Seiring berkembangnya aktifitas yg mengharuskan kita selalu berada di pusat kota baik itu untuk bekerja,bisnis,belanja ataupun yg lainnya memungkinkan kita untuk efesiensi disegala aspek diantaranya kebutuhan tempat tinggal yang memungkinkan kita efektif melakukan aktifitas tersebut diatas,jawabannya tentu tempat tinggal di pusat kota,dengan semakin mahalnya nilai tanah maka sangat sulit bagi kita untuk mewujudkan landeed house,sebagai alternatif apartemen atau hunian bertingkat akan menjadi solusinya,karena sekarang apartemen telah merambah ke segmen menengah dengan dibangunnya apartemen-apartemen dengan harga terjangkau,selain cocok untuk mengatasi kebutuhan tempat tinggal,nilai investasi lumayan menarik dengan menyewakan apartemen jika tidak diperlukan lagi,jika anda tidak membeli juga banyak sekali tawaran untuk sewa apartemen mulai apartemen sederhana sampai dengan kelas penthouse.
INFORMASI PEMESANAN SILAHKAN HUBUNGI
021-30541488 - 081513849999
EMAIL : wawanhasan@yahoo.com
Friday, December 25, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Short term rental apartments in Miraflores
Welcome! Short term rental apartments in Miraflores - Lima - Peru. Totally furnished with cable and internet. Tourists, and business people are welcomed. Central location.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Gruesst Euch Heidelberg!
Saturday 31 Oktober 2009
1845
“Gruess Dich!” is an informal way of saying “Hello!” in German, and that’s just what I did today, both to the country and city at large and to any individual people who would listen. :-) ("Gruesst Euch" is the plural version - I'm getting used to German grammar again...)
This assignment didn’t happen by accident. It occurred to me nearly a year ago that as long as I had made the decision to resume my military career and do my best to stay on active duty, there was no reason I could not try to get a tour in Europe again. I started poking around, and by last spring I was on a full-court press hunting for a position here. I treated it just like you would any other job search, and was fortunate to be accepted into the USAREUR ODCSENG (US Army Europe, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Engineers). I’m not sure exactly what job I’ll be doing there yet – they’ve mentioned several different potential assignments. But whatever it is, it will be in Europe and not the desert, so I’m as happy as a clam.
I flew out of Doha International Airport at 0145 this morning, and arrived in Frankfurt around 0630. I got a little sleep on the plane, but not much. (I’m completely exhausted, so this will be a short entry!)
Someone was supposed to pick me up at the airport, but they seem to have gotten their signals crossed. After a couple of hours and a few phone calls, I ended up taking a shuttle from Frankfurt to Heidelberg. Under other circumstances it might have bugged me a little, but I was just so happy to be here that it didn’t matter at all. Besides, it was a nice ride and gave me a chance to simply look at the scenery (and speak a little with the driver) without having to talk about military business.
I was expecting to have to stay in Army Lodging on one of the bases here, but the officer I spoke with told me to go ahead and go to a hotel nearby. Since I’m alone for the weekend (What? You don’t work Saturdays and Sundays here?), this is much better, as it has more convenient access to the public transportation to get downtown.
It was nearly noon before I was completely situated and ready to decide what to do with myself for the rest of the day. I was very tired but also excited to be here. I considered a nap, but decided to go walk around downtown for the afternoon and just go to bed early. Early to bed on Halloween – what a party pooper! Oh well, that’s just how it goes.
I had a nice afternoon walking around downtown. The weather was very nice – chilly but with the sun peeking in and out all day. I bought a city map and took a few pictures. None of them is very good, and I didn’t get any of the castle (although I had a very nice view of it as we drove into town). Here are just a few for the flavor of it:
View up a side street off the Hautpstrasse in the Fussgaengerzone (Pedestrian zone)
A view north up the Hauptstrasse
The doorway into one of the buildings of Heidelberg University
I ate lunch at "The White Swan" - the little sign on the doorway says "1778"
My first meal on this tour in Germany - Jaegerschnitzel, Pommes Frites, and Heidelberger Pils. Mmmm!
This store was too funny. The lady working in the store was standing in view when I first walked by, and she would have fit right in - dressed to the nines in really outrageous clothing. But she stepped out of view before I could get my camera out.
1845
“Gruess Dich!” is an informal way of saying “Hello!” in German, and that’s just what I did today, both to the country and city at large and to any individual people who would listen. :-) ("Gruesst Euch" is the plural version - I'm getting used to German grammar again...)
This assignment didn’t happen by accident. It occurred to me nearly a year ago that as long as I had made the decision to resume my military career and do my best to stay on active duty, there was no reason I could not try to get a tour in Europe again. I started poking around, and by last spring I was on a full-court press hunting for a position here. I treated it just like you would any other job search, and was fortunate to be accepted into the USAREUR ODCSENG (US Army Europe, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Engineers). I’m not sure exactly what job I’ll be doing there yet – they’ve mentioned several different potential assignments. But whatever it is, it will be in Europe and not the desert, so I’m as happy as a clam.
I flew out of Doha International Airport at 0145 this morning, and arrived in Frankfurt around 0630. I got a little sleep on the plane, but not much. (I’m completely exhausted, so this will be a short entry!)
Someone was supposed to pick me up at the airport, but they seem to have gotten their signals crossed. After a couple of hours and a few phone calls, I ended up taking a shuttle from Frankfurt to Heidelberg. Under other circumstances it might have bugged me a little, but I was just so happy to be here that it didn’t matter at all. Besides, it was a nice ride and gave me a chance to simply look at the scenery (and speak a little with the driver) without having to talk about military business.
I was expecting to have to stay in Army Lodging on one of the bases here, but the officer I spoke with told me to go ahead and go to a hotel nearby. Since I’m alone for the weekend (What? You don’t work Saturdays and Sundays here?), this is much better, as it has more convenient access to the public transportation to get downtown.
It was nearly noon before I was completely situated and ready to decide what to do with myself for the rest of the day. I was very tired but also excited to be here. I considered a nap, but decided to go walk around downtown for the afternoon and just go to bed early. Early to bed on Halloween – what a party pooper! Oh well, that’s just how it goes.
I had a nice afternoon walking around downtown. The weather was very nice – chilly but with the sun peeking in and out all day. I bought a city map and took a few pictures. None of them is very good, and I didn’t get any of the castle (although I had a very nice view of it as we drove into town). Here are just a few for the flavor of it:
View up a side street off the Hautpstrasse in the Fussgaengerzone (Pedestrian zone)
A view north up the Hauptstrasse
The doorway into one of the buildings of Heidelberg University
I ate lunch at "The White Swan" - the little sign on the doorway says "1778"
My first meal on this tour in Germany - Jaegerschnitzel, Pommes Frites, and Heidelberger Pils. Mmmm!
This store was too funny. The lady working in the store was standing in view when I first walked by, and she would have fit right in - dressed to the nines in really outrageous clothing. But she stepped out of view before I could get my camera out.
I finally got tired and got on the Strassenbahn (streetcar) and came back to the hotel. After this it’s a nice hot shower and bed. Tomorrow is another day free to explore before I get started on my business here. (I don’t think it will take me long to get used to these two-day weekends again!)
Mood: Tired and Happy
Music: City street noises
Mood: Tired and Happy
Music: City street noises
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Farewell to Qatar
Friday 30 October
0830
Well, today is my last day here. Tonight I go to the airport, and at 0145 I’ll be wheels up on my way to my next duty assignment.
This has been a very interesting tour in many ways. It had challenges and frustrations like I’ve never experienced before, but I learned a lot both through dealing with those and also from the staff and civilian contractors I worked with.
For much of the time here I felt as though I was swimming upstream, and not always fast enough to overcome the current. I seem to have managed not to be swept out to sea, though, so that’s something. In retrospect I did manage to accomplish some things I’m proud of, although I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped I could when I started. I suppose if you have any kind of ambition or desire to do a good job, it always feels at least somewhat that way, but in this case I really did feel as though I’d been held back or let myself down somehow.
Then I had my farewell events, when you get together and say goodbye and thanks to the people who helped you, and they say some things about you. These were kind of an eye-opener for me.
The first one was my official “Hail and Farewell” with all the officers and NCOs, held on post in the club. It was ok, but not really special. We try to make these a nice event, but so many people come and go, we have one every month, and many of them are eminently forgettable. When I got the floor, I took the opportunity to publicly and sincerely thank a few officers who had really gone out of their way to help me, and from whom I had benefitted and learned some things while here. So that was nice and I was glad to be able to do it.
Then earlier this week we got together for a few minutes at the end of the day in the office. The people in DPW had gotten a memento made for me, and wanted to give it to me before the movers came to get my things. I’m glad they did, as it would have been hard to carry and might have gotten damaged in the mail. It’s really nice – a framed plaque that includes a picture of our section (with some nice words on it about me), folded U.S. and Qatari flags, a pair of traditional Arabian knives (a la Lawrence of Arabia), a couple of US Army coins, and some desert-themed items to balance it out. It will definitely have a place on my wall:
What really struck me, though were the things people said about me. I won’t repeat it all here, but they were very complimentary, and said things about the effect I’d had on them that I would not have predicted. We all like to think well of ourselves, but if we’re honest about our limitations and our flaws, we know that we aren’t really all that special and that it’s the people around us that help us to be successful. But they really took me by surprise with some of the things they said, and it made me feel as though I’d had more of an impact than I was giving myself credit for. So that made me feel very good, and I appreciated it.
I had my outbrief with the commander, and had a chance to exchange views on my experiences here at CAS and how I thought things might be improved. I appreciated that opportunity. She is relatively new and just getting past that first few months of getting a feel for the command. So I hope that perhaps some of my observations might help to enable a few things down the road to go a little more smoothly. It’s in other people's hands now! In parting, she also gave me a commander’s coin:
CAS Commander's Coin - Obverse
CAS Commander's Coin - Reverse
My section wanted to take me out to dinner, and picked a nice place downtown where we went last night. I was very surprised when we walked in, because not only were the people from my section there, but so were many of the civilian contractors we work with on a daily basis. Socializing with our civilian contractors is not normally condoned due to possible perceptions of favoritism or improper relationships. But the OIC of the section had gotten special permission for this event, as a strictly voluntary, everything-at-your-own-expense farewell dinner for me. It was particularly appropriate to do so, because we actually only have a very few military people in our section, and depend entirely for our efficacy on the work of our civilian contractor counterparts. Without them we simply could not do our jobs. So it was very nice to have them all there.
It was a very enjoyable dinner – good food, a nice atmosphere, and very good fellowship among everyone there. I had a very interesting conversation with the civilian across from me, as well as with his wife. He is ex-military (A Vietnam veteran of the Americal Division) and I heard first-hand stories about rocket attacks on Da Nang and the massive Air Assault helicopter lifts out of Phu Bai. He and his wife have also had extensive time stationed where I am headed, so we had some interesting conversations about that area as well.
I have to say that I felt very honored by who all came – there were about 15-20 people, and amongst them were several of the on-site managers of the company we work with – all the people I work with on a daily basis and their top management. I didn’t expect that, nor did I expect the warm and sincere compliments they paid me after dinner. I am not often rendered speechless, but I came close this time. I did manage to say a few things and express my appreciation. I hope they understood how sincerely I meant it. We’ve been through a lot together, and I could never have gotten anything accomplished without them. They gave me a nice framed certificate as a memento as well, which will also have a place on my wall.
I really wish we could do things like that more often. The barriers that are set up between contractors and government employees are well-intentioned, and there are certainly very good reasons for delimiting and circumscribing the relationships in some ways. But I think that in our zeal to avoid the appearance of impropriety, we go a bit overboard (or perhaps a better metaphor would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater).
At least on a rear-area logistics base like ours, we are absolutely and completely dependent upon civilian contractors to do our jobs. As in any organization, you have to have good working relationships in order to function effectively. And since we’re all human, an important part of those relationships is the human side. You simply can’t separate them, no matter how hard you try. I have felt fortunate in that the civilian contract managers I’ve worked with have been very professional and capable, and we’ve been able to develop understandings that have helped us to overcome some pretty significant obstacles in our work. But I wonder how much better that might all have gone, had we been able to let our hair down once in awhile and simply go out and get to know each other as individuals. I hope that perhaps our dinner last night will have that salutary effect, and that after I’m gone, the current crew will gain some lasting benefit from the interchanges and fellowship we experienced.
So I’m left with quite a contrasting set of memories of Qatar – this was one of the most challenging, frustrating, and stressful assignments I’ve ever had in the Army, but I will remember my farewell send-off as one of the high points of my career. I sincerely thank everyone and wish you all the best. Patton’s Own!
Mood: Happy
Music: Bobby Horton – “Good-Bye Old Glory” (Songs of the Union Army):
Four weary years of toil and blood,
With loyal hearts and true,
By field and fortress plain and flood,
We've fought the rebel crew,
But Victory is ours at last,
The mighty work is through,
Sound drums and bugles loud and fast,
This is our last tattoo.
Chorus:
Farewell farewell to march and fight,
Hard tack a fond adieu.
Good bye "Old Glory" for tonight,
We doff the army blue.
O comrades that may ne'er return,
Who sleep beneath the dew,
Where Vickburg's gleaming signal's burn or
Lookout's crest of blue.
Where-e'er your blood has sealed the faith,
We brought in triumph through,
Goodnight to glory and to death,
And that's good morn to you.
Chorus:
Farewell farewell to march and fight,
Hard tack a fond adieu.
Good bye "Old Glory" for tonight,
We doff the army blue.
Goodbye to muster and parade,
Goodbye the grand review,
The dusty line, the dashing aid,
Goodbye our general too.
Goodbye to war, but halt! I say,
John Bull a word with you,
Pay up old scores or we again
May don the army blue.
Chorus:
Farewell farewell to march and fight,
Hard tack a fond adieu.
Good bye "Old Glory" for tonight,
We doff the army blue.
0830
Well, today is my last day here. Tonight I go to the airport, and at 0145 I’ll be wheels up on my way to my next duty assignment.
This has been a very interesting tour in many ways. It had challenges and frustrations like I’ve never experienced before, but I learned a lot both through dealing with those and also from the staff and civilian contractors I worked with.
For much of the time here I felt as though I was swimming upstream, and not always fast enough to overcome the current. I seem to have managed not to be swept out to sea, though, so that’s something. In retrospect I did manage to accomplish some things I’m proud of, although I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped I could when I started. I suppose if you have any kind of ambition or desire to do a good job, it always feels at least somewhat that way, but in this case I really did feel as though I’d been held back or let myself down somehow.
Then I had my farewell events, when you get together and say goodbye and thanks to the people who helped you, and they say some things about you. These were kind of an eye-opener for me.
The first one was my official “Hail and Farewell” with all the officers and NCOs, held on post in the club. It was ok, but not really special. We try to make these a nice event, but so many people come and go, we have one every month, and many of them are eminently forgettable. When I got the floor, I took the opportunity to publicly and sincerely thank a few officers who had really gone out of their way to help me, and from whom I had benefitted and learned some things while here. So that was nice and I was glad to be able to do it.
Then earlier this week we got together for a few minutes at the end of the day in the office. The people in DPW had gotten a memento made for me, and wanted to give it to me before the movers came to get my things. I’m glad they did, as it would have been hard to carry and might have gotten damaged in the mail. It’s really nice – a framed plaque that includes a picture of our section (with some nice words on it about me), folded U.S. and Qatari flags, a pair of traditional Arabian knives (a la Lawrence of Arabia), a couple of US Army coins, and some desert-themed items to balance it out. It will definitely have a place on my wall:
What really struck me, though were the things people said about me. I won’t repeat it all here, but they were very complimentary, and said things about the effect I’d had on them that I would not have predicted. We all like to think well of ourselves, but if we’re honest about our limitations and our flaws, we know that we aren’t really all that special and that it’s the people around us that help us to be successful. But they really took me by surprise with some of the things they said, and it made me feel as though I’d had more of an impact than I was giving myself credit for. So that made me feel very good, and I appreciated it.
I had my outbrief with the commander, and had a chance to exchange views on my experiences here at CAS and how I thought things might be improved. I appreciated that opportunity. She is relatively new and just getting past that first few months of getting a feel for the command. So I hope that perhaps some of my observations might help to enable a few things down the road to go a little more smoothly. It’s in other people's hands now! In parting, she also gave me a commander’s coin:
CAS Commander's Coin - Obverse
CAS Commander's Coin - Reverse
My section wanted to take me out to dinner, and picked a nice place downtown where we went last night. I was very surprised when we walked in, because not only were the people from my section there, but so were many of the civilian contractors we work with on a daily basis. Socializing with our civilian contractors is not normally condoned due to possible perceptions of favoritism or improper relationships. But the OIC of the section had gotten special permission for this event, as a strictly voluntary, everything-at-your-own-expense farewell dinner for me. It was particularly appropriate to do so, because we actually only have a very few military people in our section, and depend entirely for our efficacy on the work of our civilian contractor counterparts. Without them we simply could not do our jobs. So it was very nice to have them all there.
It was a very enjoyable dinner – good food, a nice atmosphere, and very good fellowship among everyone there. I had a very interesting conversation with the civilian across from me, as well as with his wife. He is ex-military (A Vietnam veteran of the Americal Division) and I heard first-hand stories about rocket attacks on Da Nang and the massive Air Assault helicopter lifts out of Phu Bai. He and his wife have also had extensive time stationed where I am headed, so we had some interesting conversations about that area as well.
I have to say that I felt very honored by who all came – there were about 15-20 people, and amongst them were several of the on-site managers of the company we work with – all the people I work with on a daily basis and their top management. I didn’t expect that, nor did I expect the warm and sincere compliments they paid me after dinner. I am not often rendered speechless, but I came close this time. I did manage to say a few things and express my appreciation. I hope they understood how sincerely I meant it. We’ve been through a lot together, and I could never have gotten anything accomplished without them. They gave me a nice framed certificate as a memento as well, which will also have a place on my wall.
I really wish we could do things like that more often. The barriers that are set up between contractors and government employees are well-intentioned, and there are certainly very good reasons for delimiting and circumscribing the relationships in some ways. But I think that in our zeal to avoid the appearance of impropriety, we go a bit overboard (or perhaps a better metaphor would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater).
At least on a rear-area logistics base like ours, we are absolutely and completely dependent upon civilian contractors to do our jobs. As in any organization, you have to have good working relationships in order to function effectively. And since we’re all human, an important part of those relationships is the human side. You simply can’t separate them, no matter how hard you try. I have felt fortunate in that the civilian contract managers I’ve worked with have been very professional and capable, and we’ve been able to develop understandings that have helped us to overcome some pretty significant obstacles in our work. But I wonder how much better that might all have gone, had we been able to let our hair down once in awhile and simply go out and get to know each other as individuals. I hope that perhaps our dinner last night will have that salutary effect, and that after I’m gone, the current crew will gain some lasting benefit from the interchanges and fellowship we experienced.
So I’m left with quite a contrasting set of memories of Qatar – this was one of the most challenging, frustrating, and stressful assignments I’ve ever had in the Army, but I will remember my farewell send-off as one of the high points of my career. I sincerely thank everyone and wish you all the best. Patton’s Own!
Mood: Happy
Music: Bobby Horton – “Good-Bye Old Glory” (Songs of the Union Army):
Four weary years of toil and blood,
With loyal hearts and true,
By field and fortress plain and flood,
We've fought the rebel crew,
But Victory is ours at last,
The mighty work is through,
Sound drums and bugles loud and fast,
This is our last tattoo.
Chorus:
Farewell farewell to march and fight,
Hard tack a fond adieu.
Good bye "Old Glory" for tonight,
We doff the army blue.
O comrades that may ne'er return,
Who sleep beneath the dew,
Where Vickburg's gleaming signal's burn or
Lookout's crest of blue.
Where-e'er your blood has sealed the faith,
We brought in triumph through,
Goodnight to glory and to death,
And that's good morn to you.
Chorus:
Farewell farewell to march and fight,
Hard tack a fond adieu.
Good bye "Old Glory" for tonight,
We doff the army blue.
Goodbye to muster and parade,
Goodbye the grand review,
The dusty line, the dashing aid,
Goodbye our general too.
Goodbye to war, but halt! I say,
John Bull a word with you,
Pay up old scores or we again
May don the army blue.
Chorus:
Farewell farewell to march and fight,
Hard tack a fond adieu.
Good bye "Old Glory" for tonight,
We doff the army blue.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Windows 7
Monday 26 October 2009
0700
Yesterday I downloaded and installed the upgrade to Microsoft Windows 7. It is Awesome!
I have suffered under Windows Vista for over a year, ever since I bought this new computer while on leave. I have never been quite sure whether the problems I was experiencing were caused by the hardware or the operating system, but I have always suspected that it was mainly Vista’s fault.
Slow startups, slow shutdowns, lagging performance (especially when opening new tabs in Internet Explorer), inexplicable crashes and lockups – it’s been a miserable year from a computing standpoint. For someone whose only connection with his family and friends is through my computer, this is a very big deal. Windows Vista totally spoiled the fun of purchasing a new computer last year.
I’ve been reading about Windows 7 for months in the Wall Street Journal, ever since Walt Mossberg started testing it. He has had good things to say about it all along, and I have been looking forward to the release. I had intended to buy it as soon as I got home in November, but when I read that you could download it from Microsoft’s online store, I couldn’t wait.
The download experience was a bit frustrating. I wanted a backup CD, but since I only have a PO Box to ship it to, that was a problem. They only deliver to street addresses. Once I gave them a street address, their website *still* wouldn’t take the order, because the billing address for my credit card is a PO Box. I had to wait until they opened at noon on Saturday (7 PM here) to get someone on the line.
I made the purchase and then waited for the promised email to come with the download instructions and the product activation code. It didn’t come, so I called back. After a couple dropped calls (after all, this was an IP call from a crowded, noisy public internet venue near the USO), I finally got someone who could help (well, his supervisor helped since his English and intellect just weren’t up to the task). The supervisor told me I could just go to a different page on the website and download it, and the activation code would be right there on the screen. Why didn’t they just tell me that in the first place??
I downloaded the software, after a number of false starts trying to decide what would be the best approach. First off, a screen came up telling me about a bunch of software I had to uninstall first because it wouldn’t work. Some of it was no big deal, but some of it was critical – e.g. the WiFi adapter device driver. How am I supposed to get online without that? So I decided to leave that in place, along with a couple of others that simply refused to uninstall themselves (the ATI graphics driver, for one).
Microsoft “strongly recommends” that you stay connected to the internet during the entire installation. I was concerned because this would require a choice between getting the upgrade and sleeping (with no internet in our quarters here, the only place to get online is a loud, raucous, crowded, smelly club environment). I went ahead and downloaded, and then once the software was on my machine and it said it was “unpacking” it, I headed for my room.
I left the machine running all night. When I woke up, it was waiting for me to put in the activation code. I had written it down, but somehow dropped a character. So I had to wait until I got back to the internet place to read it online again. Fortunately I had my iPod Touch, and could get online and back to the website (I guess I could have used one of the public internet computers as well).
Once I put in the code, it proceeded with the installation. I had to search for some device drivers and reboot a couple times, but it was fairly straightforward. I’ve been through this sort of thing enough times and experienced enough pain with other conversions that this one felt pretty painless and quick.
Once it came up, I was very impressed. The interface is overall fairly similar to Vista, with some noticeable changes in how applications are displayed on the task bar. Overall, it is *much* faster – faster to load, faster to respond, faster to enter “Sleep” mode. Very snappy and responsive.
Most importantly for me, opening multiple tabs in Internet Explorer is not the excruciating ordeal that it has been with Vista. You actually regain control of the pointer fairly quickly and can move on to open another tab. This is a daily thing with me, as I read the Wall Street Journal online. Dow Jones refuses to provide a downloadable version for offline reading, so I have to open each article in a separate tab so that I can read it at my leisure later when I’m not online. (I guess they just can’t imagine that somebody might not have an internet connection 24x7 – how to they expect people to read it on the train?).
I’ve only used Windows 7 for a couple of days now, but it hasn’t crashed or locked up yet (which was at least a daily occurrence with Vista). So I’m an enthusiastic convert.
Over the past year, I have quite often found myself cursing Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates into the deepest reaches of Hell as I struggled with Vista. Now, for what it’s worth, I just went online and bought a bunch of Microsoft stock in my retirement account. I think this is a solid product that people will feel much better about than Vista. Microsoft still may not be my favorite company (after all, I’m an ex-IBMer), but at least they're off my sh*t list.
Mood: Happy
Music: HVAC noise
0700
Yesterday I downloaded and installed the upgrade to Microsoft Windows 7. It is Awesome!
I have suffered under Windows Vista for over a year, ever since I bought this new computer while on leave. I have never been quite sure whether the problems I was experiencing were caused by the hardware or the operating system, but I have always suspected that it was mainly Vista’s fault.
Slow startups, slow shutdowns, lagging performance (especially when opening new tabs in Internet Explorer), inexplicable crashes and lockups – it’s been a miserable year from a computing standpoint. For someone whose only connection with his family and friends is through my computer, this is a very big deal. Windows Vista totally spoiled the fun of purchasing a new computer last year.
I’ve been reading about Windows 7 for months in the Wall Street Journal, ever since Walt Mossberg started testing it. He has had good things to say about it all along, and I have been looking forward to the release. I had intended to buy it as soon as I got home in November, but when I read that you could download it from Microsoft’s online store, I couldn’t wait.
The download experience was a bit frustrating. I wanted a backup CD, but since I only have a PO Box to ship it to, that was a problem. They only deliver to street addresses. Once I gave them a street address, their website *still* wouldn’t take the order, because the billing address for my credit card is a PO Box. I had to wait until they opened at noon on Saturday (7 PM here) to get someone on the line.
I made the purchase and then waited for the promised email to come with the download instructions and the product activation code. It didn’t come, so I called back. After a couple dropped calls (after all, this was an IP call from a crowded, noisy public internet venue near the USO), I finally got someone who could help (well, his supervisor helped since his English and intellect just weren’t up to the task). The supervisor told me I could just go to a different page on the website and download it, and the activation code would be right there on the screen. Why didn’t they just tell me that in the first place??
I downloaded the software, after a number of false starts trying to decide what would be the best approach. First off, a screen came up telling me about a bunch of software I had to uninstall first because it wouldn’t work. Some of it was no big deal, but some of it was critical – e.g. the WiFi adapter device driver. How am I supposed to get online without that? So I decided to leave that in place, along with a couple of others that simply refused to uninstall themselves (the ATI graphics driver, for one).
Microsoft “strongly recommends” that you stay connected to the internet during the entire installation. I was concerned because this would require a choice between getting the upgrade and sleeping (with no internet in our quarters here, the only place to get online is a loud, raucous, crowded, smelly club environment). I went ahead and downloaded, and then once the software was on my machine and it said it was “unpacking” it, I headed for my room.
I left the machine running all night. When I woke up, it was waiting for me to put in the activation code. I had written it down, but somehow dropped a character. So I had to wait until I got back to the internet place to read it online again. Fortunately I had my iPod Touch, and could get online and back to the website (I guess I could have used one of the public internet computers as well).
Once I put in the code, it proceeded with the installation. I had to search for some device drivers and reboot a couple times, but it was fairly straightforward. I’ve been through this sort of thing enough times and experienced enough pain with other conversions that this one felt pretty painless and quick.
Once it came up, I was very impressed. The interface is overall fairly similar to Vista, with some noticeable changes in how applications are displayed on the task bar. Overall, it is *much* faster – faster to load, faster to respond, faster to enter “Sleep” mode. Very snappy and responsive.
Most importantly for me, opening multiple tabs in Internet Explorer is not the excruciating ordeal that it has been with Vista. You actually regain control of the pointer fairly quickly and can move on to open another tab. This is a daily thing with me, as I read the Wall Street Journal online. Dow Jones refuses to provide a downloadable version for offline reading, so I have to open each article in a separate tab so that I can read it at my leisure later when I’m not online. (I guess they just can’t imagine that somebody might not have an internet connection 24x7 – how to they expect people to read it on the train?).
I’ve only used Windows 7 for a couple of days now, but it hasn’t crashed or locked up yet (which was at least a daily occurrence with Vista). So I’m an enthusiastic convert.
Over the past year, I have quite often found myself cursing Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates into the deepest reaches of Hell as I struggled with Vista. Now, for what it’s worth, I just went online and bought a bunch of Microsoft stock in my retirement account. I think this is a solid product that people will feel much better about than Vista. Microsoft still may not be my favorite company (after all, I’m an ex-IBMer), but at least they're off my sh*t list.
Mood: Happy
Music: HVAC noise
Friday, October 2, 2009
New Orders!
Friday 2 October 2009
1300
Well, finally! I just received an email with a copy of my new orders. I am to report to Heidelberg Germany next month, exactly as I had requested. After three years in the desert, I am totally psyched for a normal country with woods, mountains, and everything else. Hooah!
Now comes the fun part- figuring out how to get there. Ironically, the very day I posted the description of my little mini-Odyssey through the bureaucracy I started getting encouraging news that they might actually handle this in the way that makes the most sense to me - going straight from here to my next assignment without being required to go back to CONUS first to demobilize.
I am going to act on that premise until somebody gives me a convincing reason to do otherwise.
There's not really anything I can do today, but I will get started on the process as soon as I can reach the right people to get the ball rolling.
Mood: Happy.
Music: Ideal - Keine Heimat (Die Amis Kommen)
1300
Well, finally! I just received an email with a copy of my new orders. I am to report to Heidelberg Germany next month, exactly as I had requested. After three years in the desert, I am totally psyched for a normal country with woods, mountains, and everything else. Hooah!
Now comes the fun part- figuring out how to get there. Ironically, the very day I posted the description of my little mini-Odyssey through the bureaucracy I started getting encouraging news that they might actually handle this in the way that makes the most sense to me - going straight from here to my next assignment without being required to go back to CONUS first to demobilize.
I am going to act on that premise until somebody gives me a convincing reason to do otherwise.
There's not really anything I can do today, but I will get started on the process as soon as I can reach the right people to get the ball rolling.
Mood: Happy.
Music: Ideal - Keine Heimat (Die Amis Kommen)
Monday, September 28, 2009
Alone and Adrift in the Army
Tuesday 29 September 2009
0800
The Army does not do a very good job taking care of individually-mobilized reserve component soldiers. How do I know? Because I am one, and I am alone and adrift in a Kafkaesque nightmare.
The Army does a pretty good job of managing active-component soldiers through their assignments. It is also set up to do a pretty good job of mobilizing and demobilizing entire reserve component units. But when it comes to individual reservists who are mobilized and sent to fill augmentation positions in deployed units, the system leaves a lot to be desired.
When I was first mobilized I was pretty impressed with the thoroughness of the process. There were times when certain actions were duplicated and other times when people in various positions had incomplete or contradictory information, but on the whole it was pretty straightforward and got me overseas within a couple weeks after I reported for duty. It was after I had been deployed for awhile that I began to realize just how loose, disorganized, and dysfunctional the system for managing reserve personnel actions is for those of us serving on active duty.
The problem has many contributing causes, which probably makes it very hard to fix. First of all, there are different and incompatible systems for tracking personnel records in the Active Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard. Access to these systems is restricted, and there is not always someone (in fact there is rarely ever *anyone*) in an active component unit who has access to the Reserve System to update it properly. It’s not that the personnel people can’t get access – but they rotate in and out of their positions so fast that they either don’t have time or don’t have the training or their login id doesn’t work or it’s not their responsibility or who knows what – there’s always some reason why your records don’t get updated properly.
Much more serious than the relatively simple problem of people having access to the automated record systems is the fact that nobody really knows what they are supposed to do to take care of you. Or perhaps it might be more correct to say that everybody knows exactly what to do, but the things they “know” are often inconsistent or even directly contradictory. There is such a maze of regulations, policies, messages, and SOPs that nobody can possibly know it all, and people come and go so fast that nobody ever knows everything about their own job, much less your personal history with the unit – the person who was here when you got here is gone before you leave, and the new person may or may not know what the last one knew. The answer you get depends upon who you ask and when you ask them, so assuming you can get someone to pay attention in the first place, it comes down to deciding who to believe.
The problem manifests itself through a whole panoply of personnel actions including evaluations, awards, promotions, pay and entitlements, leave, etc. . I have had a number of them affect me and soldiers who worked with me. For example, when trying to update the various awards and service ribbons I am supposed to have (which are important when preparing for a promotion board) I was told that all the Reserve personnel actions were the responsibility of my “home unit”, and so they refused to update my records. But since I was mobilized and cross-leveled into the deployed active component unit, that unit *was* my home – my former unit didn’t even have access to my records any more, much less know what awards and ribbons I was supposed to have.
The bottom line is that as an individually-mobilized reserve soldier, you are on your own when it comes to taking care of your records and your personnel actions. Nobody cares about it as much as you do, and if you want to ensure it’s done you have to really work at it. While this is always true to a certain extent, and it’s always a good idea to have a handle on your personnel file being up to date, in this particular situation it’s really up to you alone.
I really feel for the lower-ranking soldiers who are in this situation. At least I have the experience to know what questions to ask, and enough rank to get people’s attention from time to time. What happens to a private or specialist who gets tossed into the maelstrom? I wonder how many veterans are out there with incomplete or messed-up records or missing pay and entitlements, unable to get their problems fixed, or who just gave up in disgust.
Why am I writing about this now? Well, for the past three months I have known that I had a follow on assignment to Germany (since 24 June, to be exact). Since that date, I have been going through the process of trying to get orders, and now that my tour here is almost ended I am trying to work through the process of getting out of here and over there. Needless to say, it’s messed up. You really couldn’t make up some of the things that have happened (unless perhaps you were Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller).
In order to get mobilized and come over to the Middle East, I had to be released by my home unit (Eighth Army, CONUS). I filled out the necessary forms, got the commander’s permission, and was cross-leveled to USARCENT (Third Army), mobilized, and sent over here in 2006. When I extended my original mobilization in 2007, it was relatively easy – USARCENT just cut an extension order. When I decided to extend again in 2008, they had to go through a different process to put me on a status called COADOS – Contingency Operation, Active Duty Operational Support (this used to be called COTTAD – Contingency Operation Temporary Tour of Active Duty). That was also pretty straightforward. So I am currently on COADOS orders that end in a month.
After I decided to look for a tour in Germany and was accepted for an assignment on June 24, I began the process again. But this time it is different because I am changing to a new Army Service Component Command (ASCC). I am transferring from USARCENT to USAREUR (US Army Europe). For this reason they made me fill out a new DA Form 1058-R, and said I had to have my home unit commander’s signature again. OK, no problem.
Except that when I went to get that signature, I found out that my home unit was deactivated last fall and no longer exists. This kind of thing happens, of course, but wouldn’t you think they’d notify the soldiers in the unit that their unit no longer existed? Nobody told me. So I needed a signature from the commander of a unit that no longer existed. I needed to find out who “owned” me now. I found an officer who had been in the unit. He was about to retire, but he thought that all the people who had been in the Eighth Army (CONUS) and were mobilized and cross-leveled at the time it was deactivated had been sent to a certain other reserve unit in Indiana. He gave me some potential contacts.
I contacted the unit in Indiana, and the commander told me he’d take care of me, no problem. A couple of days later, however, he got back in contact with me. There was a problem after all – unlike others from Eighth Army who had been reassigned to them, I was not assigned to their unit - they could not find me on their books. He looked me up in a reserve personnel system, and told me I was assigned to “something called the Third Army Augmentation Company at FT McPherson, Georgia”. Surprise! That’s the unit I currently belong to in the active component. What’s going on here?
A little background: When you mobilize into USARCENT (Third Army) as an individual reserve component augmentee, you are first assigned to the Augmentation Company of the Special Troops Battalion (STB). They process your paperwork and help you through the mobilization process at FT Benning. (I described this process in detail back when I first started this blog in 2006). As far as I know, the entire raison’d’etre for this unit is to take care of the reserve component soldiers in USARCENT. I don’t know exactly what they do, but they sure as hell don’t take care of me. I’ve been mobilized in USARCENT for three years and with rare exceptions I never even heard from them until fairly recently, after I started agitating my way through this process of getting orders. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the story…
I contacted the STB Augmentation Company and after some back-and-forth I found that I am in fact assigned to them. What I did not know before was that they are actually a reserve component unit themselves – they are part of an active component formation, but I guess since their mission is to take care of reserve soldiers they are a reserve unit. This made it clear why the Army just moved me over there (on paper) when my home unit was deactivated. It just would have been nice if someone would have told me about it. (Hypothetical question: what would have happened to all the personnel actions that my “home unit” was supposed to do if I hadn’t insisted they get taken care of here, and I went home and there was no unit?). Anyway, no harm no foul – I’d only lost a few days’ time figuring this out. So now I needed the signature of the Augmentation Company Commander on my 1058-R to request my orders, and I’d be in business.
GONG!
“Sorry, but we don’t sign 1058-R’s for soldiers requesting orders to other commands. You have to demobilize first and go back to your home unit.” “But you *are* my home unit.” “Sorry, that’s our policy”. So I went through some back and forth for awhile between USARCENT and USAREUR trying to figure out how to get the form signed. USAREUR couldn’t process my request for orders and send it to DA without a signature, and my unit wouldn’t sign it until I got out and went back to…them (?). It was nuts.
One suggested solution was to transfer out of the USARCENT Augmentation Company and go to the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). Once in the IRR, I would be a “free agent” and could sign my own request for orders. So I initiated that process. The only problem was that the Augmentation Company said I could not do this while mobilized. I had to wait until I was demobilized to get to the IRR, which I was only doing so that I could get a signed DA Form 1058-R while mobilized since I couldn’t get them to sign it until I was demobilized…this was too much.
I filed an IG complaint. The IG (Inspector General) is an office in every major command whose job, among other things, is a sort of “complaint department” of last resort when something is messed up. So I called the IG’s office in Kuwait and told them my situation. They told me what I had to do (fill out a form, naturally), and send it in. This was on a Saturday morning.
On the following Monday I got a call – no problem, everything was signed, my request for transfer to the IRR was in process and my DA 1058-R was signed by the commander. Fill out this and that, include this to complete the packet, and my request for orders was in. It had taken six or seven weeks instead of the week or so that it should have, but at least it got done. Good thing I started early! Now to wait for orders.
There’s more.
You see, in the Army *everything* revolves around orders. Nothing is official without them, and nothing happens without them. So until my new orders come, I am on my old orders. Those orders say that my tour ends on 31 October. If my new orders don’t come by then, I am off active duty, not being paid, and certainly not authorized to be in the war zone. The normal process is that you start out-processing over here, get transported back to FT Benning a week to ten days before your orders end, and go through the demobilization process. This involves quite a bit of administrative work with finance, medical personnel, and supply. A big part of it is turning in all the equipment they issued me when I mobilized.
Here’s the thing that doesn’t make sense – my new orders are to start the day after these orders end – 1 Nov. So I will have no break in service, but remain on continuous active duty. The big question all along has been whether I have to go back to FT Benning to demobilize and then remobilize, or whether I can simply go straight from one assignment to the next. It seems to me that this would save the government a substantial amount of money in travel as well as keep me here working for a couple extra weeks before I get on the plane to Germany. But nobody really seems to know how it’s supposed to work – there are as many different answers as there are people to talk to.
I have been told everything from “You have to go back and turn everything in” to “You go straight to your next assignment and keep everything until you demobilize for the final time”, and many variations in between. It makes it hard to plan how to wrap up here and get ready to travel. Where do I send my stuff? When do I start out-processing?
If I am to send my equipment back to FT Benning, it’s really time to do it now. If I’m supposed to keep it, that would be easy, I can just ship it to Germany. Some folks have said I should turn it in here (all of it or only part of it, depending upon whom I talk to). Yesterday I spent the afternoon repacking all my issued equipment according to what kind of item it is, and whether I turn it in under various circumstances (ETS, PCS, etc). So now I have three different duffel bags, of which I will ship, keep, or turn in some combination depending upon what the final answer is.
Which gets me back to the title of this entry. I still don’t have orders, and I still don’t have answers. I am trying simultaneously to do my job here and prepare to leave, but the date, destination, and process are unknown, and there’s nobody who seems to know the answers. I am in the Army, but alone and adrift.
Mood: Stressed
Music: Bobby Horton, Homespun Songs of Vicksburg - Poor Wayfaring Soldier
0800
The Army does not do a very good job taking care of individually-mobilized reserve component soldiers. How do I know? Because I am one, and I am alone and adrift in a Kafkaesque nightmare.
The Army does a pretty good job of managing active-component soldiers through their assignments. It is also set up to do a pretty good job of mobilizing and demobilizing entire reserve component units. But when it comes to individual reservists who are mobilized and sent to fill augmentation positions in deployed units, the system leaves a lot to be desired.
When I was first mobilized I was pretty impressed with the thoroughness of the process. There were times when certain actions were duplicated and other times when people in various positions had incomplete or contradictory information, but on the whole it was pretty straightforward and got me overseas within a couple weeks after I reported for duty. It was after I had been deployed for awhile that I began to realize just how loose, disorganized, and dysfunctional the system for managing reserve personnel actions is for those of us serving on active duty.
The problem has many contributing causes, which probably makes it very hard to fix. First of all, there are different and incompatible systems for tracking personnel records in the Active Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard. Access to these systems is restricted, and there is not always someone (in fact there is rarely ever *anyone*) in an active component unit who has access to the Reserve System to update it properly. It’s not that the personnel people can’t get access – but they rotate in and out of their positions so fast that they either don’t have time or don’t have the training or their login id doesn’t work or it’s not their responsibility or who knows what – there’s always some reason why your records don’t get updated properly.
Much more serious than the relatively simple problem of people having access to the automated record systems is the fact that nobody really knows what they are supposed to do to take care of you. Or perhaps it might be more correct to say that everybody knows exactly what to do, but the things they “know” are often inconsistent or even directly contradictory. There is such a maze of regulations, policies, messages, and SOPs that nobody can possibly know it all, and people come and go so fast that nobody ever knows everything about their own job, much less your personal history with the unit – the person who was here when you got here is gone before you leave, and the new person may or may not know what the last one knew. The answer you get depends upon who you ask and when you ask them, so assuming you can get someone to pay attention in the first place, it comes down to deciding who to believe.
The problem manifests itself through a whole panoply of personnel actions including evaluations, awards, promotions, pay and entitlements, leave, etc. . I have had a number of them affect me and soldiers who worked with me. For example, when trying to update the various awards and service ribbons I am supposed to have (which are important when preparing for a promotion board) I was told that all the Reserve personnel actions were the responsibility of my “home unit”, and so they refused to update my records. But since I was mobilized and cross-leveled into the deployed active component unit, that unit *was* my home – my former unit didn’t even have access to my records any more, much less know what awards and ribbons I was supposed to have.
The bottom line is that as an individually-mobilized reserve soldier, you are on your own when it comes to taking care of your records and your personnel actions. Nobody cares about it as much as you do, and if you want to ensure it’s done you have to really work at it. While this is always true to a certain extent, and it’s always a good idea to have a handle on your personnel file being up to date, in this particular situation it’s really up to you alone.
I really feel for the lower-ranking soldiers who are in this situation. At least I have the experience to know what questions to ask, and enough rank to get people’s attention from time to time. What happens to a private or specialist who gets tossed into the maelstrom? I wonder how many veterans are out there with incomplete or messed-up records or missing pay and entitlements, unable to get their problems fixed, or who just gave up in disgust.
Why am I writing about this now? Well, for the past three months I have known that I had a follow on assignment to Germany (since 24 June, to be exact). Since that date, I have been going through the process of trying to get orders, and now that my tour here is almost ended I am trying to work through the process of getting out of here and over there. Needless to say, it’s messed up. You really couldn’t make up some of the things that have happened (unless perhaps you were Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller).
In order to get mobilized and come over to the Middle East, I had to be released by my home unit (Eighth Army, CONUS). I filled out the necessary forms, got the commander’s permission, and was cross-leveled to USARCENT (Third Army), mobilized, and sent over here in 2006. When I extended my original mobilization in 2007, it was relatively easy – USARCENT just cut an extension order. When I decided to extend again in 2008, they had to go through a different process to put me on a status called COADOS – Contingency Operation, Active Duty Operational Support (this used to be called COTTAD – Contingency Operation Temporary Tour of Active Duty). That was also pretty straightforward. So I am currently on COADOS orders that end in a month.
After I decided to look for a tour in Germany and was accepted for an assignment on June 24, I began the process again. But this time it is different because I am changing to a new Army Service Component Command (ASCC). I am transferring from USARCENT to USAREUR (US Army Europe). For this reason they made me fill out a new DA Form 1058-R, and said I had to have my home unit commander’s signature again. OK, no problem.
Except that when I went to get that signature, I found out that my home unit was deactivated last fall and no longer exists. This kind of thing happens, of course, but wouldn’t you think they’d notify the soldiers in the unit that their unit no longer existed? Nobody told me. So I needed a signature from the commander of a unit that no longer existed. I needed to find out who “owned” me now. I found an officer who had been in the unit. He was about to retire, but he thought that all the people who had been in the Eighth Army (CONUS) and were mobilized and cross-leveled at the time it was deactivated had been sent to a certain other reserve unit in Indiana. He gave me some potential contacts.
I contacted the unit in Indiana, and the commander told me he’d take care of me, no problem. A couple of days later, however, he got back in contact with me. There was a problem after all – unlike others from Eighth Army who had been reassigned to them, I was not assigned to their unit - they could not find me on their books. He looked me up in a reserve personnel system, and told me I was assigned to “something called the Third Army Augmentation Company at FT McPherson, Georgia”. Surprise! That’s the unit I currently belong to in the active component. What’s going on here?
A little background: When you mobilize into USARCENT (Third Army) as an individual reserve component augmentee, you are first assigned to the Augmentation Company of the Special Troops Battalion (STB). They process your paperwork and help you through the mobilization process at FT Benning. (I described this process in detail back when I first started this blog in 2006). As far as I know, the entire raison’d’etre for this unit is to take care of the reserve component soldiers in USARCENT. I don’t know exactly what they do, but they sure as hell don’t take care of me. I’ve been mobilized in USARCENT for three years and with rare exceptions I never even heard from them until fairly recently, after I started agitating my way through this process of getting orders. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to the story…
I contacted the STB Augmentation Company and after some back-and-forth I found that I am in fact assigned to them. What I did not know before was that they are actually a reserve component unit themselves – they are part of an active component formation, but I guess since their mission is to take care of reserve soldiers they are a reserve unit. This made it clear why the Army just moved me over there (on paper) when my home unit was deactivated. It just would have been nice if someone would have told me about it. (Hypothetical question: what would have happened to all the personnel actions that my “home unit” was supposed to do if I hadn’t insisted they get taken care of here, and I went home and there was no unit?). Anyway, no harm no foul – I’d only lost a few days’ time figuring this out. So now I needed the signature of the Augmentation Company Commander on my 1058-R to request my orders, and I’d be in business.
GONG!
“Sorry, but we don’t sign 1058-R’s for soldiers requesting orders to other commands. You have to demobilize first and go back to your home unit.” “But you *are* my home unit.” “Sorry, that’s our policy”. So I went through some back and forth for awhile between USARCENT and USAREUR trying to figure out how to get the form signed. USAREUR couldn’t process my request for orders and send it to DA without a signature, and my unit wouldn’t sign it until I got out and went back to…them (?). It was nuts.
One suggested solution was to transfer out of the USARCENT Augmentation Company and go to the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). Once in the IRR, I would be a “free agent” and could sign my own request for orders. So I initiated that process. The only problem was that the Augmentation Company said I could not do this while mobilized. I had to wait until I was demobilized to get to the IRR, which I was only doing so that I could get a signed DA Form 1058-R while mobilized since I couldn’t get them to sign it until I was demobilized…this was too much.
I filed an IG complaint. The IG (Inspector General) is an office in every major command whose job, among other things, is a sort of “complaint department” of last resort when something is messed up. So I called the IG’s office in Kuwait and told them my situation. They told me what I had to do (fill out a form, naturally), and send it in. This was on a Saturday morning.
On the following Monday I got a call – no problem, everything was signed, my request for transfer to the IRR was in process and my DA 1058-R was signed by the commander. Fill out this and that, include this to complete the packet, and my request for orders was in. It had taken six or seven weeks instead of the week or so that it should have, but at least it got done. Good thing I started early! Now to wait for orders.
There’s more.
You see, in the Army *everything* revolves around orders. Nothing is official without them, and nothing happens without them. So until my new orders come, I am on my old orders. Those orders say that my tour ends on 31 October. If my new orders don’t come by then, I am off active duty, not being paid, and certainly not authorized to be in the war zone. The normal process is that you start out-processing over here, get transported back to FT Benning a week to ten days before your orders end, and go through the demobilization process. This involves quite a bit of administrative work with finance, medical personnel, and supply. A big part of it is turning in all the equipment they issued me when I mobilized.
Here’s the thing that doesn’t make sense – my new orders are to start the day after these orders end – 1 Nov. So I will have no break in service, but remain on continuous active duty. The big question all along has been whether I have to go back to FT Benning to demobilize and then remobilize, or whether I can simply go straight from one assignment to the next. It seems to me that this would save the government a substantial amount of money in travel as well as keep me here working for a couple extra weeks before I get on the plane to Germany. But nobody really seems to know how it’s supposed to work – there are as many different answers as there are people to talk to.
I have been told everything from “You have to go back and turn everything in” to “You go straight to your next assignment and keep everything until you demobilize for the final time”, and many variations in between. It makes it hard to plan how to wrap up here and get ready to travel. Where do I send my stuff? When do I start out-processing?
If I am to send my equipment back to FT Benning, it’s really time to do it now. If I’m supposed to keep it, that would be easy, I can just ship it to Germany. Some folks have said I should turn it in here (all of it or only part of it, depending upon whom I talk to). Yesterday I spent the afternoon repacking all my issued equipment according to what kind of item it is, and whether I turn it in under various circumstances (ETS, PCS, etc). So now I have three different duffel bags, of which I will ship, keep, or turn in some combination depending upon what the final answer is.
Which gets me back to the title of this entry. I still don’t have orders, and I still don’t have answers. I am trying simultaneously to do my job here and prepare to leave, but the date, destination, and process are unknown, and there’s nobody who seems to know the answers. I am in the Army, but alone and adrift.
Mood: Stressed
Music: Bobby Horton, Homespun Songs of Vicksburg - Poor Wayfaring Soldier
Monday, September 7, 2009
Afghanistan Redux
Monday 7 September 2009
1730
The Ghilzaie Chief wrote answer “Our paths are narrow and steep,
“ The sun burns fierce in the valleys, and the snow-fed streams run deep;
…” So a stranger needs safe escort, and the oath of a valiant friend .”
The Amir’s Message, Sir Alfred Lyall, 1882.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
- George Santayana
I have just finished reading a very interesting, instructive, and provocative book entitled “The Story of the Malakand Field Force – An Episode of Frontier War” by Sir Winston Churchill. It was his very first book, written in 1897 when he was a 22 year old subaltern (lieutenant). The subject of the book is the British expedition to put down the 1897 rebellion by the mountain tribes in the northwest frontier region of India. This area is now part of the Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan, directly bordering Afghanistan. It also happens to be one of the critical areas in which we are currently engaged against Al Queda and the Taliban. For that reason this book should be of particular interest to anyone interested in the current war in Afghanistan – yet I have not seen it on any COIN reading lists or mentioned in any anthologies. I found it quite by accident, while looking for something else.
I bought a printed copy of the book, but later discovered that it is out of copyright and is available for free: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9404
The book is an absolute gem – a gold mine; I hardly know where to start. I suppose a bit of historical context is in order, following which I will summarize or excerpt the book’s high points, generally following the path of the author’s narrative. I’ll probably use quotations too extensively, but Churchill’s command of English was so complete and his writing so eloquent that it seems a shame, almost a crime, to try to shorten or paraphrase it.
The general context of the conflict was the resistance of the mountain tribes to the British Imperial Government’s so-called “Forward Policy”. For many years the boundary of the British Empire in India had been considered to be the edge of the mountains. The British were content to control the plains of India, and regarded the mountainous regions to the north and west as natural borders against Russian and Afghan incursion. A series of events caused them to re-evaluate this policy in 1879 and decide to push out into the mountains, and to control the entire drainage system of the Indus. Following that, they decided that they had to control the mountain passes as well, which led them to push towards Gilgit, Chitral, Jelalabad, and Kandahar. These incursions were naturally seen as a threat by the mountain tribes (primarily Pashtuns), who resisted fiercely, and finally commenced a general uprising in 1897. This book is the story of one particular expedition in that broader conflict, in which Churchill was a participant. His first-hand observations and reflections should be of interest to us today – “plus ca change, plus c'est la même chose”.
The first chapter is entitled “The Theatre of War”, and contains a description of the terrain as well as a number of cogent observations about the people of the region:
“Except at the times of sowing and of harvest, a continual state of feud and strife prevails throughout the land…Every man’s hand is against the other, and all against the stranger…To the ferocity of the Zulu are added the craft of the Redskin and the marksmanship of the Boer. “
“Every influence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence…In such a state of society, all property is held directly by main force. Every man is a soldier.”
“This state of continual tumult has produced a habit of mind which recks little of injuries, holds life cheap and embarks on war with careless levity, and the tribesmen of the Afghan border afford the spectacle of a people, who fight without passion, and kill one another without loss of temper.”
“Their system of ethics, which regards treachery and violence as virtues rather than vices, has produced a code of honour so strange and inconsistent, that it is incomprehensible to a logical mind. I have been told that if a white man could grasp it fully, and were to understand their mental impulses—if he knew, when it was their honour to stand by him, and when it was their honour to betray him; when they were bound to protect and when to kill him—he might, by judging his times and opportunities, pass safely from one end of the mountains to the other. But a civilised European is… little able to accomplish this…”
“All are held in the grip of miserable superstition… a state of mental development at which civilisation hardly knows whether to laugh or weep.”
“Their superstition exposes them to the rapacity and tyranny of a numerous priesthood—"Mullahs," "Sahibzadas," "Akhundzadas," "Fakirs,"—and a host of wandering Talib-ul-ilms, who…live free at the expense of the people.”
Churchill uses the second chapter to describe the initial dispositions of British outposts, supply lines, and military forces. Chapter 3, “The Outbreak” describes the beginning of the uprising:
“… a single class had viewed with quick intelligence and intense hostility the approach of the British power. The priesthood of the Afghan border instantly recognised the full meaning of the Chitral road. The cause of their antagonism is not hard to discern. Contact with civilisation assails the ignorance, and credulity, on which the wealth and influence of the Mullah depend.”
Throughout Churchill’s detailed descriptions of the various signs that trouble was brewing (but which were either unobserved or underappreciated by the government), the theme that emerges is that the average Westerner simply does not understand and cannot fully appreciate the way these people think. Their warlike nature, the extraordinary influence of their religious leaders, and the inscrutability of their shifting loyalties, alliances, and vendettas made what we would now call the “human terrain” every bit as forbidding and difficult to navigate as the steep mountains, deep rivers, and burning valleys of their country. The stage was set for a bloody conflict.
Chapters 4 through 16 are a detailed account of the military campaign, with many and specific episodes of long marches, sharp encounters, advance and retreat, triumph and disaster. It was as exciting and engaging to read as a novel, with the added attraction of being a true account of conflict in places where our enemies currently operate – the Swat Valley, Malakand, Mohmand, Baujaur… I read it with great interest as military history but also as an exercise in current professional development. While many of the specific tactical lessons are dated, the general principles are not. It seems to me that it would be of little value to describe the specific battles here, but I made a few notes in the margins when I thought that his observations might illuminate some enduring lesson:
On the death of a young officer: “Fortune (is) never so capricious as on the field of battle…”
On the ruins of an earlier, peaceful civilization that had thriven in the region in about the 5th century, at a time when Rome was being overrun by the Visigoths, Huns, and Vandals : “When we reflect on the revolutions which time effects, and observe how the home of learning and progress changes as the years pass by, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion, perhaps a mournful one, that the sun of civilisation can never shine all over the world at once.”
Apologizing to the reader for including in his account the details of long dusty marches and camp routine, he says: “…he who would obtain a true idea of the soldier's life on service, must mentally share the fatigues of the march and the monotony of the camp. The fine deeds, the thrilling moments of war, are but the high lights in a picture, of which the background is routine, hard work, and discomfort.”
On the valley of the Jabdul: “This valley may, in natural and political features, be taken as typical of the Afghan valleys. Seven separate castles formed the strongholds of seven separate khans… It is ‘all against all,’ in these valleys…”
On the practicality of making alliances with local tribes: “As long as they fight, these Afghans do not mind much on which side they fight. There are worse men and worse allies helping us to-day.”
On the reliability of the locals: “Our guide meanwhile squatted on the ground and pronounced the names of all the villages, as each one was pointed at. To make sure there was no mistake, the series of questions was repeated. This time he gave to each an entirely different name with an appearance of great confidence and pride…”
To my surprise and delight, I ran across a famous Churchill quote, for which I now know the source and context: “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
On mountain warfare: “It is impossible to realise without seeing, how very slowly troops move on hillsides.”
On the dangers inherent in withdrawals: “…while it is usually easy to advance against an Asiatic, all retirements are matters of danger.” This comment was one among many descriptions of the way in which the mountain tribesmen would give ground when pressed, but would pounce immediately upon any sign of British retreat or withdrawal, and harass a returning patrol right to the gates of the camp.
“Among Europeans power provokes antagonism, and weakness excites pity. All is different in the East. Beyond Suez the bent of men's minds is such, that safety lies only in success, and peace in prosperity. All desert the falling. All turn upon the fallen.”
This aspect of the character of the mountain tribes bears further emphasis – their system of ethics is completely different than ours; they respect only power and strength:
“The reader may have been struck, in the account of the fighting in the Mamund Valley, with the vigour with which the tribesmen follow up a retreating enemy and press an isolated party. In war this is sound, practical policy. But the hillmen adopt it rather from a natural propensity, than from military knowledge. Their tactics are the outcome of their natures. All their actions, moral, political, strategic, are guided by the same principle. The powerful tribes, who had watched the passage of the troops in sullen fear, only waited for a sign of weakness to rise behind them. As long as the brigades dominated the country, and appeared confident and successful, their communications would be respected, and the risings localised; but a check, a reverse, a retreat would raise tremendous combinations on every side. “
Churchill then goes on to explain how the way in which a local uprising is dealt with is relevant to the fate of the rest of the British Empire:
“If the reader will bear this in mind, it will enable him to appreciate the position with which this chapter deals, and may explain many other matters which are beyond the scope of these pages. For it might be well also to remember, that the great drama of frontier war is played before a vast, silent but attentive audience, who fill a theatre, that reaches from Peshawar to Colombo, and from Kurrachee to Rangoon. “
On the tribesmen's reaction to proffered aid: “Sir Bindon Blood offered them medical aid for their wounded, but this they declined. They could not understand the motive, and feared a stratagem.”
Commenting upon some confusion and conflict resulting from inconsistent policies: “The political officers must be under the control of the General directing the operations. There must be no ‘Imperium in imperio.’ In a Field Force one man only can command—and all in it must be under his authority. Differences, creating difficulties and leading to disasters, will arise whenever the political officers are empowered to make arrangements with the tribesmen, without consulting and sometimes without even informing the man on whose decisions the success of the war and the lives of the soldiers directly depend. “
Chapter 17 is entitled “Military Observations”. Here Churchill reviews and summarizes the more important observations and lessons of a strictly military nature:
“The first and most important consideration is transport. Nobody who has not seen for himself can realise what a great matter this is…In these valleys, where wheeled traffic is impossible, the difficulties and cost of moving supplies are enormous; and as none, or very few, are to be obtained within the country, the consideration is paramount.”
“…all the fighting occurred in capturing villages, which lay in rocky and broken ground in the hollows of the mountains, and were defended by a swarm of active riflemen…The tribesmen would dart from rock to rock, exposing themselves only for an instant, and before the attention of a section could be directed to them and the rifles aimed, the chance and the target would have vanished together… speaking generally, infantry should push on to the attack with the bayonet without wasting much time in firing, which can only result in their being delayed under the fire of a well-posted enemy. “
“As the enemy seize every point as soon as it is left, all retirements should be masked by leaving two or three men behind from each company. These keep up a brisk fire, and after the whole company have taken up a new position, or have nearly done so, they run back and join them. Besides this, the fire of one company in retiring should always be arranged to cover another, and at no moment in a withdrawal should the firing ever cease. The covering company should be actually in position before the rear company begins to move, and should open fire at once.”
“The necessity for having the officers in the same dress as the men, was apparent to all who watched the operations… at close quarters the keen-eyed tribesmen always made an especial mark of the officers, distinguishing them chiefly, I think, by the fact that they do not carry rifles.”
“The fatigues experienced by troops in mountain warfare are so great, that every effort has to be made to lighten the soldier's load. At the same time the more ammunition he carries on his person the better.”
“Great efforts should be made to give the soldier a piece of chocolate, a small sausage, or something portable and nutritious to carry with him to the field. In a war of long marches, of uncertain fortunes, of retirements often delayed and always pressed, there have been many occasions when regiments and companies have unexpectedly had to stop out all night without food. It is well to remember that the stomach governs the world.”
“…the enemy do not become formidable until a mistake has been made.”
“The terrible losses inflicted on the tribesmen in the Swat Valley show how easily disciplined troops can brush away the bravest savages in the open. But on the hillside all is changed, and the observer will be struck by the weakness rather than the strength of modern weapons. Daring riflemen, individually superior to the soldiers, and able to support the greatest fatigues, can always inflict loss, although they cannot bar their path.”
“The military problem…presented in the Afghan valleys; a roadless, broken and undeveloped country; an absence of any strategic points; a well-armed enemy with great mobility and modern rifles, who adopts guerilla tactics. The results…are, that the troops can march anywhere, and do anything, except catch the enemy; and that all their movements must be attended with loss.“
“This has been perhaps a cold-blooded chapter. We have considered men as targets; tribesmen, fighting for their homes and hills, have been regarded only as the objective of an attack; killed and wounded human beings, merely as the waste of war…but practical people in a business-like age will remember that they live in a world of men—not angels—and regulate their conduct accordingly. “
Given our own current situation in Afghanistan, it seems appropriate to close my entry with some of Churchill’s own closing words:
“We are at present in a transition stage, nor is the manner nor occasion of the end in sight. Still this is no time to despair. I have often noticed in these Afghan valleys, that they seem to be entirely surrounded by the hills, and to have no exit. But as the column has advanced, a gap gradually becomes visible and a pass appears. Sometimes it is steep and difficult, sometimes it is held by the enemy and must be forced, but I have never seen a valley that had not a way out. That way we shall ultimately find, if we march with the firm but prudent step of men who know the dangers; but, conscious of their skill and discipline, do not doubt their ability to deal with them as they shall arise.”
Mood: Calm & Confident
Music: Mozart – Clarinet Quintets
1730
The Ghilzaie Chief wrote answer “Our paths are narrow and steep,
“ The sun burns fierce in the valleys, and the snow-fed streams run deep;
…” So a stranger needs safe escort, and the oath of a valiant friend .”
The Amir’s Message, Sir Alfred Lyall, 1882.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
- George Santayana
I have just finished reading a very interesting, instructive, and provocative book entitled “The Story of the Malakand Field Force – An Episode of Frontier War” by Sir Winston Churchill. It was his very first book, written in 1897 when he was a 22 year old subaltern (lieutenant). The subject of the book is the British expedition to put down the 1897 rebellion by the mountain tribes in the northwest frontier region of India. This area is now part of the Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan, directly bordering Afghanistan. It also happens to be one of the critical areas in which we are currently engaged against Al Queda and the Taliban. For that reason this book should be of particular interest to anyone interested in the current war in Afghanistan – yet I have not seen it on any COIN reading lists or mentioned in any anthologies. I found it quite by accident, while looking for something else.
I bought a printed copy of the book, but later discovered that it is out of copyright and is available for free: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9404
The book is an absolute gem – a gold mine; I hardly know where to start. I suppose a bit of historical context is in order, following which I will summarize or excerpt the book’s high points, generally following the path of the author’s narrative. I’ll probably use quotations too extensively, but Churchill’s command of English was so complete and his writing so eloquent that it seems a shame, almost a crime, to try to shorten or paraphrase it.
The general context of the conflict was the resistance of the mountain tribes to the British Imperial Government’s so-called “Forward Policy”. For many years the boundary of the British Empire in India had been considered to be the edge of the mountains. The British were content to control the plains of India, and regarded the mountainous regions to the north and west as natural borders against Russian and Afghan incursion. A series of events caused them to re-evaluate this policy in 1879 and decide to push out into the mountains, and to control the entire drainage system of the Indus. Following that, they decided that they had to control the mountain passes as well, which led them to push towards Gilgit, Chitral, Jelalabad, and Kandahar. These incursions were naturally seen as a threat by the mountain tribes (primarily Pashtuns), who resisted fiercely, and finally commenced a general uprising in 1897. This book is the story of one particular expedition in that broader conflict, in which Churchill was a participant. His first-hand observations and reflections should be of interest to us today – “plus ca change, plus c'est la même chose”.
The first chapter is entitled “The Theatre of War”, and contains a description of the terrain as well as a number of cogent observations about the people of the region:
“Except at the times of sowing and of harvest, a continual state of feud and strife prevails throughout the land…Every man’s hand is against the other, and all against the stranger…To the ferocity of the Zulu are added the craft of the Redskin and the marksmanship of the Boer. “
“Every influence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence…In such a state of society, all property is held directly by main force. Every man is a soldier.”
“This state of continual tumult has produced a habit of mind which recks little of injuries, holds life cheap and embarks on war with careless levity, and the tribesmen of the Afghan border afford the spectacle of a people, who fight without passion, and kill one another without loss of temper.”
“Their system of ethics, which regards treachery and violence as virtues rather than vices, has produced a code of honour so strange and inconsistent, that it is incomprehensible to a logical mind. I have been told that if a white man could grasp it fully, and were to understand their mental impulses—if he knew, when it was their honour to stand by him, and when it was their honour to betray him; when they were bound to protect and when to kill him—he might, by judging his times and opportunities, pass safely from one end of the mountains to the other. But a civilised European is… little able to accomplish this…”
“All are held in the grip of miserable superstition… a state of mental development at which civilisation hardly knows whether to laugh or weep.”
“Their superstition exposes them to the rapacity and tyranny of a numerous priesthood—"Mullahs," "Sahibzadas," "Akhundzadas," "Fakirs,"—and a host of wandering Talib-ul-ilms, who…live free at the expense of the people.”
Churchill uses the second chapter to describe the initial dispositions of British outposts, supply lines, and military forces. Chapter 3, “The Outbreak” describes the beginning of the uprising:
“… a single class had viewed with quick intelligence and intense hostility the approach of the British power. The priesthood of the Afghan border instantly recognised the full meaning of the Chitral road. The cause of their antagonism is not hard to discern. Contact with civilisation assails the ignorance, and credulity, on which the wealth and influence of the Mullah depend.”
Throughout Churchill’s detailed descriptions of the various signs that trouble was brewing (but which were either unobserved or underappreciated by the government), the theme that emerges is that the average Westerner simply does not understand and cannot fully appreciate the way these people think. Their warlike nature, the extraordinary influence of their religious leaders, and the inscrutability of their shifting loyalties, alliances, and vendettas made what we would now call the “human terrain” every bit as forbidding and difficult to navigate as the steep mountains, deep rivers, and burning valleys of their country. The stage was set for a bloody conflict.
Chapters 4 through 16 are a detailed account of the military campaign, with many and specific episodes of long marches, sharp encounters, advance and retreat, triumph and disaster. It was as exciting and engaging to read as a novel, with the added attraction of being a true account of conflict in places where our enemies currently operate – the Swat Valley, Malakand, Mohmand, Baujaur… I read it with great interest as military history but also as an exercise in current professional development. While many of the specific tactical lessons are dated, the general principles are not. It seems to me that it would be of little value to describe the specific battles here, but I made a few notes in the margins when I thought that his observations might illuminate some enduring lesson:
On the death of a young officer: “Fortune (is) never so capricious as on the field of battle…”
On the ruins of an earlier, peaceful civilization that had thriven in the region in about the 5th century, at a time when Rome was being overrun by the Visigoths, Huns, and Vandals : “When we reflect on the revolutions which time effects, and observe how the home of learning and progress changes as the years pass by, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion, perhaps a mournful one, that the sun of civilisation can never shine all over the world at once.”
Apologizing to the reader for including in his account the details of long dusty marches and camp routine, he says: “…he who would obtain a true idea of the soldier's life on service, must mentally share the fatigues of the march and the monotony of the camp. The fine deeds, the thrilling moments of war, are but the high lights in a picture, of which the background is routine, hard work, and discomfort.”
On the valley of the Jabdul: “This valley may, in natural and political features, be taken as typical of the Afghan valleys. Seven separate castles formed the strongholds of seven separate khans… It is ‘all against all,’ in these valleys…”
On the practicality of making alliances with local tribes: “As long as they fight, these Afghans do not mind much on which side they fight. There are worse men and worse allies helping us to-day.”
On the reliability of the locals: “Our guide meanwhile squatted on the ground and pronounced the names of all the villages, as each one was pointed at. To make sure there was no mistake, the series of questions was repeated. This time he gave to each an entirely different name with an appearance of great confidence and pride…”
To my surprise and delight, I ran across a famous Churchill quote, for which I now know the source and context: “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
On mountain warfare: “It is impossible to realise without seeing, how very slowly troops move on hillsides.”
On the dangers inherent in withdrawals: “…while it is usually easy to advance against an Asiatic, all retirements are matters of danger.” This comment was one among many descriptions of the way in which the mountain tribesmen would give ground when pressed, but would pounce immediately upon any sign of British retreat or withdrawal, and harass a returning patrol right to the gates of the camp.
“Among Europeans power provokes antagonism, and weakness excites pity. All is different in the East. Beyond Suez the bent of men's minds is such, that safety lies only in success, and peace in prosperity. All desert the falling. All turn upon the fallen.”
This aspect of the character of the mountain tribes bears further emphasis – their system of ethics is completely different than ours; they respect only power and strength:
“The reader may have been struck, in the account of the fighting in the Mamund Valley, with the vigour with which the tribesmen follow up a retreating enemy and press an isolated party. In war this is sound, practical policy. But the hillmen adopt it rather from a natural propensity, than from military knowledge. Their tactics are the outcome of their natures. All their actions, moral, political, strategic, are guided by the same principle. The powerful tribes, who had watched the passage of the troops in sullen fear, only waited for a sign of weakness to rise behind them. As long as the brigades dominated the country, and appeared confident and successful, their communications would be respected, and the risings localised; but a check, a reverse, a retreat would raise tremendous combinations on every side. “
Churchill then goes on to explain how the way in which a local uprising is dealt with is relevant to the fate of the rest of the British Empire:
“If the reader will bear this in mind, it will enable him to appreciate the position with which this chapter deals, and may explain many other matters which are beyond the scope of these pages. For it might be well also to remember, that the great drama of frontier war is played before a vast, silent but attentive audience, who fill a theatre, that reaches from Peshawar to Colombo, and from Kurrachee to Rangoon. “
On the tribesmen's reaction to proffered aid: “Sir Bindon Blood offered them medical aid for their wounded, but this they declined. They could not understand the motive, and feared a stratagem.”
Commenting upon some confusion and conflict resulting from inconsistent policies: “The political officers must be under the control of the General directing the operations. There must be no ‘Imperium in imperio.’ In a Field Force one man only can command—and all in it must be under his authority. Differences, creating difficulties and leading to disasters, will arise whenever the political officers are empowered to make arrangements with the tribesmen, without consulting and sometimes without even informing the man on whose decisions the success of the war and the lives of the soldiers directly depend. “
Chapter 17 is entitled “Military Observations”. Here Churchill reviews and summarizes the more important observations and lessons of a strictly military nature:
“The first and most important consideration is transport. Nobody who has not seen for himself can realise what a great matter this is…In these valleys, where wheeled traffic is impossible, the difficulties and cost of moving supplies are enormous; and as none, or very few, are to be obtained within the country, the consideration is paramount.”
“…all the fighting occurred in capturing villages, which lay in rocky and broken ground in the hollows of the mountains, and were defended by a swarm of active riflemen…The tribesmen would dart from rock to rock, exposing themselves only for an instant, and before the attention of a section could be directed to them and the rifles aimed, the chance and the target would have vanished together… speaking generally, infantry should push on to the attack with the bayonet without wasting much time in firing, which can only result in their being delayed under the fire of a well-posted enemy. “
“As the enemy seize every point as soon as it is left, all retirements should be masked by leaving two or three men behind from each company. These keep up a brisk fire, and after the whole company have taken up a new position, or have nearly done so, they run back and join them. Besides this, the fire of one company in retiring should always be arranged to cover another, and at no moment in a withdrawal should the firing ever cease. The covering company should be actually in position before the rear company begins to move, and should open fire at once.”
“The necessity for having the officers in the same dress as the men, was apparent to all who watched the operations… at close quarters the keen-eyed tribesmen always made an especial mark of the officers, distinguishing them chiefly, I think, by the fact that they do not carry rifles.”
“The fatigues experienced by troops in mountain warfare are so great, that every effort has to be made to lighten the soldier's load. At the same time the more ammunition he carries on his person the better.”
“Great efforts should be made to give the soldier a piece of chocolate, a small sausage, or something portable and nutritious to carry with him to the field. In a war of long marches, of uncertain fortunes, of retirements often delayed and always pressed, there have been many occasions when regiments and companies have unexpectedly had to stop out all night without food. It is well to remember that the stomach governs the world.”
“…the enemy do not become formidable until a mistake has been made.”
“The terrible losses inflicted on the tribesmen in the Swat Valley show how easily disciplined troops can brush away the bravest savages in the open. But on the hillside all is changed, and the observer will be struck by the weakness rather than the strength of modern weapons. Daring riflemen, individually superior to the soldiers, and able to support the greatest fatigues, can always inflict loss, although they cannot bar their path.”
“The military problem…presented in the Afghan valleys; a roadless, broken and undeveloped country; an absence of any strategic points; a well-armed enemy with great mobility and modern rifles, who adopts guerilla tactics. The results…are, that the troops can march anywhere, and do anything, except catch the enemy; and that all their movements must be attended with loss.“
“This has been perhaps a cold-blooded chapter. We have considered men as targets; tribesmen, fighting for their homes and hills, have been regarded only as the objective of an attack; killed and wounded human beings, merely as the waste of war…but practical people in a business-like age will remember that they live in a world of men—not angels—and regulate their conduct accordingly. “
Given our own current situation in Afghanistan, it seems appropriate to close my entry with some of Churchill’s own closing words:
“We are at present in a transition stage, nor is the manner nor occasion of the end in sight. Still this is no time to despair. I have often noticed in these Afghan valleys, that they seem to be entirely surrounded by the hills, and to have no exit. But as the column has advanced, a gap gradually becomes visible and a pass appears. Sometimes it is steep and difficult, sometimes it is held by the enemy and must be forced, but I have never seen a valley that had not a way out. That way we shall ultimately find, if we march with the firm but prudent step of men who know the dangers; but, conscious of their skill and discipline, do not doubt their ability to deal with them as they shall arise.”
Mood: Calm & Confident
Music: Mozart – Clarinet Quintets
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Don't Fight Your Pack
Tuesday 1 September 2009
1945
I haven’t felt much like writing lately. Why? A combination of things, I guess. I’ve been very busy, kind of tired, and spending a lot of time thinking ahead to the end of my tour, among other things. But mainly I think I’ve just been dragged down by some of the negative things I’ve been dealing with - primarily the bureaucracy and the incredible stupidity and inefficiency it engenders, with the result that it can be very hard to get anything done.
I’ve been working on a variety of things, and actually getting some things done, especially in the past couple of weeks (finally!) But I just haven’t felt much like writing.
I’ve read several books, about which I intend to write eventually, as soon as the mood strikes. But today a passage in one of the books I’m reading struck me, and I thought I’d share some of it.
The book is called “The Book of Camp-Lore and Wood Craft”. It’s by Dan Beard, one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, and it was written in 1920. It’s a treasure trove of information about old-fashioned camping skills. There are lengthy sessions on making fire with friction (i.e. “rubbing sticks together”) as well as percussion (flint and steel) and other means. There are also extensive notes on different arrangements of fires for different purposes, and lots of notes on other practical woodcraft skills . It is a very enjoyable read, although today’s lightweight equipment and “leave no trace” wilderness ethic make most of the skills and advice unnecessary and inappropriate except for emergency use. But it’s a lot of fun to read nonetheless, and of course “Be Prepared” includes knowing things like this just in case of emergency. Mostly I am enjoying reading it a few pages at a time as an escape from the desert. It reminds me of many nights spent out in the woods at home.
While it is not a Boy Scout manual per se, and is mostly just a how-to book of practical skills, I was struck by some passages I read today under the heading of “Don’t Fight Your Pack”. In this section, old Dan transitions from camping advice to moral instruction. I thought it was interesting and insightful, so here are some excerpts:
Don’t Fight Your Pack
“When we speak of ‘fighting the pack’, we mean fighting the load; that does not mean getting one’s load up against a tree and punching it with one’s fists or ‘kicking the stuffings out of it’, but it means complaining and fretting because the load is uncomfortable.
…the mind has as much to do with carrying the load as the muscles. If the mind gives up you will fall helpless under a small load; if the mind is strong you will stagger along under a very heavy one.
When I asked a friend, who bears the scars of the pack straps on his body, how he managed to endure the torture of such a load, he replied with a grin that as soon as he found that to ‘fight his pack’ meant to perish – meant death!-he made up his mind to forget the blamed thing and so when the pack wearied him and the straps rubbed the skin off his body, he forced himself to think of the good dinners he had had at the Camp-fire Club of America, yum! yum! Also, of all the jolly stories told by the toastmaster and of the fun he had had at some other entertainments. Often while thinking of these things he caught himself laughing out loud as he trudged along the lone trail, FORGETTING the hateful pack on his back. ‘In this way’, said he, with a winning smile upon his manly and weather-beaten face, ‘I learned how not to fight the pack but to FORGET IT! Then he braced himself up, looked at the snow-capped mountain range ahead, hummed a little cowboy song and trudged on over the frozen snow at a scout’s pace.
Now that you know what a pack is, and what ‘fighting the pack’ means, remember that if one’s studies at school are hard, that is one’s pack. If the work one is doing is very hard, difficult, or tiresome, that is one’s pack. If one’s parents are worried and forget themselves in their worry and speak sharply, that is one’s pack. Don’t fight your pack; remember that you are a woodcrafter; straighten your shoulders, put on your scout smile and hit the trail like a man!
If you find you are tempted to break the Scout Law, that you are at times tempted to forget the Scout Oath, that because your camp mates use language unfit for a woodcrafter or a scout, and you are tempted to do the same, if your playmates play craps and smoke cigarettes, and laugh at you because you refuse to do so, so that you are tempted to join them, these temptations form your pack; don’t give in and fall under your load and whimper like a ‘sissy’ or a ‘mollycoddle’, but straighten up, look the world straight in the eye, and hit the trail like a man!
Some of us are carrying portage packs which we can dump off our shoulders at the end of the ‘carry’, some of us are carrying hiking packs which we must carry through life and can never dump from our shoulders until we cross the Grand Portage from which no voyagers ever return. All our packs vary in weight, but none of them is easy to carry if we fret and fume and complain under the load."
Mood: Feeling Better :-)
Music: Bobby Horton, "The Army of the Free"
1945
I haven’t felt much like writing lately. Why? A combination of things, I guess. I’ve been very busy, kind of tired, and spending a lot of time thinking ahead to the end of my tour, among other things. But mainly I think I’ve just been dragged down by some of the negative things I’ve been dealing with - primarily the bureaucracy and the incredible stupidity and inefficiency it engenders, with the result that it can be very hard to get anything done.
I’ve been working on a variety of things, and actually getting some things done, especially in the past couple of weeks (finally!) But I just haven’t felt much like writing.
I’ve read several books, about which I intend to write eventually, as soon as the mood strikes. But today a passage in one of the books I’m reading struck me, and I thought I’d share some of it.
The book is called “The Book of Camp-Lore and Wood Craft”. It’s by Dan Beard, one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, and it was written in 1920. It’s a treasure trove of information about old-fashioned camping skills. There are lengthy sessions on making fire with friction (i.e. “rubbing sticks together”) as well as percussion (flint and steel) and other means. There are also extensive notes on different arrangements of fires for different purposes, and lots of notes on other practical woodcraft skills . It is a very enjoyable read, although today’s lightweight equipment and “leave no trace” wilderness ethic make most of the skills and advice unnecessary and inappropriate except for emergency use. But it’s a lot of fun to read nonetheless, and of course “Be Prepared” includes knowing things like this just in case of emergency. Mostly I am enjoying reading it a few pages at a time as an escape from the desert. It reminds me of many nights spent out in the woods at home.
While it is not a Boy Scout manual per se, and is mostly just a how-to book of practical skills, I was struck by some passages I read today under the heading of “Don’t Fight Your Pack”. In this section, old Dan transitions from camping advice to moral instruction. I thought it was interesting and insightful, so here are some excerpts:
Don’t Fight Your Pack
“When we speak of ‘fighting the pack’, we mean fighting the load; that does not mean getting one’s load up against a tree and punching it with one’s fists or ‘kicking the stuffings out of it’, but it means complaining and fretting because the load is uncomfortable.
…the mind has as much to do with carrying the load as the muscles. If the mind gives up you will fall helpless under a small load; if the mind is strong you will stagger along under a very heavy one.
When I asked a friend, who bears the scars of the pack straps on his body, how he managed to endure the torture of such a load, he replied with a grin that as soon as he found that to ‘fight his pack’ meant to perish – meant death!-he made up his mind to forget the blamed thing and so when the pack wearied him and the straps rubbed the skin off his body, he forced himself to think of the good dinners he had had at the Camp-fire Club of America, yum! yum! Also, of all the jolly stories told by the toastmaster and of the fun he had had at some other entertainments. Often while thinking of these things he caught himself laughing out loud as he trudged along the lone trail, FORGETTING the hateful pack on his back. ‘In this way’, said he, with a winning smile upon his manly and weather-beaten face, ‘I learned how not to fight the pack but to FORGET IT! Then he braced himself up, looked at the snow-capped mountain range ahead, hummed a little cowboy song and trudged on over the frozen snow at a scout’s pace.
Now that you know what a pack is, and what ‘fighting the pack’ means, remember that if one’s studies at school are hard, that is one’s pack. If the work one is doing is very hard, difficult, or tiresome, that is one’s pack. If one’s parents are worried and forget themselves in their worry and speak sharply, that is one’s pack. Don’t fight your pack; remember that you are a woodcrafter; straighten your shoulders, put on your scout smile and hit the trail like a man!
If you find you are tempted to break the Scout Law, that you are at times tempted to forget the Scout Oath, that because your camp mates use language unfit for a woodcrafter or a scout, and you are tempted to do the same, if your playmates play craps and smoke cigarettes, and laugh at you because you refuse to do so, so that you are tempted to join them, these temptations form your pack; don’t give in and fall under your load and whimper like a ‘sissy’ or a ‘mollycoddle’, but straighten up, look the world straight in the eye, and hit the trail like a man!
Some of us are carrying portage packs which we can dump off our shoulders at the end of the ‘carry’, some of us are carrying hiking packs which we must carry through life and can never dump from our shoulders until we cross the Grand Portage from which no voyagers ever return. All our packs vary in weight, but none of them is easy to carry if we fret and fume and complain under the load."
Mood: Feeling Better :-)
Music: Bobby Horton, "The Army of the Free"
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Happy Independence Day
Saturday, 4 July 2009
1230
I worry about my country sometimes. I am afraid that a very strong and unhealthy elitist trend has taken hold, especially among the political, academic, legal, and media professions. Many of these people seem to me not fully to embrace the principles of liberty and individual rights upon which our country was founded, and want us to be more like the countries of Europe. As my dad told me once when I was a young boy: "There's no shortage of people who want to tell you what to do." I prefer to operate under the philosophy that if you want to be free yourself, you've got to be prepared let the other fellow do as he likes, as well, whether you agree with it or not. "That government is best which governs least." - Thomas Paine
I wanted to post something for July 4th, but didn't feel especially voluble. Then this morning I read this piece in the Wall Street Journal, and it expressed my sentiments exactly. I take the liberty of reproducing it below without permission but with due accreditation to the authors.
Happy Independence Day!
==========================================
The Last Best Hope of Earth
July Fourth is much more than just an American holiday.
By WILLIAM J. BENNETT and JOHN CRIBB
'I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence." This statement from Abraham Lincoln in Philadelphia in 1861 was no staff-manufactured line. It was an expression from a man filled with deep emotion at finding himself standing in the hall where a courageous band of rebels pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to a high and dangerous purpose -- American independence. We celebrate them on July Fourth.
Lincoln revered the Declaration and its ideals of liberty and equality. In an 1858 speech in Chicago, he said it was "the father of all moral principle" in the American republic, and its spirit "the electric cord . . . that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together."
He spent much time pondering the hardships endured by those who had fought for independence. In that speech he called them "iron men." As a boy, he read accounts of the patriots' battlefield struggles in Parson Weems's "Life of Washington" and thought, as he told the New Jersey state Senate in 1861, that "there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for."
Yet in Lincoln's time, the Declaration and its spirit was under attack. Proponents of slavery insisted that the Founders did not intend for the God-given right to liberty in the Declaration to apply to all people. The notion that "all men are created equal" was belittled by John C. Calhoun in 1848 as "the most false and dangerous of all political error."
The Declaration had its detractors abroad as well. Across Europe, members of privileged classes sneered at the thought of people ruling themselves. Many a nobleman viewed the Civil War as proof that the American democratic experiment would fail.
British statesman John Bright took them to task: "Privilege thinks it has a great interest in this contest, and every morning, with blatant voice, it . . . curses the American Republic. Privilege has beheld an afflicting spectacle for many years past. It has beheld thirty millions of men, happy and prosperous, without emperor, without king . . . Privilege has shuddered at what might happen to old Europe if this grand experiment should succeed."
Lincoln understood that if the American experiment of self-government were to succeed, the country must be saved on the basis of the Declaration of Independence. It was no accident that in the first sentence of the Gettysburg Address, he quoted the Declaration, reminding Americans that from the beginning the nation had been dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Lincoln also understood that the struggle over the Declaration was part of an eternal struggle between two principles at the basis of all government. "They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle," as he put it in one of his famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas. "The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings."
The struggle continues today. Terrorists and dictators hate the United States for its founding principles. They prefer to rob people of liberty, subjugate women, and spread their power by the sword. Yet America still has iron men and women who stand up to such tyrants. These iron men are now fighting on battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document in the same sense as the Constitution. No one talks about a law being "undeclarational," or opines about their "declarational rights." Yet it remains the first and in some ways most universal of our great founding documents. As Lincoln said in Philadelphia in February 1861, there is "something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time."
As long as the United States stands fast for the moral principles of July 4, 1776, we will continue to be the bulwark of freedom, the last best hope of earth.
Messrs. Bennett and Cribb are the authors of the "American Patriot's Almanac" (Thomas Nelson, 2008).
1230
I worry about my country sometimes. I am afraid that a very strong and unhealthy elitist trend has taken hold, especially among the political, academic, legal, and media professions. Many of these people seem to me not fully to embrace the principles of liberty and individual rights upon which our country was founded, and want us to be more like the countries of Europe. As my dad told me once when I was a young boy: "There's no shortage of people who want to tell you what to do." I prefer to operate under the philosophy that if you want to be free yourself, you've got to be prepared let the other fellow do as he likes, as well, whether you agree with it or not. "That government is best which governs least." - Thomas Paine
I wanted to post something for July 4th, but didn't feel especially voluble. Then this morning I read this piece in the Wall Street Journal, and it expressed my sentiments exactly. I take the liberty of reproducing it below without permission but with due accreditation to the authors.
Happy Independence Day!
==========================================
The Last Best Hope of Earth
July Fourth is much more than just an American holiday.
By WILLIAM J. BENNETT and JOHN CRIBB
'I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence." This statement from Abraham Lincoln in Philadelphia in 1861 was no staff-manufactured line. It was an expression from a man filled with deep emotion at finding himself standing in the hall where a courageous band of rebels pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to a high and dangerous purpose -- American independence. We celebrate them on July Fourth.
Lincoln revered the Declaration and its ideals of liberty and equality. In an 1858 speech in Chicago, he said it was "the father of all moral principle" in the American republic, and its spirit "the electric cord . . . that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together."
He spent much time pondering the hardships endured by those who had fought for independence. In that speech he called them "iron men." As a boy, he read accounts of the patriots' battlefield struggles in Parson Weems's "Life of Washington" and thought, as he told the New Jersey state Senate in 1861, that "there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for."
Yet in Lincoln's time, the Declaration and its spirit was under attack. Proponents of slavery insisted that the Founders did not intend for the God-given right to liberty in the Declaration to apply to all people. The notion that "all men are created equal" was belittled by John C. Calhoun in 1848 as "the most false and dangerous of all political error."
The Declaration had its detractors abroad as well. Across Europe, members of privileged classes sneered at the thought of people ruling themselves. Many a nobleman viewed the Civil War as proof that the American democratic experiment would fail.
British statesman John Bright took them to task: "Privilege thinks it has a great interest in this contest, and every morning, with blatant voice, it . . . curses the American Republic. Privilege has beheld an afflicting spectacle for many years past. It has beheld thirty millions of men, happy and prosperous, without emperor, without king . . . Privilege has shuddered at what might happen to old Europe if this grand experiment should succeed."
Lincoln understood that if the American experiment of self-government were to succeed, the country must be saved on the basis of the Declaration of Independence. It was no accident that in the first sentence of the Gettysburg Address, he quoted the Declaration, reminding Americans that from the beginning the nation had been dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Lincoln also understood that the struggle over the Declaration was part of an eternal struggle between two principles at the basis of all government. "They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle," as he put it in one of his famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas. "The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings."
The struggle continues today. Terrorists and dictators hate the United States for its founding principles. They prefer to rob people of liberty, subjugate women, and spread their power by the sword. Yet America still has iron men and women who stand up to such tyrants. These iron men are now fighting on battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document in the same sense as the Constitution. No one talks about a law being "undeclarational," or opines about their "declarational rights." Yet it remains the first and in some ways most universal of our great founding documents. As Lincoln said in Philadelphia in February 1861, there is "something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time."
As long as the United States stands fast for the moral principles of July 4, 1776, we will continue to be the bulwark of freedom, the last best hope of earth.
Messrs. Bennett and Cribb are the authors of the "American Patriot's Almanac" (Thomas Nelson, 2008).
Monday, June 22, 2009
No Cash in Theater
Tuesday 23 June 2009
0700
Ever since I was first mobilized in 2006, the Army has been trying to discourage me from using cash. Since I am somewhat stubborn and old fashioned, I have resisted. But they have finally forced my hand.
The military has a stored-value card they call the “EagleCash” card that is accepted at the PX and all other venues on military installations. You can either go to the finance office and put money on it manually, or you can link it to your bank account and put money on it directly from there. There are kiosks all over the place where you can put in your card, enter a PIN, and move funds back and forth between the card and the linked bank account.
The idea behind this is that we carry less cash around and use this card for everything. And in a purely practical sense it is more convenient. Managing cash involves a lot of work on the part of the finance office, AAFES, and the other businesses that operate over here. The AAFES POGS were an early attempt to reduce this workload by mostly eliminating US coins. But you could still get paper currency (albeit in limited amounts) from the finance office and from the ATMs that local banks had located on the bases.
When I came back from leave, however, this policy had changed. Now there is no more cash being dispensed by the finance office, and the ATMs will not be restocked when they run out of US cash. If you spend cash at the PX, they say they will still give US cash in change, but if you are here on base and want to get money, the only way to do it is to either get an EagleCash card or use your debit card. Since not all the venues are equipped for debit cards (and the system for processing them goes down all the time anyway), the only real solution is an EagleCash card. Here in Qatar you can still get Qatari Reals (the local currency) for use off post. I have no idea what the policy or practice will be elsewhere in Theater.
I already had an EagleCash card, even though I didn’t want it. I had to get it to pay for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation representative to eat in the DFAC back in March, since that is the only way to pay for meals there. But since then it just sat in my wallet. Now I have to use it all the time.
The Army finance office has a really ludicrous little propaganda blurb posted near the “cash” registers that says something about how they want to “increase choices” and therefore are eliminating cash. Talk about Orwellian NewSpeak! What a bunch of crap. But there’s nothing you can do about it.
If you really, really want US cash you will have to go off post to a local bank, which as far as I know is only possible here in Qatar. It’s hardly worth it, and probably not even possible anywhere else in the CENTCOM AOR. So they’ve got us captive.
All this may seem like a silly thing to get worked up about, but I am very sensitive to issues of financial privacy. My objection to using electronic means of payment has nothing to do with convenience and everything to do with anonymity. Where I shop and what I buy is nobody's business but my own, and I don't care to have some government bureaucrat or other busybody snooping through my transaction records, for whatever reason they may have. ("Dear Citizen: You have exceeded the maximum recommended allowance for high-fat food purchases, and have therefore been reclassified into Citizen Lifestyle Category 4C. Your insurance company has been notified so that your premiums may be adjusted to reflect your increased risk of heart disease. We recommend that you consult the list of government-approved food vendors at http://www.fda.gov/ so that you may transition to a government-approved low-fat lifestyle. If you wish to contest this finding, fill out USDA form 2752-3A, and a government inspector will call on you at your home to ensure that the following items have been removed from your pantry....")
I still remember most of the essential attributes of money as a means of exchange from Econ 101 – in order to be useful as a universal medium of exchange, money must be: portable, fungible, divisible, recognizable, and indestructible. These attributes make it useful not only as a medium exchange, but as a standard of value and a means of storing wealth. Money is a fundamental element of a free society, because it enables individuals to deal with each other voluntarily on mutually-acceptable terms independent of outside authority, without having to rely on the barter system.
Money is absolutely essential for true liberty. For this reason, authoritarian governments hate money (at least real money, such as gold or silver). They do not like it when people can deal with each other without government intervention or government visibility. Our own government has systematically undermined the institution of money since the early 20th century, starting with the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and following up with the eventual elimination of gold and silver as the basis of the US currency and as a medium of exchange.
I still remember 1965, when the US government eliminated silver coins and replaced them with the debased “sandwich” coins. My dad brought home bags of coins from the bank and we went through them taking out all the silver coins. Then he’d take back all the “sandwich” coins, get more bags of coins, and we’d go through those taking out all the silver. Many other people did the same thing, and silver coins disappeared from circulation almost overnight.
People aren’t stupid – they understand what is valuable and what is not. What many (most?) people today are, however, is not stupid but ignorant. We have been conditioned and educated (or un-educated) to believe that the ephemeral stuff in our bank accounts is “money” when it’s actually just fiat currency that relies for its value on people's confidence in it, and on the government’s ability to tax us to replace it.
The government has even been messing with the currency for the past several years. How many times have they changed the paper money in the last 20 years? They justify the changes as a way to stop counterfeiters and drug dealers from moving large quantities of cash, but those are just the easy people to demonize. They want to be able to detect large concentrations of cash via the magnetic strips they’ve put in the recent versions of our currency. They really hate financial privacy – they have even been attacking Switzerland and other off-shore financial havens and pressuring them to loosen their bank secrecy laws. Big Brother wants to watch you, whether you like it or not…
I prefer to store as much value as possible in the form of true money (e.g. gold and silver) or other tangible items that will have value regardless of social conditions. My primary vehicle for this is guns and ammunition. I collect firearms and ammunition as a means of preserving the value of my money from both inflation and government confiscation through excessive taxation or other means. Ammunition in particular embodies all the key characteristics of money (although it is "durable", rather than "indestructible") with the additional advantage that it has inherent usefulness. You can't eat a silver coin, but you can eat a squirrel or rabbit that you shoot with a .22 caliber bullet. In a serious economic and social crisis, I believe that the very best store of wealth will be ammunition in popular calibers, especially .22 Long Rifle, .223/5.56mm, .308/7.62mm, .30-06, .30 Carbine, .30-30, .38/.357, 9mm, .44 Special/.44 Magnum, and .45 ACP.
(Yes, I know – announcing that here on the internet may seem incompatible with financial privacy, but there is a value in public discussion of these issues that transcends the potential danger. If we are afraid to speak out against bad or unjust government policies or actions then we’ve already lost our freedom. Besides, I bought most of it from private individuals using cash so there aren't any specifics on record, and I still have it and can trade it or sell it anonymously, which is the whole point.)
Think I’m some kind of nutcase? Well, the Obama administration is messing with our financial system at its roots, and people are worried. Now, get up from your computer and go to the local gun store and try to buy some military-caliber rifle or handgun ammunition (or primers, if you are a hand loader). Good luck with that…there is virtually none to be had, and what little there is has skyrocketed in price. It’s all been bought up, and there are long supply-induced waiting periods and limitations on what they can or will sell to an individual. I’m sure this is due in large part to the noises the administration is making about gun control, but I believe it’s also a reaction to their economic policies. Of course, the current administration hates private civilian firearms ownership for many of the same reasons they hate money, but that’s a different discussion.
On the wall of my office at home I keep a little montage to remind me of the potential consequences of bad government policy. It consists of three items: A Luger pistol (German WWI design), a framed German banknote from August 1923 in the denomination of 5 Million Marks, and a P-38 pistol (German WWII design). In the 1920’s the hyperinflation in Germany led people to take their pay and run to buy something on the way home, anything tangible, just as a way of trying to preserve the value of their “money” before it became worthless. It got to the point where a wheelbarrow full of cash could barely buy a loaf of bread (which is why the money was dated by the month and why I could find a basket full of 5 Million Mark notes in a German flea market in 1983). The message behind my little wall display: Bad policies in post-WWI Germany led to uncontrollable inflation and economic collapse, which set the stage for the rise of the Nazi Party and the incredible misery and destruction caused by WWII, the greatest catastrophe in human history.
So back to the present – in our little part of the world, we are no longer able to get cash or engage in anonymous financial transactions. Everything is stored electronically, everything is traceable, everything is visible to Big Brother. How long before they do that to us at home as well?
Mood: Concerned
Music: Altan – Germans (no kidding, I just went to look at iTunes to see the name of the Celtic reel that happens to be playing right at this exact moment as I finish this posting, and that was the name…I couldn’t have made that up if I’d wanted to.)
0700
Ever since I was first mobilized in 2006, the Army has been trying to discourage me from using cash. Since I am somewhat stubborn and old fashioned, I have resisted. But they have finally forced my hand.
The military has a stored-value card they call the “EagleCash” card that is accepted at the PX and all other venues on military installations. You can either go to the finance office and put money on it manually, or you can link it to your bank account and put money on it directly from there. There are kiosks all over the place where you can put in your card, enter a PIN, and move funds back and forth between the card and the linked bank account.
The idea behind this is that we carry less cash around and use this card for everything. And in a purely practical sense it is more convenient. Managing cash involves a lot of work on the part of the finance office, AAFES, and the other businesses that operate over here. The AAFES POGS were an early attempt to reduce this workload by mostly eliminating US coins. But you could still get paper currency (albeit in limited amounts) from the finance office and from the ATMs that local banks had located on the bases.
When I came back from leave, however, this policy had changed. Now there is no more cash being dispensed by the finance office, and the ATMs will not be restocked when they run out of US cash. If you spend cash at the PX, they say they will still give US cash in change, but if you are here on base and want to get money, the only way to do it is to either get an EagleCash card or use your debit card. Since not all the venues are equipped for debit cards (and the system for processing them goes down all the time anyway), the only real solution is an EagleCash card. Here in Qatar you can still get Qatari Reals (the local currency) for use off post. I have no idea what the policy or practice will be elsewhere in Theater.
I already had an EagleCash card, even though I didn’t want it. I had to get it to pay for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation representative to eat in the DFAC back in March, since that is the only way to pay for meals there. But since then it just sat in my wallet. Now I have to use it all the time.
The Army finance office has a really ludicrous little propaganda blurb posted near the “cash” registers that says something about how they want to “increase choices” and therefore are eliminating cash. Talk about Orwellian NewSpeak! What a bunch of crap. But there’s nothing you can do about it.
If you really, really want US cash you will have to go off post to a local bank, which as far as I know is only possible here in Qatar. It’s hardly worth it, and probably not even possible anywhere else in the CENTCOM AOR. So they’ve got us captive.
All this may seem like a silly thing to get worked up about, but I am very sensitive to issues of financial privacy. My objection to using electronic means of payment has nothing to do with convenience and everything to do with anonymity. Where I shop and what I buy is nobody's business but my own, and I don't care to have some government bureaucrat or other busybody snooping through my transaction records, for whatever reason they may have. ("Dear Citizen: You have exceeded the maximum recommended allowance for high-fat food purchases, and have therefore been reclassified into Citizen Lifestyle Category 4C. Your insurance company has been notified so that your premiums may be adjusted to reflect your increased risk of heart disease. We recommend that you consult the list of government-approved food vendors at http://www.fda.gov/ so that you may transition to a government-approved low-fat lifestyle. If you wish to contest this finding, fill out USDA form 2752-3A, and a government inspector will call on you at your home to ensure that the following items have been removed from your pantry....")
I still remember most of the essential attributes of money as a means of exchange from Econ 101 – in order to be useful as a universal medium of exchange, money must be: portable, fungible, divisible, recognizable, and indestructible. These attributes make it useful not only as a medium exchange, but as a standard of value and a means of storing wealth. Money is a fundamental element of a free society, because it enables individuals to deal with each other voluntarily on mutually-acceptable terms independent of outside authority, without having to rely on the barter system.
Money is absolutely essential for true liberty. For this reason, authoritarian governments hate money (at least real money, such as gold or silver). They do not like it when people can deal with each other without government intervention or government visibility. Our own government has systematically undermined the institution of money since the early 20th century, starting with the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and following up with the eventual elimination of gold and silver as the basis of the US currency and as a medium of exchange.
I still remember 1965, when the US government eliminated silver coins and replaced them with the debased “sandwich” coins. My dad brought home bags of coins from the bank and we went through them taking out all the silver coins. Then he’d take back all the “sandwich” coins, get more bags of coins, and we’d go through those taking out all the silver. Many other people did the same thing, and silver coins disappeared from circulation almost overnight.
People aren’t stupid – they understand what is valuable and what is not. What many (most?) people today are, however, is not stupid but ignorant. We have been conditioned and educated (or un-educated) to believe that the ephemeral stuff in our bank accounts is “money” when it’s actually just fiat currency that relies for its value on people's confidence in it, and on the government’s ability to tax us to replace it.
The government has even been messing with the currency for the past several years. How many times have they changed the paper money in the last 20 years? They justify the changes as a way to stop counterfeiters and drug dealers from moving large quantities of cash, but those are just the easy people to demonize. They want to be able to detect large concentrations of cash via the magnetic strips they’ve put in the recent versions of our currency. They really hate financial privacy – they have even been attacking Switzerland and other off-shore financial havens and pressuring them to loosen their bank secrecy laws. Big Brother wants to watch you, whether you like it or not…
I prefer to store as much value as possible in the form of true money (e.g. gold and silver) or other tangible items that will have value regardless of social conditions. My primary vehicle for this is guns and ammunition. I collect firearms and ammunition as a means of preserving the value of my money from both inflation and government confiscation through excessive taxation or other means. Ammunition in particular embodies all the key characteristics of money (although it is "durable", rather than "indestructible") with the additional advantage that it has inherent usefulness. You can't eat a silver coin, but you can eat a squirrel or rabbit that you shoot with a .22 caliber bullet. In a serious economic and social crisis, I believe that the very best store of wealth will be ammunition in popular calibers, especially .22 Long Rifle, .223/5.56mm, .308/7.62mm, .30-06, .30 Carbine, .30-30, .38/.357, 9mm, .44 Special/.44 Magnum, and .45 ACP.
(Yes, I know – announcing that here on the internet may seem incompatible with financial privacy, but there is a value in public discussion of these issues that transcends the potential danger. If we are afraid to speak out against bad or unjust government policies or actions then we’ve already lost our freedom. Besides, I bought most of it from private individuals using cash so there aren't any specifics on record, and I still have it and can trade it or sell it anonymously, which is the whole point.)
Think I’m some kind of nutcase? Well, the Obama administration is messing with our financial system at its roots, and people are worried. Now, get up from your computer and go to the local gun store and try to buy some military-caliber rifle or handgun ammunition (or primers, if you are a hand loader). Good luck with that…there is virtually none to be had, and what little there is has skyrocketed in price. It’s all been bought up, and there are long supply-induced waiting periods and limitations on what they can or will sell to an individual. I’m sure this is due in large part to the noises the administration is making about gun control, but I believe it’s also a reaction to their economic policies. Of course, the current administration hates private civilian firearms ownership for many of the same reasons they hate money, but that’s a different discussion.
On the wall of my office at home I keep a little montage to remind me of the potential consequences of bad government policy. It consists of three items: A Luger pistol (German WWI design), a framed German banknote from August 1923 in the denomination of 5 Million Marks, and a P-38 pistol (German WWII design). In the 1920’s the hyperinflation in Germany led people to take their pay and run to buy something on the way home, anything tangible, just as a way of trying to preserve the value of their “money” before it became worthless. It got to the point where a wheelbarrow full of cash could barely buy a loaf of bread (which is why the money was dated by the month and why I could find a basket full of 5 Million Mark notes in a German flea market in 1983). The message behind my little wall display: Bad policies in post-WWI Germany led to uncontrollable inflation and economic collapse, which set the stage for the rise of the Nazi Party and the incredible misery and destruction caused by WWII, the greatest catastrophe in human history.
So back to the present – in our little part of the world, we are no longer able to get cash or engage in anonymous financial transactions. Everything is stored electronically, everything is traceable, everything is visible to Big Brother. How long before they do that to us at home as well?
Mood: Concerned
Music: Altan – Germans (no kidding, I just went to look at iTunes to see the name of the Celtic reel that happens to be playing right at this exact moment as I finish this posting, and that was the name…I couldn’t have made that up if I’d wanted to.)
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Here We Go Again
Sunday 14 June 2009
0700
I have just returned to the theater from my R&R leave for this tour. I wasn’t going to take a leave at all this time, and save it all for the end. But my youngest daughter had a band concert I wanted to see, there was some important family business to take care of, and frankly I needed a break. So once my medical issues had been taken care of in Germany I went ahead and departed the AOR on Saturday 23 May for two weeks of R&R in Michigan. The travel process was very smooth and I arrived in Michigan via Kuwait and Atlanta on Sunday afternoon 24 May.
Last year on R&R I did everything they tell you not to do – too many planned activities, too many expectations, etc. The result was a disastrous, stressful time. Everybody was unhappy and it left me feeling like I needed a leave to recover from my leave.
This time I did things quite differently. When I got home I took care of the one main item of business right away, and once that was done I just relaxed with no particular plan. Every time my kids asked “Dad, what’s your plan for today?” my answer was “I don’t have a plan – what do you want to do?”. It was great.
I went up to the UP with my Dad, picked up some rifles I wanted (just in case the Democrats follow their worst instincts and let President Obama and AG Eric Holder have their way and ban them), went to the band concert, drove my daughter back and forth to school, saw my mother, played Bananagrams, watched TV, hung out at coffee shops and bookstores, went for walks in the woods, played Frisbee golf and watched a Stanley Cup game with my son, saw/heard him play his guitar (he’s good!), went to the shooting range several times, spent a beautiful summer day canoeing on the Huron River, split some wood, sat outside at a bonfire, sat on the front porch through an awesome thunderstorm, got in a workout with my older daughter at the rec center, helped her do some work on her car, and generally just relaxed and unwound.
I did have a pretty long list of administrative things I needed to do while I was home, but instead of letting that list drive my schedule I just took care of them a little at a time when my kids were busy doing other things. And almost everything ended up getting done just the same.
What a difference it made! With the exception of one incident where I overreacted to something unexpected, it was a very smooth, uneventful, relaxing and regenerative opportunity to reconnect with my family.
The end came all too soon, and I departed from Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Tuesday morning. The trip back was smooth but took a bit longer, both because of the different direction of the time change and also because of a day’s delay at Ali Al Salem in Kuwait. I spent a long hot day in a tent there waiting for a flight to Qatar. I ended up getting on a C130 late Thursday night and arriving back in Qatar early Friday morning.
As I walked around amongst the tents in the hot, dusty billeting area at Ali, a familiar marching cadence ran through my mind:
“Here we go again,
Same old sh*t again,
Marching down the avenue,
four more months and we’ll be through,
I’ll be glad and so will you.”
And that’s pretty much how I felt coming back. The green trees and grass at home were a welcome breath of fresh air. After three years over here, I am heartily sick of the desert.
I feel refreshed and ready to get back to work, but I’m definitely ready for a change of scenery to something more normal. I am working to find my next duty tour someplace besides the CENTCOM AOR. I’m sure that if I stay on active duty I’ll find my way back over here eventually, but for now they can have it. This fall I am leaving!
Mood: Ready for work
Music: Mozart, Flute Concerto in D
0700
I have just returned to the theater from my R&R leave for this tour. I wasn’t going to take a leave at all this time, and save it all for the end. But my youngest daughter had a band concert I wanted to see, there was some important family business to take care of, and frankly I needed a break. So once my medical issues had been taken care of in Germany I went ahead and departed the AOR on Saturday 23 May for two weeks of R&R in Michigan. The travel process was very smooth and I arrived in Michigan via Kuwait and Atlanta on Sunday afternoon 24 May.
Last year on R&R I did everything they tell you not to do – too many planned activities, too many expectations, etc. The result was a disastrous, stressful time. Everybody was unhappy and it left me feeling like I needed a leave to recover from my leave.
This time I did things quite differently. When I got home I took care of the one main item of business right away, and once that was done I just relaxed with no particular plan. Every time my kids asked “Dad, what’s your plan for today?” my answer was “I don’t have a plan – what do you want to do?”. It was great.
I went up to the UP with my Dad, picked up some rifles I wanted (just in case the Democrats follow their worst instincts and let President Obama and AG Eric Holder have their way and ban them), went to the band concert, drove my daughter back and forth to school, saw my mother, played Bananagrams, watched TV, hung out at coffee shops and bookstores, went for walks in the woods, played Frisbee golf and watched a Stanley Cup game with my son, saw/heard him play his guitar (he’s good!), went to the shooting range several times, spent a beautiful summer day canoeing on the Huron River, split some wood, sat outside at a bonfire, sat on the front porch through an awesome thunderstorm, got in a workout with my older daughter at the rec center, helped her do some work on her car, and generally just relaxed and unwound.
I did have a pretty long list of administrative things I needed to do while I was home, but instead of letting that list drive my schedule I just took care of them a little at a time when my kids were busy doing other things. And almost everything ended up getting done just the same.
What a difference it made! With the exception of one incident where I overreacted to something unexpected, it was a very smooth, uneventful, relaxing and regenerative opportunity to reconnect with my family.
The end came all too soon, and I departed from Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Tuesday morning. The trip back was smooth but took a bit longer, both because of the different direction of the time change and also because of a day’s delay at Ali Al Salem in Kuwait. I spent a long hot day in a tent there waiting for a flight to Qatar. I ended up getting on a C130 late Thursday night and arriving back in Qatar early Friday morning.
As I walked around amongst the tents in the hot, dusty billeting area at Ali, a familiar marching cadence ran through my mind:
“Here we go again,
Same old sh*t again,
Marching down the avenue,
four more months and we’ll be through,
I’ll be glad and so will you.”
And that’s pretty much how I felt coming back. The green trees and grass at home were a welcome breath of fresh air. After three years over here, I am heartily sick of the desert.
I feel refreshed and ready to get back to work, but I’m definitely ready for a change of scenery to something more normal. I am working to find my next duty tour someplace besides the CENTCOM AOR. I’m sure that if I stay on active duty I’ll find my way back over here eventually, but for now they can have it. This fall I am leaving!
Mood: Ready for work
Music: Mozart, Flute Concerto in D
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Vanishing Footprints
Friday 22 May 2009
0530
Today marks a historic date in American history. I’d like to share the reason why the 22nd of May is a special date to me personally.
I have the honor and privilege of claiming descent from several ancestors who fought in the Civil War. Family lore says there were five or six who went to fight, and only one or two who came back. About the others, nothing is known, not even their names (at least not to me nor any relatives I know), although it is said that some died in Andersonville. But one of the men who returned did leave behind some artifacts from his life, and I am their current caretaker. I have a couple of photographs, a letter, two pocketbooks, a little glass pitcher that was beside his bed when he died, and his canteen and musket from the Civil War.
Christian Small's standard-issue rifle musket from the Civil War. My dad and his brother used to play with it when they were kids.
I have known about my Great-great-great Uncle Christian Small for years, but it wasn’t until recently that I began to find out more about him and his service in the Union Army, and to realize that he was a part of some very historic campaigns and battles. Now that I know more about his service, I plan to write an article for a military history or firearms magazine once I return to the United States. It turns out that “Uncle Chris” was a veteran of the Vicksburg Campaign. He served as a private in the 22nd Iowa Volunteer Infantry, which was the only Union regiment actually to penetrate the fortifications at Vicksburg on 22 May 1863.
“Vanishing Footprints” is the name of a book that was written by Samuel D. Pryce, the 22nd Iowa’s Regimental Adjutant (who kept the records and filed every official report for the Regiment for their entire wartime service). The book was never actually published and might have been lost to history, but for the manuscript having been preserved at the University of Iowa for all these years. It was finally edited and published in 2008, and recently I discovered it while researching the 22nd Iowa. There are other books that were written and published many years ago, but this is the official history, endorsed by the 22nd Iowa Regimental Association in 1903 in anticipation of its publication. The book is available from the Camp Pope Bookshop in Iowa City: http://www.camppope.com/ourbksa.htmmppope.com/ourbksa.htm .
I normally wait to write about a book until I have finished it, and I have read two military history books recently that I want to review here, so I am behind. But time doesn’t wait, and I want to write something today, on the anniversary of the Regiment’s most famous achievement, as well as in time for Memorial Day.
The assault by the 22nd Iowa Infantry on the Railroad Redoubt at Vicksburg on 22 May 1863 is famous and well-documented. This book contains much more detail than any other account I have read. It was a terrible, bloody day. After nine months’ service, only 200 soldiers in the Regiment remained able to take part in the attack (out of 1008 mustered in the fall of 1862). The 22nd Iowa led the assault on their part of the line, made it through the ditch and up the embankment, and planted the United States and Regimental flags on the parapet, where they were visible up and down the line. They drove the confederate forces from that part of the fort, and their flags remained there all day. These were the only Union flags to be planted on any part of the Vicksburg fortifications at any time before the surrender of the city on July 4th.
The Assault of the 22nd Iowa on the Vicksburg Defenses, 22 May 1863 (Todd Pederson Collection)
It is apparently a matter of some controversy that Gen Grant did not reinforce the breach made by the 22nd Iowa. Whatever the reasons for the decisions at higher levels of command, it is clear that conditions on the ground were appalling. The Iowa soldiers held the redoubt all afternoon, suffering greatly from the hot sun and from unrelenting Confederate fire on their position. Uncle Chris’s service record says that he was wounded on this day. He does not appear on the list of names of those who personally entered the fortifications - only about 20 men made it inside. But he was there. Nearly every member of the Regiment was wounded, killed, or captured. The adjutant's records show 28 killed and 142 wounded out of the 200 men in the attack, a casualty rate of 85%. This was the highest casualty rate for any unit on either side in any battle of the entire Civil War.
My Great-great-great Uncle Christian Small and my Aunt Lorraine in 1927. He died in 1932 at the age of 95. What that mans' eyes must have seen...
This book is very well-written, although not highly polished. Much of it is typical flowery 19th-century prose, very descriptive and evocative. But it is also very immediate and personal, and is peppered with folksy witticisms and humorous observations that made me laugh from time to time despite the tragedy described in its pages. The picture it paints is probably typical for any war – enthusiastic, patriotic youths who muster into the Army with excitement and anticipation, go off to war, then live through terrible privations and horrible, bloody battles, and come home diminished in number and changed forever by their experiences. I may write more later once I’ve finished it, to share any additional thoughts I have or things that I learn. For now I’d like to close by sharing some of the author’s own words, so that my friends and family will have a small taste of the book and perhaps even want to read it for themselves.
Here are some excerpts from the first chapter, starting with the opening paragraphs and ending with the closing words:
“Once again open the casket of the past---with its strife, its fever and fret, its bloodshed and death, the indescribable and terrible past. Those who live in this generation, and who have passed through the portal of the new century, may consider it a long distance back through the receding four decades, when the south was devastated by the iron heel of war---the tumult years of civil strife; and yet to those who participated in that conflict, it seems more like a brief span than two score crowded years.
In the ordinary affairs of life the harsh outlines are often lost in the dim and hazy past—but to the soldiers of the Civil War, the wake of fire and sword, and every feature of the red panorama, passes before their eyes with a distinctness nothing can obliterate. A tide of fearful memories sweep through their minds every day in the year, with all the grotesqueness of a nightmare.
Iowa’s share in the great tragedy of horrors for the preservation of the union was costly in the sacrifice of human life. It cost blood and treasure to crush out the arrogant and blind scheme of empire based upon the human slavery--a pandemonium of lust and maddening injustice. Iowa soldiers toiled in almost every campaign from Virginia to the mouth of the Rio Grande River, and were distinguished in nearly every battle of the great war. With its gallery of heroic figures, the sturdy young commonwealth is pregnant with examples of patriotism –and love of country.”
“…The present volume is written to a large extent for private circulation, for the amusement and edification of the survivors themselves, and as a sacred legacy to their children--and their children’s children--to the latest generation… And yet soldiers of other regiments and other wars may enjoy reading the story of marches and battles, to scale mountains with them, wander over flower-strewn valleys, over blackened landscapes, and over bloody battlefields. It will be like a leaf out of their own lives, written with blood and tears.”
“The story is told just as it occurred at the time…It is written to honor the brave men who gave the best years of their lives to their country. It is written to supplement the archives of the state with a more extended regimental history, so that future generations may learn of what material the foundation is composed upon which their temple of liberty is erected, and at what cost of blood and treasure it was preserved.”
Uncle Chris's resting place in Panora, Iowa. "...until the Lord said 'your work is done'."
Mood: Reverent
Music: Battle Hymn of the Republic
0530
Today marks a historic date in American history. I’d like to share the reason why the 22nd of May is a special date to me personally.
I have the honor and privilege of claiming descent from several ancestors who fought in the Civil War. Family lore says there were five or six who went to fight, and only one or two who came back. About the others, nothing is known, not even their names (at least not to me nor any relatives I know), although it is said that some died in Andersonville. But one of the men who returned did leave behind some artifacts from his life, and I am their current caretaker. I have a couple of photographs, a letter, two pocketbooks, a little glass pitcher that was beside his bed when he died, and his canteen and musket from the Civil War.
Christian Small's standard-issue rifle musket from the Civil War. My dad and his brother used to play with it when they were kids.
I have known about my Great-great-great Uncle Christian Small for years, but it wasn’t until recently that I began to find out more about him and his service in the Union Army, and to realize that he was a part of some very historic campaigns and battles. Now that I know more about his service, I plan to write an article for a military history or firearms magazine once I return to the United States. It turns out that “Uncle Chris” was a veteran of the Vicksburg Campaign. He served as a private in the 22nd Iowa Volunteer Infantry, which was the only Union regiment actually to penetrate the fortifications at Vicksburg on 22 May 1863.
“Vanishing Footprints” is the name of a book that was written by Samuel D. Pryce, the 22nd Iowa’s Regimental Adjutant (who kept the records and filed every official report for the Regiment for their entire wartime service). The book was never actually published and might have been lost to history, but for the manuscript having been preserved at the University of Iowa for all these years. It was finally edited and published in 2008, and recently I discovered it while researching the 22nd Iowa. There are other books that were written and published many years ago, but this is the official history, endorsed by the 22nd Iowa Regimental Association in 1903 in anticipation of its publication. The book is available from the Camp Pope Bookshop in Iowa City: http://www.camppope.com/ourbksa.htmmppope.com/ourbksa.htm .
I normally wait to write about a book until I have finished it, and I have read two military history books recently that I want to review here, so I am behind. But time doesn’t wait, and I want to write something today, on the anniversary of the Regiment’s most famous achievement, as well as in time for Memorial Day.
The assault by the 22nd Iowa Infantry on the Railroad Redoubt at Vicksburg on 22 May 1863 is famous and well-documented. This book contains much more detail than any other account I have read. It was a terrible, bloody day. After nine months’ service, only 200 soldiers in the Regiment remained able to take part in the attack (out of 1008 mustered in the fall of 1862). The 22nd Iowa led the assault on their part of the line, made it through the ditch and up the embankment, and planted the United States and Regimental flags on the parapet, where they were visible up and down the line. They drove the confederate forces from that part of the fort, and their flags remained there all day. These were the only Union flags to be planted on any part of the Vicksburg fortifications at any time before the surrender of the city on July 4th.
The Assault of the 22nd Iowa on the Vicksburg Defenses, 22 May 1863 (Todd Pederson Collection)
It is apparently a matter of some controversy that Gen Grant did not reinforce the breach made by the 22nd Iowa. Whatever the reasons for the decisions at higher levels of command, it is clear that conditions on the ground were appalling. The Iowa soldiers held the redoubt all afternoon, suffering greatly from the hot sun and from unrelenting Confederate fire on their position. Uncle Chris’s service record says that he was wounded on this day. He does not appear on the list of names of those who personally entered the fortifications - only about 20 men made it inside. But he was there. Nearly every member of the Regiment was wounded, killed, or captured. The adjutant's records show 28 killed and 142 wounded out of the 200 men in the attack, a casualty rate of 85%. This was the highest casualty rate for any unit on either side in any battle of the entire Civil War.
My Great-great-great Uncle Christian Small and my Aunt Lorraine in 1927. He died in 1932 at the age of 95. What that mans' eyes must have seen...
This book is very well-written, although not highly polished. Much of it is typical flowery 19th-century prose, very descriptive and evocative. But it is also very immediate and personal, and is peppered with folksy witticisms and humorous observations that made me laugh from time to time despite the tragedy described in its pages. The picture it paints is probably typical for any war – enthusiastic, patriotic youths who muster into the Army with excitement and anticipation, go off to war, then live through terrible privations and horrible, bloody battles, and come home diminished in number and changed forever by their experiences. I may write more later once I’ve finished it, to share any additional thoughts I have or things that I learn. For now I’d like to close by sharing some of the author’s own words, so that my friends and family will have a small taste of the book and perhaps even want to read it for themselves.
Here are some excerpts from the first chapter, starting with the opening paragraphs and ending with the closing words:
“Once again open the casket of the past---with its strife, its fever and fret, its bloodshed and death, the indescribable and terrible past. Those who live in this generation, and who have passed through the portal of the new century, may consider it a long distance back through the receding four decades, when the south was devastated by the iron heel of war---the tumult years of civil strife; and yet to those who participated in that conflict, it seems more like a brief span than two score crowded years.
In the ordinary affairs of life the harsh outlines are often lost in the dim and hazy past—but to the soldiers of the Civil War, the wake of fire and sword, and every feature of the red panorama, passes before their eyes with a distinctness nothing can obliterate. A tide of fearful memories sweep through their minds every day in the year, with all the grotesqueness of a nightmare.
Iowa’s share in the great tragedy of horrors for the preservation of the union was costly in the sacrifice of human life. It cost blood and treasure to crush out the arrogant and blind scheme of empire based upon the human slavery--a pandemonium of lust and maddening injustice. Iowa soldiers toiled in almost every campaign from Virginia to the mouth of the Rio Grande River, and were distinguished in nearly every battle of the great war. With its gallery of heroic figures, the sturdy young commonwealth is pregnant with examples of patriotism –and love of country.”
“…The present volume is written to a large extent for private circulation, for the amusement and edification of the survivors themselves, and as a sacred legacy to their children--and their children’s children--to the latest generation… And yet soldiers of other regiments and other wars may enjoy reading the story of marches and battles, to scale mountains with them, wander over flower-strewn valleys, over blackened landscapes, and over bloody battlefields. It will be like a leaf out of their own lives, written with blood and tears.”
“The story is told just as it occurred at the time…It is written to honor the brave men who gave the best years of their lives to their country. It is written to supplement the archives of the state with a more extended regimental history, so that future generations may learn of what material the foundation is composed upon which their temple of liberty is erected, and at what cost of blood and treasure it was preserved.”
Uncle Chris's resting place in Panora, Iowa. "...until the Lord said 'your work is done'."
Mood: Reverent
Music: Battle Hymn of the Republic
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