe half an hour when we got a knock on the door. I answered to find the duty sergeant standing there with a clipboard and asked for my roommate and I. She informed us that a vehicle needed repair and she was locating mechanics to make the run. I informed her that I was not on call but that answer was insufficient. Due to the length of travel time for the married personnel they were never called for this duty. It was standing policy to locate mechanics in the barracks to manage vehicles during off hours. The duty sergeant looked at my roommate and he just lifted the half-empty bottle and said, "Sorry, sergeant, I'm not on call so I started drinking." She shrugged and went back to knocking on doors. It's against regs to drink and turn a wrench. I learned to have a bottle in my hand at all times when off duty and made it conspicuous, so much so that they stopped knocking on my door altogether.

One weekend about halfway through my tour, late at night, we were sitting in my room drinking and shooting bull when one of our friends came in and said that he'd ditched his car right outside the barracks and needed help getting it out. Mark was clearly intoxicated but we all went out to try to help before anyone noticed. It was raining and it was a pretty futile task but we didn't get much of a chance anyway since the MPs showed up within minutes. They took Mark away in cuffs and took all of our names down. Monday morning we were in Top's office to explain. They questioned us one by one but all of our stories were the same, Mark was driving alone and he'd asked for a push. Except for him, no disciplinary action was taken.

But Top and my platoon sergeant had a little something extra for me. I told you I made myself conspicuous in my drinking - apparently a bit too conspicuous. Top and my sergeant explained that they had noticed my drinking and were going to refer me to the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Program(ADAPCP). They said that they didn't think that my drinking was a problem, I made formations, did PT, and performed my tasks, but if I continued drinking this way it could become a problem. They gave me a choice, I could request ADAPCP myself or they could refer me. If they referred me it would mean that I wouldn't be eligible for promotion until I had completed the program and it would look worse in my personnel file than if I'd self-referred. So refer I did.

For those of you who don't know, ADAPCP is a huge thing. There are three possible levels to the program and the counselors decide which is required after an interview. The first, and the one that my leadership really wanted for me, was a two day class on the effects of alcohol. The second was two-weeks long and the third was in-patient rehab. If a soldier should be thrown out of the program, they were discharged from the military, so we were at the mercy of the counselors. And no drinking was allowed for the duration of counseling. My platoon sergeant brought me to the initial interview. There were two sets of counselors and the ones that were assigned to me we'll call Bob and Suzy. When we arrived at the meeting my platoon sergeant notified me that I should just be honest and everything would be fine.

Honesty was not a great plan. They first talked to the sergeant and he explained that he just wanted me to get the two day class. He said that the company leadership felt that my drinking didn't warrant anything more. But then they began to question me about my drinking habits and family history. I'm from a family of drinkers. They're all social drinkers and they're some of the most sociable people you could ever hope to meet. Bob was an absolute dick, a pompous man and a bully to boot. He was well aware that he held my military career in his hands and took every opportunity to ensure that I knew it too. The worst of it was that none of these counselors had ever served in the military, they were all civilians. Bob would make these smart-ass remarks when I was answering questions and I'd respond in kind, then he'd let me know that he could end the conversation now and make a referral to have me discharged if I was going to have this attitude. It got so bad that my sergeant had to let him know that he thought Bob had attitude first and that he didn't think it proper for a counselor to be speaking in that manner to a patient. He gave some bullshit answer about trying to get me out of my comfort zone. Sarge just remarked about how strange it was to threaten my enlistment upon achieving that goal. I requested a new counselor right there. When Bob asked why, I told him that I think our personalities clash and I felt that my needs would be best served by a counselor with whom I didn't have such conflict. Bob said, "You've got a fucking problem with your drinking and your attitude and I'm gonna be the one to fix you." Sarge had enough, "I didn't bring this soldier here for you to fucking fix!" Bob saw the problem and relented, in theory. He allowed Suzy to be my counselor. This two weeks would involve both group and individual counseling, mostly group. Bob and Suzy's patients were in a group and the other two counselors in a separate group. Bob agreed to allow Suzy to be my counselor but Bob sat in on every one of my individual sessions and dominated them while Suzy twiddled her thumbs in the corner. Suzy was a very submissive person so Bob dominated the group sessions too. On paper Suzy was my counselor but in reality it was still Bob. Too bad, too. Suzy was a very nice person on the few occasions that we spoke alone. I honestly felt that she had the soldiers' best interests in mind. She was just too submissive and Bob was her boss.

I was assigned the two week out-patient counseling and I found out later that Mark would be in the same group as me. When we were out the building my sergeant asked me why I had told them all those things about my family. They asked and you told me to be honest. "I didn't want you to be that fucking honest." Unclear instructions are a bitch. Sarge filled Top in on all of the conversations in the meeting: my honesty, Bob's attitudes and threats, and the status of my counseling. "Well this turned into a shit show, didn't it?" He told me that I had reason to not like this Bob character but to keep my mouth shut, do my two weeks, and get back to work.

Keeping my mouth shut would not be a thing that was happening. Bob and Suzy's favorite question was "How do you feel about that?" We were only allowed to respond with feeling words - that makes me happy, that makes me sad - then we could explain. I'm not quite certain how that would get me to stop drinking but that's the way it was. Most of the people responded to the questions in the manner that they thought would make the process quickest. I was told to be honest, though, and that's how I was gonna approach this.

Our first day of counseling came the Monday right after the Super Bowl, which played early in the morning at the overseas post we were at. All of the soldiers there had watched the game and none of us had gotten more than a couple hours sleep. We all arrived early and were dozing in the group room when Bob walked in and greeted everyone with a chipper, "Good Morning, everyone!" Bob had not stayed up to watch the game. The room full of soldiers just kinda looked at him, nobody saying much of anything. Bob responded with "I can see this is gonna be a cheerful fucking bunch." Bob was also a shitty counselor. Then Bob asked if any of us had anything to drink while watching the game and everyone said no. Bob gave us a lengthy speech about trust and let us know that he was going to trust us and that anyone that did drink could come forward without consequence. We all again responded in the negative. Then he left the room and came back with a fucking breathalyzer. He went around the room testing each of us and after each test he'd ask the person how they felt about it. Most responded that they really didn't care. They didn't drink so it wasn't an issue. I told Bob that what he was doing made me angry and let him know that he was a liar and had proved himself untrustworthy. He was a bit stunned and couldn't fathom why I would think that. So I let him know that he'd just said that he was going to trust our answers but then broke out a breathalyzer. He said, "Trust is earned, is it not?" "Yes, Bob, and you just burned your trust right here. Nobody's gonna believe a word you have to say for the rest of this two weeks." Bob was not amused. Needless to say that nobody was idiot enough to drink during the Super Bowl. We all expected the breathalyzer.

The next two weeks went pretty much like this. Bob would ask me how I felt and I'd tell him. They had us do trust falls one day, the most idiotic invention ever. Someone would climb up on the desk and fall backwards into the groups' arms. Everyone else went and then Bob announced it was my turn. Yeah, I ain't doing that. Bob explained how this would build trust and allow us to speak more openly to one another. "Trust is earned, Bob, and it ain't earned by doing this shit. I only met these people a few days ago and none of them have earned my trust." Bob said that everyone else had trusted me to catch them and that I should return that trust. "That was their decision. It ain't mine." He eventually came to the realization that nothing he was saying was gonna get me to do that. Honestly, it wasn't about a lack of trust for me, I just have a low tolerance for bullshit. I might also have a small problem with authority.

Three days before the end of the program I was kicked out. Bob had asked my buddy Mark a question and Mark answered. Bob then asked how he felt about that and Mark replied that he didn't know, that he hadn't had time to really process it, and if Bob came back to him in a bit he'd be able to answer. Bob blew a gasket. He began yelling and ranting that Mark was lying and trying to hide his feelings. Then he put Mark in time out. Absolute insanity, he had Mark move his chair out of the circle and made him face the corner until he was ready to be honest. Then Bob went around the circle asking us how we all felt about what he'd just said to Mark. As usual, the soldiers responded with shit like, I think Mark should open up more and share his feelings. I said, "What you just did makes me very fucking angry. You asked that man an opinionated question - how do you feel. You don't fucking know how he feels, Bob. He gave you a very mature response. Then you cuss him out, call him a liar, and send him to the corner like a fucking child? You're lucky that he didn't get up a beat the living shit out of you." Bob was stunned. He was unaccustomed to being challenged like that. He apologized to Mark and invited him back into the circle then he and Suzy left the room for a few minutes. When they returned they let me know that I was booted from the program for disruptive behavior. Fuck me, I guess honesty isn't really what they want after all.

When I got back to post, Top and the platoon sergeant were waiting. Bob had, of course, recommended discharge. I was told that Bob said that he had been very patient with my disruptions but that he had no choice to make this recommendation after I physically threatened him. I let them know that I had not threatened him in any way and informed them of what had actually transpired. They showed me the official forms that Bob had sent and he'd misrepresented that entire exchange. He said that I'd told him that I'd kick his ass for what he told Mark. He'd also detailed what he referred to as my disruptive behavior while downplaying his piss poor attitude towards us.

We spoke for over an hour about all of my issues with Bob, with the way that he spoke to the soldiers, that he threatened discharge to any who questioned him, his abusive attitude. I explained that I'd asked for another counselor and Bob had agreed, but that he was actually the one counseling me. Top was a very patient person but he got angry when he heard this. See, this was kind of a rule. If a counselor isn't a good fit for whatever reason, they're supposed to transfer the soldier to another one. The goal of ADAPCP is to counsel soldiers and return them to duty and a personality conflict would impede this goal.

Top had my platoon sergeant and I each write up a sworn statement, the platoon sergeant saying he'd witnessed me requesting a new counselor and all of the other things he'd witnessed during my interview, and my statement on everything else - the fact that Bob sat in on my counseling, Bob's abusive language, everything. Then he sent me back to work and called Mark in to ask him what had happened and Mark confirmed my story in another sworn statement.

A few days later I was called back to see Top. They had reached an agreement that I would return to counseling but that I'd have to repeat the entire two weeks. I had not completed the program and therefore nobody could sign off that I did. This time Bob would not be my counselor, I was assured. I later found out that those official statements were brought up the chain of command, going all the way to the general of the medical unit that Bob was assigned to. My command were more than willing to have Bob removed from his position. Going on profanity laced tirades and threatening to discharge anyone who disagrees with you are not really approved counseling techniques, as it turns out. A squad leader from another squad in the platoon said that my command had made it clear that they might have to discharge me on Bob's recommendation but that they'd climb up his ass with a magnifying glass afterwards. And Bob was really up shit's creek. Not only were his counseling methods unorthodox, but the form he'd sent my chain of command was an official form. You know, the army doesn't really like it when someone lies on an official form. Unfortunately for Bob, the interaction he'd misrepresented was witnessed by upwards of 20 people.

When my platoon sergeant and I arrived to do the interview again, we were brought into the office of Bob and Suzy. My sergeant asked where the other counselors were. Bob let him know that by the time they scheduled me the other counselors were already full. My sergeant said, "This is not what we agreed on." Bob said, "It's this or he can be discharged." My platoon sergeant said, "Have it your way, you'll be gone before he is" and we started heading for the door.

I got my new counselors and the next two weeks were cake. Bob never did fix me.

So once we were able to get back to actually drilling in person after months of pointless virtual drills during COVID, we were obviously very behind on a lot of mandatory tasks like PMCS of vehicles. There was a huge push to get all these tasks done as fast as possible, I was tasked with managing the PMCS of our pintle trailers as I was the only one licensed and qualified to use them. We had three trailers, one that was 100% good to go, one that was only missing the trailer cable that connects to the truck and powers the brake light, and one one where the air lines were completely broken. In a rare display of industriousness for Specialist me and in line with what I had been taught that if it wasn’t bolted on it was interchangeable between pieces of equipment, I told my guys to take the trailer cable from the trailer with broken air hoses and put it on the one that was missing one thereby giving us two usable trailers. Sent my guys off to help other groups while i finished signing all the paperwork and turning it in to maintenance. The head maintenance sergeant looks over the paperwork and gets livid at how we corrected the deficiency and I need to go get my Platoon Sergeant and Platoon Leader and bring them back with me to decide my punishment. I find them both explain the situation and it goes something like this (heavily paraphrased):

Platoon Sergeant “it’s an interchange part he’s an idiot and since I’m a Sergeant First Class and Acting First Sergeant today if a Staff Sergeant has something to discuss with me he comes to me not the other way around”

Platoon Leader “and I’m a 2nd LT, a very important rank, he must fill out a form in triplicate to request an audience” (yes while exaggerated, he really was that much of a tool)

I then end up spending the next hour and half going between the two each insisting the other go to them, at some point I even offered to just go put the damned thing back on the original trailer and was informed that was not a 10 level task because the connectors were fragile and I would inevitably end up bending the pins. I finally had enough of this power play bs I go to the commander and explain it all and he summons everyone to his office with the end result of me getting a written counseling statement saying the I did bad and connecting the cable to the connector is indeed a level 20 task and don’t do it ever again.

I left the office stewing about all this though way more about being used as a pawn in a stupid power play than the toothless counseling statement. I then came to the realization that the connector on the truck is the exact same one as on the trailer so I hatched my plan. The very next month we of course have to PMCS all the equipment and once again I’m in charge of the trailers so when it gets down to the step where we have to contact the truck to the trailers to verify all the lights work, I stop my guys from connecting the cable and send one of them to go get a maintenance sergeant to come do it. He comes back and says they won’t come, it’s a 10 level task. Gotcha mark it down as a deficiency and explanation of maintenance unwilling to come and make cable connection. Take the completed paperwork to maintenance turn them in and walk out. This continues for months with other platoons joining the fun until it’s time for AT. Once again everyone gets to the step where we have to connect the cables and send for a maintenance sergeant to come connect them and once again they refuse to come. This time since we have a definite hit time to get all the vehicles and equipment lined up and ready to convoy out, we all informed our chains of command that we weren’t going to be able to make our hit times due to maintenance not completing their portion of the PMC. The commander (new commander) sends the XO to come down and see why his convoy isn’t forming up already. We all explain what the hold up is and I show him the counseling statement that says it’s a not a 10 level task. He sends for all the Maintenance NCOs and asks them why none of them have done their part of the PMCS.

Head Maintenance “Sir, that’s a 10 level task I don’t know where all these soldiers came up with the idea it wasn’t”

XO “well Sergeant according to this counseling statement signed by you, it would be you that decided it wasn’t a 10 level task”

Head Maintenance “oh no sir that’s only for the trailer”

XO “it doesn’t specify that and it’s the same connection so you and your sergeants had better get hustling you only have an hour before all these vehicles need to be on line”

Head Maintenance “Sir we still have all our own stuff to do to get ready”

XO “you dug this hole sergeant you get to live in it”

We didn’t make the hit time but it’s the Reserves we almost never made our hit time.

Originally posted ten years ago:

Wolf

There is a wolf shelter not far from us. You can go meet the wolves. It’s an interesting experience. Our domestic dogs are deliberately kept in a juvenile mindset - those who grow out of it are culled out of the dog species. Even hunting dogs are teen-stupid - they must look like giant, insane babies to wolves and wild dogs - noisy, reckless and unhinged, willing to endure a life-ending injury for no profit at all, willing to track and attack anything, even things that are not edible, even things that will kill them.

A mature wolf is an adult. Look in a wolf’s eyes - there is a profound intelligence there. They are, like us, a loping predator, but much better at it than we ever were. Unlike us, they think the hunt is about lunch. Unlike us, they do not believe in unprofitable violence. They are not interested in the prospect of a fair fight - they seek the weak and wounded. Unlike us, this intelligent predator, along with orcas, has evaluated us as non-food, possibly dangerous, surely crazy.

Yet we project the very things that wolves find craziest about us back on them - we name military units after them, we have our cub scouts wear pictures of wolves on their uniforms, we imagine a wolf that would never survive in the wild, noble, spiritual, totemic, feral. We misunderstand them and ourselves. This is a war story about misunderstanding.

After the Fall

Bernard Fall died in 1967 while observing the 4th US Marines of 3 Mar Div conduct a sweep of the Street Without Joy. Fall was the author of La Rue Sans Joie, the authoritative book on the French War in Vietnam. I tried to read it before I came in country, but it was too remote in time for me, lost in old hostilities and causes that I knew nothing about. There was a clash of empire and culture that I didn’t understand. I couldn’t make sense out of what the participants were up to.

So I guess it was ironic that I found myself in the same place 7 years after Fall described the road leading northwest out of Hué, paralleling Highway 1 on the east as “La Rue Sans Joie.” It was as he described, a series of villages, bamboo woods and rice paddies thick with good cover, from where the Viet Minh had ambushed French forces moving along Highway 1. East of the Rue were sand dunes and fishing villages. As you got up toward Quang Tri the dunes came inland about four to five clicks, rising to a ridge maybe 200 feet high parallel with the coast of the South China Sea. Along the top of the dunes in a kind of forest of feathery conifers were fishing villages.

About halfway between Hué and Quang Tri, there was a road that cut off to the northeast at right angles to Highway 1 all the way across the Rue and to the South China Sea, where on the shore was a firebase known as Utah Beach. That was the home of the Armored Cavalry scout battalion of the 9th ID. The rest of their division was 500 miles south, in the Delta. No idea why they were all the way up here.

But they were away from home, and Division support. A bunch of people from Bravo Troop got some kind of tropical fever, including their Commanding Officer (CO) and artillery Forward Observer (FO). My South Vietnamese Army (ARVNs) unit was taking some garrison time, so I was volunteered. I was maybe a month away from being a 1st Lieutenant.

Rue with a Difference

So was the Bravo Troop commander. He was one of two remaining officers, but a West Pointer, and one captain’s misfortune could mean career-advancing command time for a young LT. He was eager to make the remainder of his troop work. He was glad to see me.

That wasn’t a universal sentiment. I never did figure out how the troop was divided up. They were in M113 armored personnel carriers, four or five men to a track. Supposedly, we had tanks, M48 Pattons, which occasionally would show up as we passed by Utah Beach, only to break down again and disappear. The sand just defeated them.

We had between 15 and 20 tracks (the sand made for a high breakdown rate on the tracks, too) armed with .50 cal machine gun turrets and a couple of M60 machine guns on each side. We operated more like a reinforced platoon than a troop. The CO would subdivide the troop more or less randomly, depending on the situation.

The guy we're gonna call Sergeant Wolf was officially - I’m guessing - both the 3rd Platoon Leader and the Platoon Sergeant. He might as well have been the company First Sergeant too. He seemed to fill that slot. He was not sure about me. I wasn’t even in the 9th ID. He didn’t trust ARVNs, and he didn’t trust people who worked with ARVNs.

Flanks for the Memory

That lasted a couple of days, until one of our squads poked its way into a treeline behind a paddy dike, and got backed out again by Rocket-propelled Grenade (RPG) fire and at least one 12.7mm machine gun. The squad joined the rest of us back at the far end of the rice paddy, and the CO decided it was our duty to go see what those boys didn’t want us to see. I had already called up a battery of 105mm howitzers, and I was working the treeline. Trouble was that our right flank on the line of advance was also a paddy dike and bamboo thickets. I didn’t like it. Would be a good place for an RPG ambush.

Not gonna happen on my watch. I check-fired the battery I had, but made them stay lined up on target, called up another battery, adjusted it in on the flanking paddy dike and dropped a battery one of High Explosive rounds as close to the tracks as was reasonable. In the meantime, the CO had gotten the troop’s tracks on line, and started to move across the rice paddy to where the fire had come from. I walked the battery on our right flank ahead of us as we went, just to shake up anyone hiding there.

I remember this fire mission so well because it was fun and easy. I could see everything. There were visible location markers on the ground - church steeples and buildings that were actually on the map. Anyway it went well. The troop assaulted the tree line. Nobody was there. No sign of anyone. Aw. My introduction to the tunnels and bunkers of the Rue.

Leader of the Pack

But not everyone was disappointed. Sergeant Wolf had also been worried about the right flank. He commented in the after-action brief that he had never seen better artillery support. I told him I would let the batteries know he liked it.

And from that point on, Wolf was okay with me. It wasn’t just that. The whole troop just kind of settled in with me. I wasn’t an outsider any more. I was a member of the pack. Huh. The CO couldn’t manage that.

Wolf was my introduction to a senior Sergeant (NCO) in the field. It’s a kind of animal that doesn’t live back behind the wire. He was the first I met, but not the last. They are a rare breed, absolutely the backbone of a fighting unit.

We need to talk about Wolf here. He was a buck sergeant, but I suspect he had lost one or even two rockers not too long ago - he looked like he might be a drinker when he was bored. He was about 30 or so, maybe 5' 10", blond, perpetually sunburnt, kind of pear-shaped. He had an angry/annoyed snarl on his face most of the time, a thin, blond mustache and a perpetual stubble of black beard. He didn’t say much - not to me, anyway - but he was obeyed instantly by the troopers. They utterly trusted him, no backtalk, very little grumbling.

I’ve written before that there is a certain kind of senior sergeant (NCO) that does not do well in peacetime. Stupid, goofy soldiers who don’t take things seriously just make them angry and sullen, drive them to drink and hot-tempered exchanges with battalion Sergeant-Majors. They are not good teachers in a rear echelon (REMF) environment.

But put them in the field, where the young soldiers are intensely interested in anything they have to say, where things seldom have to be said more than once, where things are taken seriously, and these NCOs shine.

Wolf was an alpha-dog. Give him a cigar stub, and maybe a better physique, and you could star him in a comic book. He was in his environment. He was well adapted for it.

Alien Invaders

But he was no diplomat. None of us were. We were assigned to patrol the fishing villes on the dune ridge. These Vietnamese families were subsistence fishermen. They had huts and nets and boats. No radios, no TVs, no idea about Communism or politics or wtf was going on. They were living there on the dunes - generations of them, kids, parents, grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles, aunts.

And here came these people. Young men of every color and race except theirs - huge, hairy, sweaty, funny smelling, loud, grinning, incredibly generous and friendly, insanely dangerous. We had giant clanking machines, and we pretty much looked just like the French.

We acted like blowing up one of their houses was nothing. We acted like none of this was real. We had food and drink and clothing that came from nowhere around here. We stomped all over their food and drink and livelihood like they could get more from the same place we got ours, and then acted like what we did was nothing for them to get excited about. We were crazy, and they had to learn to live with that. They did, too.

Hospitality

Our goal that summer was to find the hospital. Battalion Intelligence (S2) assured us that there was a hospital in those dunes. They were absolutely sure. Higher intelligence was sure. The Pentagon was sure. Walter Reed was there under the sand with operating rooms and wards and the whole nine yards. All we had to do was find it.

So we went barging from ville to ville looking for the hospital. We found abandoned North Vietnamese Army (NVA) packs with vials of medicine in them. We found more medical equipment. We even captured some NVA medics. But no hospital.

Finally, the pressure was too much. The Battalion Area of Operation (AO) S2 came out to direct us to the very spot he knew that hospital was. We were waiting for him when he choppered in. He looked around gobstopped. Fishing family hooches. Boats. Nets. Nothing. He was sure - all the interrogations of captured NVA said this is where the hospital was. It had to be here.

My West Point LT walked him through it. “Look around. This is a nice place. White sand, friendly villagers, cool breezes from the sea. If you’re a wounded NVA guy, this would be a good place to get dropped off by your buddies, no? Local girls, good food.”

He walked over to a hammock. “Here’s a hospital bed.” He picked up one of the NVA packs and dumped it on the ground. Glass vials and some medical equipment fell out. “Here’s the nurse’s station. Here’s the operating room.” He picked up another pack, “Here’s a doctor’s bag. They’ve got medical units roving around. This is the hospital!”

The S2 wasn’t buying it. Or maybe he was, but he just couldn’t disappoint all those senior officers who were avid to capture the enemy version of Johns Hopkins. Those prisoners were telling the truth. They had been at a hospital. But they were both literally and figuratively speaking a different language than the Americans.

Who's Your Daddy?

So we kept on looking for the hospital. Which meant barging into fishing villes, forcing their patients to go underground, forcing their remaining young men to go into the bush, and the rest of the ville had to endure the company of American jägermonsters.

We’d roll across the sand-dunes, pick a random fishing village, line up and move in ready for bear. We had some attached South Vietnamese interrogators, called “Ruff-puffs” (Regional Forces/Provisional Forces) in case we needed to grill somebody. But we hardly ever did.

Here’s what we found. Women and kids. Old women. Young, pregnant women. Maybe one or two old guys. It was a running joke to point at one of the pregnant village women and ask the old guy, “Where’s the father?” He’d point to himself. He’s the Dad. Uh huh. Point to another girl. “Where’s the father of this one?” Well, guess what, that’s his too. After about twenty minutes we’d all be laughing, the old man included.

But still, big, scary, smelly, armed invaders all over your ville. Kinda edgy. The villagers were all fake smiles and tension.

Sand Doin's

Picture this scene then: A hot, bright day on the low conifers that top the dunes. We’ve just rolled in. No resistance, but the villagers have been careless - there were medical packs dropped here and there. Someone had been here recently. The Ruff-Puffs were talking harshly to the resident old man.

I was plotting fire and getting lunch. Across the white sand stomped Sergeant Wolf. He was hauling a boy, about 10, by one arm. The boy was screaming in protest and dragging his feet. Wolf looked pissed off. He was wearing his helmet, fatigue pants with a pistol. He had no shirt - a totally white, hairy guy about twice the size of Vietnamese male.

The kid’s other arm was being held by his mother (or grandmother - hard to tell) who was also being dragged along, even with both her feet planted in the sand. She was screaming too. Behind her, half running, was another old man, pleading the boy’s case in rapid Vietnamese. This procession was headed straight for the Ruff-Puff track.

I was eating C rations. Dinner and a show! I picked up my food and joined the parade.
When grandpa-san and momma-san caught sight of the Ruff-Puff track the wailing and crying and pleading doubled in volume, but Wolf was relentless. He dragged them on.

He dragged them right past the Ruff-Puff track and over to the medical track. He stopped there, turned around, broke Momma’s grip on the boy’s other arm, lifted the boy up, sat him down in the track, lifted the kid's leg in front of our medic’s nose, and pointed to an infected, infested pus blossom on the boy's leg. “Lance that,” he said. “Clean it up.”

Then he glared at momma-san and grandpa-san who were staring at the red-cross on the medic’s bag getting a clue. As soon as he saw they understood what was going on, he turned and stomped over to his track without another word.

One of his track crew gave him a look. “Fuck,” said Wolf. “I got kids. You need to take care of that shit. Can’t just let it fester.”

No one said anything. We were all kind of astonished. I don’t know about anyone else, but I was having difficulty imagining Sergeant Wolf with a kid. Wasn’t possible, was it? Damn.

But y’know, that was the most sane thing I saw that day. Good to see. I like to think that somewhere a pack leader lifted up his muzzle and smelled the air. “They’re capable of producing an adult alpha,” he said to his mate. “There’s hope for them.”

Maybe so. We should get a second opinion from the Killer Whales.

Swan Song

So after all that, it's just a story. Started with SGT Wolf's dragging of that boy. That's the core.
You know how some restaurants will box up your leftovers? The regular ones will box it in styrofoam, but the nice ones will fancy it up, make a paper swan foil pouch or something? It's still just leftovers in there. But it's nicer, too.

Sometimes things that seem different and unrelated reflect back and forth and enhance each other: There was Wolf, acting like a mensch, being a good Dad, in spite of how he looked. There were all these pups around him imprinting on that behavior.

I wanted to show that. It seemed like a good thing in the middle of all the bad misunderstandings, some of them decades old, that littered the Street Without Joy.

Yeah. Some joy - even there. It ain't much, but it's something. I like that memory. I made a paper swan.

​

Below is a story from my time at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (British Army). I served as a soldier and gained a commission from the ranks, and as such, there was little novelty left in the whirlwind of training. Peak summer 2016, bang on midway through the year-long training. I hope it sends you back to your own CBRN and trench warfare days gone by.

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Over a year you spend about two months in the field, a culmination of all the lessons, tactical practice, leadership and physical training. Whilst Pirbright and Chicksands (Phase 1 and 2 for soldiers in my trade) spend weeks building to the final platoon attack, Sandhurst started at this level. The curve was as steep as it was painful. Within 24 hours, we could go from sitting in Faraday Hall discussing the Normandy campaign, to cold and wet in west Wales where you could re-enact it. Before you could blink at your breakfast pain au chocolat, you would be transported to a muddy hole in the ground and screaming “stand to” or charging across a field looking for a spot of grass to collapse into or a tree to lean on.

Exercise Slim’s Stand is quite famous amongst the Sandhurst alumni, for that despite the assurance that it isn’t a sleep deprivation and digging exercise, that’s exactly what it is. Blenheim company was dropped off with all their kit in the usual manner, but on this occasion with a lot more digging equipment; for Slim’s Stand is a defensive and CBRN exercise. We tabbed into the Company area that covered a large field in the Stanford Training Area in Norfolk. It was the second time we had exercised here from Sandhurst, but having served five years by now, this was one of the dozen times I had visited this particular circus. The area is famous for its spiky flora and sandy earth – imperfect for military training. After our sleepy, swelteringly hot and dry coach journey, as is Sandhurst tradition, we began the insertion tab. The sun shone strongly as the shoulder straps dug into necks and heads slumped pointing at the floor, as did the weapons. We were exhausted in the first two hours of the two-week exercise. Every movement, every time we stopped and took a knee required a tall effort and though I felt pretty pathetic, I soldiered on. It was the ultimate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation exercise. As we arrived at a woodblock to set up before we “dug in”, a carcass of a sheep lay hanging over a barbed fence. Its innards long rotten away. I couldn't wait to fall over this when we inevitably had to withdraw under fire at night. As the CQ dragged the sheep away, to dump it in another woodblock for the next commissioning course, Maj Hunter looked at me and smiled. My expression beneath an oily camouflage-painted face must have been pathetic.

“Feeling strong?” he chimed.

“Ready to rock and roll, Sir”, I lied.

He and I both knew that I wished I was the sheep being dragged into the back of the Land Rover.

We all set up the defensive positions and began to dig the trenches. Digging in the sand in the baking summer was exhausting, we had to wear full body armour and webbing with weapons slung. We were preparing trenches for war, after all. As the day progressed the trenches began to get deeper and we hit groundwater and fatigue. In teams of five or six, we dug and dug, and rotated through thirty minutes of rest/guarding. This went on from after breakfast until the sun began to set and the dark summer evening provided a refreshing chill to our sweaty bodies. The perspiration leaking out of me dried, only for me to drink and perspire more – a biomechanical cycle that created a crust of salt and dirt all over my body. Still, we continued. It wasn’t that we weren’t allowed to sleep; we weren’t allowed to sleep until the trenches were dug. Therefore, it couldn’t truly be called a sleep deprivation exercise (which would have caused a raised eyebrow at the training division). However, a situation was created where sleep was deprived. In any case, the lawyers must have been happy.

If it wasn’t bad enough that we were digging, many cadets were in command appointments and were busy writing orders, digging model pits and creating the work that we would roll straight into as soon as the trenches were dug. A deep comedy set into the section by around 0400 on the second day, fatigue at digging had its toll on us physically and mentally, and if someone made a terrible joke, laughter lasted for minutes.

The trenches had to be to a specification that we were taught the previous week. They were around 20 ft long, 5 ft deep and 2 ft wide. This is where a soldier would defend a position in conventional war if given the time to ‘dig in’. Slim’s Stand was 24–32 hours of non-stop digging followed by a week of platoon attacks, night recces, dawn raids and more platoon attacks. This exercise also had the anticipated addition of the CBRN serials. A shout of “GAS GAS GAS!” in the distance, would have us drop everything, slam a rubber General Service Respirator (GSR) to the face, and then spend the next few hours doing everything on reduced oxygen as you sucked in the air as best you could through the filters and your ears. The staff would make sure we were wearing the masks properly by sneaking through the tall grass like Bengal tigers and spraying CS gas at us. I vowed that if the Russians invaded with gas, I’d let them in.

After days of digging in the sand and mud and dirt and a few days of combat, the platoon was beginning to know what fatigue was. Our arms were tired from carrying our weapons, daysack straps cut cruelly into the shoulders and neckline. Heads sagged as we moved, legs shuffled and feet scraped the grass. As the sun rose each day, so did the temperature, but the training staff thermometer never sent us the magic signal to stop the training – they must have kept it in the shade. The sweat dripped off every edge of my body and I only had to urinate once over the first two days. When I did, it was luminous yellow and gave me a headache. We were disgusted to learn later that our sister Company in Sandhurst – Inkerman – had ceased training for a glorious few hours when the temperature was too hot at midday. I was envious of their break. I didn’t care if we didn’t ‘complete’ Sandhurst, I just wanted an easier life. I was less envious later on when Inkerman had to spend additional time training making up for the lost command appointments. The cruel and fun nature of military life, one second you're in that hurt locker, and the next you're smiling as you see the door slam on someone else.

I’ve always loved video games. I remember when I was 6 or 7 years old, my parents bought me and my brother a Nintendo NES. I can’t remember the exact specifics as to why, but my parents never allowed us to plug it into the TV in the living room. I think they thought it would burn out the TV. For the younger folks out there, TV’s in the long-long-ago used to be 2 feet deep, in addition to being 2 feet wide and frequently made ominous popping and clicking sounds when turned on or off. So the NES was banished to the unfinished basement and plugged into a 12 inch barely not black-and-white TV, with a folding metal chair for seating.

My brother and would get a carefully rationed shared hour of Nintendo a few nights a week. Extra time could be added for good grades, chores, books read and time playing outside. Most games were different back then in that few of them allowed for extensive saving systems, so that half hour of gaming was usually ill spent trying to frantically play the first few levels of whatever few games we had and trying to get to something new and interesting. Of course, this usually led to fights between me and my brother, over what game got played, and for exactly how long. Eventually as we grew up, the sizes of the TVs in the house grew, and summer jobs allowed us both to purchase what we wanted for gaming, and the need for careful rationing became a long-distance memory until the summer of 2011.

The summer of 2011 was and likely will continue to hold the record for being the worst summer of my life. I was in the province of Kandahar, well north of the city, in the Arghandab River Valley, which I didn’t learn until I arrived, was alleged to be the birthplace of the Taliban. Suffice it to say, the locals didn’t want us there, and most of us on the NATO side didn’t want to be there either. Freezing cold in the winter, hot enough to fry an egg in the summer, awash with weapons, ancient clan feuds and a culture and a lifestyle that to an outsider like me, looked downright medieval. The only modern things in the valley were rifles, motorcycles, and cell phones, beyond that, their collective lifestyle probably hadn’t changed much since the arrival of gunpowder.

NATO forces maintained a tenuous control that extended to slightly beyond the range of our rifles, and sometimes not even that. Having previously deployed to Iraq, where only the most desperate or suicidal insurgents would dare to go toe to toe with coalition forces, the Taliban in Afghanistan would regularly engage our guard towers, convoys and bases with small arms and rocket fire, often resulting in their bloody and spectacular deaths. There was a level of reckless bravery, spurred on by some brutal species of religious zealotry and ideological fanaticism that I have never seen before or since, and hope to never encounter again. They were hard men.

Unfortunately, many of the US troops I worked with on some days didn’t seem much better. The unit from the 101st I initially supported had through great cost of blood, sweat and diplomacy earned a fragile peace in the valley. They had turned many local leaders against supporting the Taliban, swelled the ranks of the Afghan Police, Army and allied militias, and had started the frustrating and occasionally fruitless effort of waging peace, instead of war.

That all changed when they rotated out and a new cavalry squadron from 10th Mountain rotated in. I had been initially excited to work with 10th Mountain again, because the infantry battalion from 1st Brigade I had worked with on my Iraq deployment set the example of what a motivated, competent, and professional unit should look like. The cavalry squadron from Afghanistan did the exact opposite and were a rolling circus of misery through and through to work with. They enforced the most asinine and pettiest of standards for on base living, micromanaging their Soldiers to the point that their shoes and boots had to be aligned under their bunks in a certain way that was inspected daily. The situation was so bad for the junior enlisted that several committed suicide, turned to using local black market heroin, and in one bizarre case, two Soldiers maimed themselves by exploding a hand grenade on base to get MEDEVACed home.

Their combat abilities outside the wire were also lackluster, and they ignored the hard-earned lessons that 101st desperately attempted to pass along to them during the transition period between the two units. They frequently lost men killed and wounded throughout the AO in situations the previous unit never had. They had half a dozen spectacularly incompetent incidents on friendly fire, the most memorable of which was when two platoons from different companies accidentally engaged each other and attempted to call in artillery strikes on each other from the same battery of mortars. While many of their Soldiers were outstanding and brave as individuals, their leadership generally sucked. Few of their officers placed any value in the diplomatic efforts and outreach to the local Afghan leaders in the valley, many of whom at great personal risk had allied with the previous unit. They openly and contemptuously blew off the advice of their civilian State Department, CIA, and USAID advisors. As my entire job is military diplomacy, and I had learned in Iraq the dividends that such efforts could pay out, it was a very frustrating year. Though there were some glimmers of hope. While the staff at battalion level seemed to prioritize how many Soldiers they could induce to insanity, some of their leaders at the company and platoon level were eager and willing to work with me and the other members of my team.

I began a routine of visiting the smaller patrol bases and COPs (Combat Outposts) for days or weeks at a time, staying until I ran out of fresh clothes, money, or patience (whichever came first). Like some sort of itinerant salesman of diplomacy, I often traveled by foot from base to base until returning to battalion headquarters. Most of these patrol bases housed roughly a platoon (20-30ish) US troops, with a similar number of either Afghan Army or Police. Few of the Afghan Army soldiers were ethnically Pashtun, and fewer still were locals, making them outsiders in the eyes of the locals, just as much as the NATO troops. Most were from northern Afghanistan and were ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazari’s who spoke Dari as their Linga franca, though just about all possessed a working knowledge of Pashto.

The bases were small and spartan and built for war, not comfort. Thick walls of HESCO barriers, sometimes with claymore mines hidden inside the gabions, guard towers and plywood shacks. Bunkers and tents for accommodations, and field generators for power. Few had internet, though most had some small shared MWR room, where off duty Soldiers, American and Afghan alike could relax for a few hours a day off duty and find some small respite from the war. And it was at one of the COPs that I saw the first stringent rationing of video games that I hadn’t experienced since my childhood.

I don’t remember which COP it was exactly; Winkleman, Pittman, Babur, they are all a blur of KIA names, dust, mud and concrete. But in one room, there was a large flat screen TV, some bean bag and camp chairs and some sort of videogame console, PlayStation or Xbox, I don’t remember. Afghan and Americans would trade the system for and hour each at all hours of the day, and while I rarely played myself, I noticed an interesting pattern emerging of which group played which games.

Likely due to the lack of English fluency and literacy on the part of the Afghans, they weren’t able to play games that had complex instructions, dialogue, storylines, or writing of any kind. So, they played FIFA World Cup until they burned a hole in the disc and ordered it again. They might not understand shooters or roleplaying games, but they sure as shit knew their soccer. Some played Guitar Hero. Some of them would also play car racing games, Gran Turismo, and others, which always struck me as kinda cute, because few of them had regularly driven on paved roads in their lives, let alone raced sports cars.

To maximize game time, troops of both nations usually hooked up multiple controls to play with or against each other. Though the Americans generally stuck to first person shooters, fantasy games and complex role-playing games, that were a source of bafflement and wonder to the Afghans, who would occasionally spectate during “American Time” on the TV. Games of intricate detail, showcasing a world so beyond what they had or ever would experience, until a particular game was dropped into the console. Medal of Honor (2010) was a decent if somewhat generic first-person shooter, that had its single player campaign take place during the 2001-2002 invasion of Afghanistan. In a vaguely historically accurate series of missions, you the player take the role of various Special Ops, Marine and US Army Ranger Troops, gunning down waves of Taliban bad guys, liberating Afghanistan and ending the war. The same war that we were still stuck fighting some 10 years later. Sorry EA Games, we fucked that one up.

During one of the missions as you infiltrate a Taliban camp, stealthily killing the Taliban guards, several of them call out to each other in what I had just assumed was video-game foreign language gibberish. This notion was dispelled when a young Hazara Afghan Soldier tugged my translator by the arm and excitedly spoke to him in Dari. My translator explained that the bad guys in the game were actually speaking dialect perfect Afghan Pashto, and that they were giving instructions to each other in the video game artificial intelligence world on how to flank and kill the American player. I was legitimately impressed by the level of detail applied to a video game and watched the digital carnage with the Afghan troop and my translator. I tuned with a somewhat impressive smile to the Afghan and saw his face go from wonderment to sadness.

The Hazara are a double minority within Afghanistan. They aren’t ethnically Pashtun, like the majority of peoples in southern and central Afghanistan. They aren’t like the Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmen up north either, who while all different and unique, always seemed vaguely similar in the eyes of a foreigner. They are an Asiatic people, who are the descendants of the Mongols Hordes garrisoning the region when Genghis Khan conquered much of the known world. The empire collapsed and the Hazara stayed, isolated, and insulated in their mountains, gradually adopting Shia Islam, firmly cementing their “Double Outsider” status. “Wrong” ethnic group and “Wrong” religion, and for that, they have been persecuted by the other ruling ethnicities in Afghanistan for centuries.

The young man likely joined the Afghan Army due to the promise of a nationally unified government, which promised to put an end to the petty squabbles and power plays between the various ethnicities and religions, and unify them as Afghans under one flag, one nation. To the descendant of a tribe of people to permanently dispossessed and persecuted, this new Afghanistan, with the backing of NATO was a goal worth fighting for, a goal that had always been far out of reach to his father and grandfather who had also likely fought their entire lives.

Noting his sad expression, I asked him what was wrong. He looked at the television where another digital enemy was gunned down, bleeding out in high definition, shouting in his native language. He looked back at me and shrugged and said “Do you ever get tired of war?”. He shrugged again and his expression became one of almost pity as he walked off.

I remember feeling goosebumps creeping down my arms and a feeling of shame burn through my chest. How could it not? How confusing, disorienting, and wrong this must have seemed to him. We had come to his country from thousands of miles away and fought by night and day for goals and dreams that always seemed just so far out of reach, only after a years’ time to return to America, reliving the war only in our nightmares. But for him, there was no plane to take him home. On his infrequent leaves home, he would still carry a rifle and be on guard against the Taliban. For his war, there was no saved game file, no extra lives, no restarts, and no off button.

With all the options in the digital world to escape to, in fantasy for an hour or two a day, he and his fellow Afghans chose to become football heroes, Rockstar musicians, race-car drivers…anything but Soldiers. Most of the Americans, after a long day of patrols, convoys, and occasional gunfights, settled back down onto their bean bag chairs for a night of…. virtual patrols, convoys, and constant gunfights. The greatest difference between fantasy and reality was that in our fantasy, we were killing scores more Afghans than we could ever dream of in our real life….

Over a decade later, I still do love video games, though I generally play them on my computer. I rarely if ever play shooter games and never any from my wars. I prefer games where you build your own little worlds, economies, trade networks and factories. The Paradox Studio games of some of my favorites, little digital worlds with all the political machinations, economic empires, and cultural victories. Wars are sanitary affairs, based off mathematical matrices and theoretical dice rolls. Bloodless and impersonal.

Over a decade later the world isn’t any safer or peaceful than it was during the summer of 2011. The US and allied militaries are embroiled again in another conflict in the Middle East, poised to spiral into a regional war if not carefully and diplomatically managed. Three US Army Reservists were killed just last week at their base in Jordan. If anything, the worlds gotten worse since then. Wars rage in Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar, Syria, and Palestine and more.

I think of that brave Hazara Soldier, who likely spent his entire life in a conflict that he and generations of his ancestors could not escape. I look at the wars that rage today in Ukraine, Palestine, and Yemen, fueled by greed, hate, ideology, fanaticism, and fascism. The men who started these wars will never smell blood, or gunpowder or dust or fire. They will never hear the screams of the wounded and dying. For them it is all a game.

I’ll soon be receiving orders for another overseas deployment, which will be my sixth.

I feel like that sad, pitying young Afghan, asking the same weary question to the leaders of the nations who started and prolong these conflicts.

“Do you ever tire of War?”

At the suggestion of a reader. We have had an influx of posts about trauma lately. The mod team wants you to know you are not alone.

Twenty-two a day. An average of 22 veterans kill themselves every day. More die from natural causes, or from service-connected disabilities. Our WWII vets are almost gone, and the Korea and Vietnam vets aren't far behind. We can't afford to lose 22 of our best every day to suicide. Sadly, some of the same statistics are playing out in other countries as well - this isn't an uniquely American problem.

Dealing with military trauma is unique, in that most people don't have a frame of reference for it. Even just going into the military and attempting to readjust to civilian life can be hard. Combine that with the fact that we all had wildly different experiences both growing up and in the military, and it makes it difficult to treat. It makes it hard to talk about it too. I get that. It is hard to write about my 100 hours in Iraq when there are guys with four or six deployments or Purple Hearts and shit that are here writing as well, but I do it. Sometimes you may feel like your trauma doesn't "measure up." Yep, been there, especially when my Vietnam veteran father cast doubt on my experiences. Today I don't let that happen. Anyone who suggests I don't have PTSD or that it isn't very bad is met with a "Fuck you" and an end to the discussion.

That's some hot bullshit right there. Something you saw or something that happened to you fucked you up. Welcome to the human experience. Don't lessen what you went through by comparing it to others. And certainly don't listen to anyone who suggests you weren't traumatized.

So if you need to write about your shit, here are some suggestions:

• Be fearless. I've had a lot of folks over the years say they were afraid to share with the community. Don't be. You weren't afraid to put on a uniform and take the Oath, but you are afraid of sharing with your brothers and sisters in uniform from around the world? Really? Don't be.

• Honesty. Can't say enough about this. People can tell a bullshit artist.

• Take your time. I have banged out some really good pieces in under an hour, but I find my best pieces take a few days of massaging and editing before they are ready. Don't be in a rush.

• Formatting. This goes a long way. Paragraphs, proper punctuation and capitalization, etc. If you need help, there are plenty of tools built into programs like Word to help you. The easier it is to read your story, the more likely people will read and comment.

• Be yourself. Don't worry about trying to be a writer - just tell your story. Some of the best writing is pretty raw and not "professional" whatever the fuck that means. Write. Enjoy the process. In the same vein, don't try to write like another writer. It never goes well.

If you are specifically dealing with combat trauma, read "The Evil Hours" by David Morris. It has helped me quite a bit. The author is a combat veteran and a war journalist, so he's been there and done that. Find someone you can talk to, even if it isn't about the trauma just yet. One day it will be talking about the trauma.

WRITE. Even if you never show it to anyone or publish it. Writing your thoughts down has a way of helping your brain organize things. Write about something terrible that happened to you and immediately destroy it. Write about something else. Repeat. Seeing that terrible thing in black and white somehow makes it less real, and more like fiction. You know it happened to you, but you can almost see a version of yourself where it didn't, and you can take inspiration from that. One day, you may find you want to share the writings with others. One day, you may find that the act of destroying those terrible things has somehow made them easier to bear. Both were true for me.

I'll say it again, this place was never meant to be a mental health support group. But it has become one. As long as that is what the community wants and needs, that is what we will provide.

Peace and love y'all.

#OneLove 22ADay Slava Ukraini! Heróyam sláva!

My first SAR mission: Recovery of the pilots from a mid air collision off Saint Augustine, Island, Alaska. I have been out drinking the night before having duty. I was hung over to say the least. Too hung over to eat breakfast that morning. By noon I was beginning to think I was going to survive. I was looking forward to lunch. Just as I was finishing up, the morning duties, the SAR alarm went off. “Launch the Ready H3.” I got excited. It was going to be my first SAR.

Got my aircraft, ready to go, sat there waiting for the pilots to show up. Once the pilots arrived, I found out we were going to have to wait further for the flight surgeon to show up. Once we had everyone on board, there was a briefing saying that we were going to be picking up people from a mid air collision.

We flew from home base to Saint Augustine Island, which is located just west of Homer Alaska. We landed the helicopter on the beach. The flight surgeon announced he was not going out on the boat to recover the bodies. He said he had seen this before and did not need to see it now.

Myself and a corpsman were picked up at the beach by a landing craft, and taken out to rendezvous with the boat which had the wreckage of the two aircraft on it and the bodies of the pilots. Being I was already hung over, the trip across the water on the Landing craft with the diesel fumes pouring over us almost made me vomit.

Got to the vessel, containing the remains of the pilots and stepped out onto the deck. There were two tarps laying on the deck, and all of the blood and fish slime of the daily catch washing across the deck. I approached the first tarp., under it was the remains of one of the pilots. He was basically disassembled. Just pieces. I put the pieces into a Body bag without counting pieces and closed the body bag. I walked across the deck to the second tarp. Under that tarp was the second body. This body was basically intact. It was laying prone on the deck with what was left of the face peering up at me. It was attached by a flap of skin and had been otherwise severed from the head.

We did not turn that body over. We put the body in the body bag face down. I could not bear the thought of seeing what was left on the other side. I did not lose my shit.

Later, on that evening, we returned to home base. By that time we had missed all of the meals of the day. I went over to the EM club to have a hamburger. I met with the corpsman who had been on the flight with me. He said he was very surprised to see me sitting there eating that half cooked hamburger so soon after what we had been through.

I told him I was hungry.

It's been 13 years now since i heard the news on each of them. I remember the details, some clearer than others, some murky as memories get over time. Telling an NCO in shock at the news to quit being a pussy and do his job, we've got work to do. Not wanting to put roster numbers on the battle board. Wondering why the guy just doing his job was so unlucky.

Yet, after each one, life went on. Work continued. We had a job to do. No time to mourn. No time to wait. No time to reminisce. No time to go to memorial ceremonies. Just work.

I hold a bitterness in my heart. The bitterness of not having time to process. Of time to think. Of time to mourn. Of time to reminisce. Only time to continue the mission.

Thirteen years later, I drive by the road signs with their names. See the town where one of them rests. See a Facebook post. Any one of a million reminders. Then I'm reminded that I still haven't gone and seen them. Any of them. Thirteen years later.

It isn't for lack of opportunity. It isn't for lack of support. It isn't for any reason that I can use as a valid excuse.

I'm not sure if it's because I'm afraid that some of the bitterness will go away. Maybe it's because if I see their gravestones a sense of finality will set in. Maybe I'll see them in the store one day. At the bar. Driving down the road. That can't happen if I see their stones. If I place the coin upon it, cementing the reality that I know to be true, but have some sort of plausible denaibility against. I need to see them. To let myself be vulnerable. To allow that closure. I've planned it multiple times, but always find an excuse or a reason not to go.

Maybe it's time to stop making excuses and finding reasons.

Thirteen years later.