So tonights blog is inspired by a talk I received today from one of the senior ranking officers on our team.
The content of the talk sort of stuck with me today and I wanted to share this quick note with my friends and also preserve the feeling I have in this forum for later reflection....hopefully in happier times in about a year.
The officer speaking to us told the four of us that we were "Rattle Proof" as aviators and he expected us to leverage our ability to stay calm under pressure. He also told us that life in the infantry was simple and soldiers usually just need to know their "task" and "purpose" and they will comply. Pretty simple stuff I thought. He also told us that as aviators we could expect to be seen as the resident experts on any army aviation platform....again I saw that as pretty reasonable. His final words below struck a chord with me and gave me a chill. I want to share these with you to help you gain perspective of what the real warriors out in the remote corners of the battlefield live with and how they think versus how most of my intel and aviator friends see the world from bases like Balad in Iraq and Bagram in Afghanistan.
Directives from one team chief.
1. Prepare yourself for violence; you must be ready everyday to confront catastrophe. Harden yourself.
2. Be able to kill with your weapon under stress without hesitation.
3. Know where to get help.
4. Know how to save your life and your buddy's life.
5. Focus your physical fitness plan on combat related tasks that challenge your personal resolve.
On that note. Have a great night.
S.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Living with Joe
Its been a few weeks since my last update so I guess its about that time. The first thing I'd like to share is how wonderful it is to be living with and amongst soldiers....aka Joe! Joe is a general term to refer to a soldier who has not yet grown up or figured out what he wants to do in life. Joe struggles to maintain his individuality by wearing cowboy hats and large belt buckles instead of assimilating into the culture of his surroundings.
Joe also has a girlfriend. Joe's girlfriend arrives every Friday night at the barracks via a taxi cab or bus and pulls behind her a rolling suitcase. Joe's girlfriend takes the walk of shame down the hall of the barracks to Joe's room and then leaves sometime on Sunday or in special circumstances on Monday morning before PT.
So for the past month I have had the privilege of living amongst Joe with eleven Lieutenant Colonels and fourteen Majors. I think we have all grown together due to our shared experiences. For example, last weekend we were all awakened by Joe as he and his Joe friends tried to find their barracks rooms in a drunken stupor. I smiled a little on the inside when I heard one of the Joe's tell the other Joe "happy father's day".
Tonight on the way back from dinner I passed a group of Joe's walking towards the Taxi stand. Please see the attached picture. The leader of this group was pushing a shopping cart for some reason while his underlings were dressed in mid-western wear...no doubt they were on their way to the club outside of Grafenwoher.
Okay. Enough about Joe.
I received an email this week informing me that the Golden Knights...the Army parachute team...has made the decision to bring me on board after this deployment to be their air detachment commander. Karen and I are pretty excited about that and we look forward to moving back to North Carolina.
I've finished up two weeks of Pashto training and we are all having a good time speaking very modest amounts of Pashto to each other. In fact, much of our conversations at the chow hall and out in town have turned to three or four word Pashto phrases. I'm glad there aren't many Pashto speakers in Germany because someone sitting near us would no doubt wonder why six Americans in a German biergarten were telling each other to put their weapons down, surrender, and sit down in Pashto.
This week has been full of advisor training as we've all been engaged in role playing scenarios and interpreter training. We even had an authentic Afghan meal the other night. I was thankful that a rival tribe did not ride in on horseback during the meal and steal all of our possessions....I guess it wasn't that authentic after all.
I am scheduled to head further East in about a month. Its hard to believe that tomorrow is Carlie's 9th birthday. She had her party today and grandma and grandaddy Hoke's house. Due to the timing of this deployment I will also miss her 10th birthday....that isn't cool.
Ya'll take care and be on the lookout for Joe.
S.
Joe also has a girlfriend. Joe's girlfriend arrives every Friday night at the barracks via a taxi cab or bus and pulls behind her a rolling suitcase. Joe's girlfriend takes the walk of shame down the hall of the barracks to Joe's room and then leaves sometime on Sunday or in special circumstances on Monday morning before PT.
So for the past month I have had the privilege of living amongst Joe with eleven Lieutenant Colonels and fourteen Majors. I think we have all grown together due to our shared experiences. For example, last weekend we were all awakened by Joe as he and his Joe friends tried to find their barracks rooms in a drunken stupor. I smiled a little on the inside when I heard one of the Joe's tell the other Joe "happy father's day".
Tonight on the way back from dinner I passed a group of Joe's walking towards the Taxi stand. Please see the attached picture. The leader of this group was pushing a shopping cart for some reason while his underlings were dressed in mid-western wear...no doubt they were on their way to the club outside of Grafenwoher.
Okay. Enough about Joe.
I received an email this week informing me that the Golden Knights...the Army parachute team...has made the decision to bring me on board after this deployment to be their air detachment commander. Karen and I are pretty excited about that and we look forward to moving back to North Carolina.
I've finished up two weeks of Pashto training and we are all having a good time speaking very modest amounts of Pashto to each other. In fact, much of our conversations at the chow hall and out in town have turned to three or four word Pashto phrases. I'm glad there aren't many Pashto speakers in Germany because someone sitting near us would no doubt wonder why six Americans in a German biergarten were telling each other to put their weapons down, surrender, and sit down in Pashto.
This week has been full of advisor training as we've all been engaged in role playing scenarios and interpreter training. We even had an authentic Afghan meal the other night. I was thankful that a rival tribe did not ride in on horseback during the meal and steal all of our possessions....I guess it wasn't that authentic after all.
I am scheduled to head further East in about a month. Its hard to believe that tomorrow is Carlie's 9th birthday. She had her party today and grandma and grandaddy Hoke's house. Due to the timing of this deployment I will also miss her 10th birthday....that isn't cool.
Ya'll take care and be on the lookout for Joe.
S.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Flags, Trains, and all things nautical
June 11th, 2011
It happens to be June 12th now but for all practical purposes it is still the 11th. Today began with a key leader rehearsal on the parade grounds here at Grafenwoher. Today marks a milestone in the 172d BCT deployment schedule. As each battalion assembled on the parade field and cased their Colors, they truly began the cycle of deployment, redeployment, and retraining. The Colors will be uncased in Afghanistan in the next month or so and the unit will do its duty over there for as long as it takes as as much as it costs.
After the ceremony I offered to take one of the other officers to the train station. On the way there he convinced me to ride along to Nurnberg and at least eat lunch with him. So we left the Vilseck train station at 1340 and arrived exactly 40 minutes later in downtown Nurnberg.
For anyone who hasn't been to the former Roman city.....that the allies happened to utterly and completely destroy during WWII; it is a great place to visit. Nurnberg comes with all of the trimings...torture museum...red light district...brotwurst stands...an opera house....a castle that sits on top of a hill...and a moat.
What really captivated me today was the statue just inside of the walled area of the city. I felt I could relate to this statue because of a past experience I had on the water a few years ago when my brother tried to teach me to sail by simple trial and error. The scene in this statue is captivating. A woman is clearly terrified of the skeleton in the boat who is towering over her. There is also a dog in the boat who is unhappy and a child who is clenching a dagger. Check out the picture below.
So after I enjoyed the work of art, I decided to look for some trinkets for the kids or something nice for Karen. The first store I walked into had a snow globe that I couldn't resist. Inside of the globe was an iceberg and the Titanic.
Evidently my brother is going to look at a sail boat tomorrow with the intent to potentially purchase the boat. Duane, if you read this, you were on my mind today as I came across two warnings from the hereafter that seemed to be steering me away from the boat.
The final treasure I found today was a picture of Jesus. I found this picture at an antique shop. The backing that is used to frame the picture is a 1921 newspaper. The picture itself is not in great shape but I think my family will enjoy this picture for many years to come. I hope you all like it.
That is it for now. Things are a little boring right now so the pace of writing will have to slow down until we get further into training. The first week of Pashto went well. I can now write and say the Pashto alphabet.
Good nite my friends.
Steven
It happens to be June 12th now but for all practical purposes it is still the 11th. Today began with a key leader rehearsal on the parade grounds here at Grafenwoher. Today marks a milestone in the 172d BCT deployment schedule. As each battalion assembled on the parade field and cased their Colors, they truly began the cycle of deployment, redeployment, and retraining. The Colors will be uncased in Afghanistan in the next month or so and the unit will do its duty over there for as long as it takes as as much as it costs.
After the ceremony I offered to take one of the other officers to the train station. On the way there he convinced me to ride along to Nurnberg and at least eat lunch with him. So we left the Vilseck train station at 1340 and arrived exactly 40 minutes later in downtown Nurnberg.
For anyone who hasn't been to the former Roman city.....that the allies happened to utterly and completely destroy during WWII; it is a great place to visit. Nurnberg comes with all of the trimings...torture museum...red light district...brotwurst stands...an opera house....a castle that sits on top of a hill...and a moat.
What really captivated me today was the statue just inside of the walled area of the city. I felt I could relate to this statue because of a past experience I had on the water a few years ago when my brother tried to teach me to sail by simple trial and error. The scene in this statue is captivating. A woman is clearly terrified of the skeleton in the boat who is towering over her. There is also a dog in the boat who is unhappy and a child who is clenching a dagger. Check out the picture below.
So after I enjoyed the work of art, I decided to look for some trinkets for the kids or something nice for Karen. The first store I walked into had a snow globe that I couldn't resist. Inside of the globe was an iceberg and the Titanic.
Evidently my brother is going to look at a sail boat tomorrow with the intent to potentially purchase the boat. Duane, if you read this, you were on my mind today as I came across two warnings from the hereafter that seemed to be steering me away from the boat.
The final treasure I found today was a picture of Jesus. I found this picture at an antique shop. The backing that is used to frame the picture is a 1921 newspaper. The picture itself is not in great shape but I think my family will enjoy this picture for many years to come. I hope you all like it.
That is it for now. Things are a little boring right now so the pace of writing will have to slow down until we get further into training. The first week of Pashto went well. I can now write and say the Pashto alphabet.
Good nite my friends.
Steven
Sunday, June 5, 2011
The Desk Drawer
What is there? Today when I got up I was looking for something...who knows what..but I opened my desk drawer and the picture before me reminded me of one of those pottery barn catalogs where the contents of the drawer seemed to be evidence of a bygone era...things placed there for no particular reason other than to remind one of the past. The id tags...commonly known as dog tags...reminded me of many old black and white pictures that many organizations use today to remind their sponsors or customers that they support America, its veterans...and somehow honor the past. Its interesting what emotions a simple set of id tags can evoke in Americans. I'm not judging the use of flags or military artifacts as a way to get through to an audience in fact that isn't even the point of this post.
So as I looked at the contents of the drawer I noticed that almost everything in there was significant and had a story. The knife was purchased at Ramstein Air Base in 2008 while I was there with my dad in law. I'm not sure why we were there at Ramstein but we happened into the BX and the knife was on sale. I remember looking at a beer stein with Wade that had a wolf or something else painted on the side which reminded me of the NC State Wolfpack.
The sharpening stone was sent to me by my Dad the last time I was in Afghanistan. He wanted to send a care package so I asked him for a sharpening stone, some bicycle tires, some "Groom and Clean" for my metro sexual roommate, and some craisens. Why do we remember these things and furthermore why do I still have the box that the stone came in?
The official passport in the drawer was ordered up in 2007 as my old unit prepared to fly airplanes all over God's creation to get to Afghanistan. Someone thought it would be a good idea if we had the red official passport in addition to ID cards just in case we were detained while abroad....looking back it was a good idea.
The marker with the red body and black tip was purchased with a pack of recordable DVDs in Boston in November 2009. I was there training with...(omitted)...and they wanted video of the training that they could keep. The pack of DVDs came with that marker....again..why do I still have it. Karen would tell you that I am anything but a pack rat.
The wings...ah the wings.
The ID tags...something we loath to wear, pride ourselves in having a reason to wear, and hope we never have a need for.
The oak leaf...not an indicator of who I am, but of the quality of those who have supported me.
It is interesting that the things in our lives conspire to bring us to where we are today. Every moment of every day occurs simply because of the choices we've made through our entire lives leading up to the moment we call the present.
Pashto language training starts tomorrow.
S.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Easy Money
So I could have written this post from many different points of view. The fact of the matter personally is that I now have the most modern equipment of any army to conduct war with once I arrive in Afghanistan.
On the downside, I'm not sure how much more effective the equipment will make our forces at winning over the Taliban or Al Queda to a talking solution to bring peace to the region. And if the new equipment I am wearing does not do either of those two things and it does not give me significantly more protection than what I was wearing already...it goes into the wasteful spending fund that seems to exists to keep retired Army folks employed....mainly at Fort Belvoir, Aberdeen, and Huntsville.
So our morning began at 3am local time here in sunny Germany. I started the day off with a PB&J and a coke, a quick shave, a hot shower, and a quick run down to the assembley area where we met the friendly German bus drivers who were no doubt peveed about working on what is know as German father's day.
We bused down to Schweinfurt and formed our ranks outside of a makeshift warehouse. A "contact team" of sorts was there to fully equip about 300 soldiers with the latest and greatest from the Program Manager Soldier office out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia. On my list of new equipment was:
1. Danner Hiking Boots: 2 pair. (Very nice for hiking)
2. More sunglasses. 2 pair.
3. Four new uniforms in the OEF camo pattern.
4. Nice infantry fighting gloves
5. All new hats, rank, and patches
6. Two new Ruck sacks with all of the trimmings
7. Brand new bullet proof vest with all of the trimmings
That pretty much rounded out the fun equipment that the Army was good enough to pass out to ensure our safe return.
Break Break Break:
For some reason today I'm feeling a little low again. I'm not sure if it is the move into the barracks that occured yesterday that has me down given a few missing creature comforts over here, or if I'm just slipping back into a sullen feeling for a few days.
I got to see Karen, Sofia, and Bubba-town today on Skype which made things nice. It looks like I'm going to get a solid night of sleep here on Graf as it approaches 10pm. Tomorrow is another day of predeployment screening...medical...dental...vision...wills...legal stuff.
Well friends. Thanks for reading. Thanks as always for the emails during the week....they do help...I hope I'm not whining too much.
Wishing you all the best wherever you are tonight. Welcome home to missing husbands; and my friends Purple D, Sprinkles, Buck Wild, Dominoes, and Gina.
S.
On the downside, I'm not sure how much more effective the equipment will make our forces at winning over the Taliban or Al Queda to a talking solution to bring peace to the region. And if the new equipment I am wearing does not do either of those two things and it does not give me significantly more protection than what I was wearing already...it goes into the wasteful spending fund that seems to exists to keep retired Army folks employed....mainly at Fort Belvoir, Aberdeen, and Huntsville.
So our morning began at 3am local time here in sunny Germany. I started the day off with a PB&J and a coke, a quick shave, a hot shower, and a quick run down to the assembley area where we met the friendly German bus drivers who were no doubt peveed about working on what is know as German father's day.
We bused down to Schweinfurt and formed our ranks outside of a makeshift warehouse. A "contact team" of sorts was there to fully equip about 300 soldiers with the latest and greatest from the Program Manager Soldier office out of Fort Belvoir, Virginia. On my list of new equipment was:
1. Danner Hiking Boots: 2 pair. (Very nice for hiking)
2. More sunglasses. 2 pair.
3. Four new uniforms in the OEF camo pattern.
4. Nice infantry fighting gloves
5. All new hats, rank, and patches
6. Two new Ruck sacks with all of the trimmings
7. Brand new bullet proof vest with all of the trimmings
That pretty much rounded out the fun equipment that the Army was good enough to pass out to ensure our safe return.
Break Break Break:
For some reason today I'm feeling a little low again. I'm not sure if it is the move into the barracks that occured yesterday that has me down given a few missing creature comforts over here, or if I'm just slipping back into a sullen feeling for a few days.
I got to see Karen, Sofia, and Bubba-town today on Skype which made things nice. It looks like I'm going to get a solid night of sleep here on Graf as it approaches 10pm. Tomorrow is another day of predeployment screening...medical...dental...vision...wills...legal stuff.
Well friends. Thanks for reading. Thanks as always for the emails during the week....they do help...I hope I'm not whining too much.
Wishing you all the best wherever you are tonight. Welcome home to missing husbands; and my friends Purple D, Sprinkles, Buck Wild, Dominoes, and Gina.
S.
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