Our New Running Joke

Q: Вы говорите по-русски?*

No? Better learn!


So advised the jokesters over the last few days of our annual training down at Ft. Hunter Ligget.

The conflict in Georgia is in its fifth day now. Russia seems to have stopped their advance, and have begun to make demands from a position of indisputable military power.

My family has a treasured Finnish history, and I see echoes of those old stories in the present conflict.

Finland had rich ores and an arctic port in the north, and in the south there was territory directly north of Leningrad that the Soviets saw as defensive terrain. The Soviets made their demands, and on Finland's refusal proceeded to shell a Russian village on the border, accuse the Finns of an unprovoked attack and restate their demands. When Finland categorically refused the Soviet demands, the Red Army invaded.

Stalin's purges had seriously weakened the Red Army, and that, combined with the most bitter winter in memory and a miracle or two for Finland, resulting in a crushing initial defeat. Hitler looked on at Stalin's blunder and saw a giant with feet of clay- a key factor in his later decision to invade in Operation Barbarossa. Stalin, meanwhile, had learned a hard lesson from the ignominious defeat, and a hardened Red Army, complete with a rebuilt officer corps, saw frozen farmland become the Wehrmacht's grave.

The current situation in Georgia is considerably different, of course- most notably in military performance, and the lack of any regional power to oppose Russia. The basics, however, are the same- a former Russian territory sited on key terrain and resources with a government growing less and less receptive to socialism suffers provocation after provocation as Russia builds a tissue-thin rationale for war. Georgia made the mistake of rising to the bait (and failing to hold the south end of the Roti Tunnel when they did, but that's another matter), and now both we and they will have to deal with the consequences.

The outcomes are fairly obvious and very bad at this point:

Russia will end in de facto control of South Ossetia and the western breakaway province of Abkhazia.

The current government of Georgia is done. Russia will call for "regime change", although they will not use that word. If they get a new government outright, Georgia will become the newest old Russian puppet state. If the current government survives Russian demands for replacement, they will not last long at home and the end state may well be the same.

Other western-friendly former bloc countries have to be sweating buckets right now. Looking at you, Ukraine.

Lastly- we didn't cause the current situation, but we sure as hell stoked the fire with troop training, the push for Georgia's inclusion in NATO, public and glowing support for Georgia's government, and a general "we got your back" attitude. Now that everything has exploded, we're issuing strongly worded statements, and France is heading up a diplomatic effort.

Other "Coalition of the Willing" members are probably re-examining their willingness to play on the GWOT stage, knowing what they now know about America and the world's willingness to back them up in case of trouble at home.





*Do you speak Russian?

About that demo...

Just a quick note here-

We accidentally sent a shaped charge skipping the other day in similar fashion to what I had described. Seriously... we didn't mean to. We had set up two shots of three shaped charges each, and one of the six charges misfired. Normally, a shaped charge is set up on a metal tripod, pointing downwards to punch a hole into the ground that will be filled with another charge for cratering. The standoff from the ground is required in order for the shaped explosion to fully form. When the one shaped charge misfired, the tripod was blasted away by the concussion from the other five charges, and the misfired charge was left lying on the ground. When we cleared the charge, we simply detonated it where it lay on the ground, for safety. The blast sent a plasma ball skipping across a tinder-dry grassy meadow and up a ridgeline into a stand of trees and high brush, leaving a line of small but quickly growing fires in its wake. The base wildfire unit put out the fire on the ridge, and we just waited for the fires on the valley floor to die down before continuing to blast California sky-high.

Demo

It’s Day #2 of Annual Training- that two week part of the “Just 1 weekend a month, 2 weeks a year!” that the US Army Reserve Component promises new recruits with dreams of playing soldier. Never minding, of course, those few odd years when there’s a war on.

Tomorrow is the first day of “real training”- today and yesterday have been administrative-heavy with settling in to living quarters and sorting out the rush of confusion that accompanies shipping hundreds of men and tons of equipment to a base hundreds of miles away from home.

Tomorrow is Demolition Day- the best day of the training cycle by far, and the main reason I became a Combat Engineer. I asked the recruiter what Army jobs dealt with explosives; she answered Combat Engineer and Explosives Ordnance Disposal. My nascent impression of the distinction was that Engineers blew stuff up, while EOD neutralized bombs that tried to blow them up. Since I didn’t want to go looking for trouble and get blown up in the process, I decided to join as an engineer. I’ll leave the irony to the reader.

Combat Engineers live for demo. There’s a sense of raw power when dealing with blocks of C4 and loops of detonating cord. There’s a downside, too- most of us can’t watch modern action movies without comment. Grenades don’t explode into fireballs, and a small satchel charge of plastic explosive won’t bring down a large building no matter how well placed.

On the other hand, we learn how much C4 it takes to cut through how much steel; how much Composition H it takes to blast impassable craters into roads, and how detonating cord explodes at 25,000 feet per second- fast enough to race in a straight line from Los Angeles to New York in minutes.

On a night like tonight, we talk about intangibles and wishlists, too. How cool would it be to blow up the old tank that’s sitting out on the range? Better yet, how about we take our blocks of C4 and spools of detonator caps and fuse and teach a class on “field-expedient” demo- the way simple cross-sections of steel with plastic explosive on the back can become simple shaped charges with many times the destructive power of the explosive alone?

I’ve heard older soldiers, experienced with more supplies and less oversight, talk about the way a military shaped charge, when tipped on its side, will send a superheated ball of metal plasma skipping across the desert. If that’s true, could we have shaped charge races? First plasma ball to the end of the valley wins?

Of course we won’t try it… there’s too many high ranking officers and NCOs around who would take an extraordinarily dim view of the proceedings. Still, there’s a lot of improvised demo that is ok, because the Army Field Manual on such makes it so. I know of at least 9 different ways to open a locked door with nothing more than detonating cord, tape, and hard rubber or spare intravenous solution bags. Some are so gentle they remove little more than a doorknob- others will tear a steel fire door off its hinges and send it into the back wall of the building. I can stand within a few meters of them all.

Really, when you think about it, it’s little wonder that former combat engineers are on the short list of people for the FBI to talk to when something explodes.

And another one's gone... another one's gone... another one bites the dust


The recently milblog-famous LT G is now assured of a book deal, and the milblog-reading public is now deprived of an erudite inside look into the current prosecution of the ground war in Iraq. No long tails, no FOB life, no ice cream cones- Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal was exactly that- a blog of US soldiers at war. I'll take my "proud father" moment here- I found his blog just a few days after the Gravediggers hit the Iraqi dirt; a few days after I had mourned the lack of quality milblogs currently "on the ground".


The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage

That was the post (of prescient title) that did him in. A too-real look at the struggle of a combat lieutenant to stay out of the mind-draining quagmire. No, not the media's Iraq: that quagmire is contrived and belied by the situation on the ground. This quagmire was the grind of the Tactical Operations Center, of the FOB life. LT G did not want to be a company executive officer. For a combat troop, that would be as good as suicide. The post he wrote about it got his blogging canned. Martyrs get books. Ask Colby Buzzell (who got called out of the inactive reserve for another Iraq deployment, by the way. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.)

It's too bad. I'll miss reading Kaboom.

Memorial Day

Seen from here, they have no names. They could be any men, from any war.

Those men I remembered on Monday...

The three Badgers you already know about, if you’ve been reading here long. Good men, taken much too soon. We all know far too well that the bomb that took them could have claimed any three of us.

A sniper killed Major Olmstead while he tried to talk insurgents into surrendering, rather than running away and forcing his men to shoot. Captain Casey was killed when he went to aid Major Olmstead. Major Olmstead became the first milblogger that I know of to be killed in action in Iraq- his last post was published by a friend and spoke at length of his life’s philosophy and final regret at having died.

Taps

LTC Jack Friedrichsen was my grandfather, an Army Air Corps veteran of World War II. He died while I was in training to deploy to Iraq, just days after my 22^nd birthday. In the birthday card he sent to me that year, he told me how proud he was that I had chosen to serve my country and wished me safety in Iraq. I was reading it on my bunk when they came to tell me he was dead.

Pvt. James Kern

Another man I remembered Monday was one I had only just come to know, a little. Private James Kern was a veteran of the 1st Kentucky Cavalry in the Civil War. He died in 1928 and was buried in the Civil War-era "Silent Camp" in Boise. His grave formed an empty space between the weathered rows of marble- at some point since his burial, his headstone disappeared. Perhaps he never had one in the first place. Monday was Boise's day to give him the honor he deserved.

Civil War reenacters fire a salute to Pvt. Kern

The Last Monday in May

 THE WHITE HOUSE


                  Office of the Press Secretary
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                       May 2, 2000



Memorandum on the White House Program for the National Moment
of Remembrance


Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies

Subject:  White House Program for the National Moment of Remembrance

 As Memorial Day approaches, it is time to pause and consider the
true meaning of this holiday. Memorial Day represents one day of
national awareness and reverence, honoring those Americans who died
while defending our Nation and its values. While we should honor these
heroes every day for the profound contribution they have made to
securing our Nation's freedom, we should honor them especially on
Memorial Day.
 In this time of unprecedented success and prosperity throughout our
land, I ask that all Americans come together to recognize how fortunate
we are to live in freedom and to observe a universal ``National Moment
of Remembrance'' on each Memorial Day. This memorial observance
represents a simple and unifying way to commemorate our history and
honor the struggle to protect our freedoms.
 Accordingly, I hereby direct all executive departments and agencies,
in consultation with the White House Program for the National Moment of
Remembrance (Program), to promote a ``National Moment of Remembrance''
to occur at 3 p.m. (local time) on each Memorial Day.
 Recognizing that Memorial Day is a Federal holiday, all executive
departments and agencies, in coordination with the Program and to the
extent possible and permitted by law, shall promote and provide
resources to support a National Moment of Remembrance, including:

• Encouraging individual department and agency personnel, and Americans everywhere, to pause for one minute at 3:00 p.m. (local time) on Memorial Day, to remember and reflect on the sacrifices made by so many to provide freedom for all.
• Recognizing, in conjunction with Memorial Day, department and agency personnel whose family members have made the ultimate sacrifice for this Nation.
• Providing such information and assistance as may be necessary for the Program to carry out its functions.

I have asked the Director of the White House Millennium Council to issue additional guidance, pursuant to this Memorandum, to the heads of
executive departments and agencies regarding specific activities and
events to commemorate the National Moment of Remembrance.

                                       William J. Clinton

Who do you remember today?

Dong.
3 o'clock.

Lieutenant Colonel Jack Friedrichsen, US Air Force

Dong.
Second bell.

Major Andrew Olmsted, US Army
Captain Thomas Casey, US Army

Dong.
3 strikes for the hour.

Sergeant Ross Clevenger, US Army
Sergeant Jim Holtom, US Army
Private First Class Ray Werner, US Army


Tomorrow I'll write about today, and post some pictures.
Today, I'll remember.

Musings and Memories

(crossposted at Jules Crittenden)

Who's up for some war stories? Ok, maybe not *exactly* war stories, but I've been mumbling through old memories of Iraq recently. This post will be pretty much stream-of-consciousness, so continue reading only if you want a look inside.

Trash. Iraq is covered in it. Some areas are getting cleaned up now, but canals and roadsides are still the skunky lairs of plastic refuse and decaying filth.

I never understood the guys who complained about the mess, saying that "no one here cares enough to pick up the trash" (I would have a hard time caring, too, if the trash in my neighborhood covered IEDs), and then use the trash as an excuse to toss old water bottles-turned bathroom breaks out of the trucks.

An old favorite pit stop was Saddam's Mosque, the grandest structure in Ramadi, and oddly (I thought) named for the primarily secular former leader. Every night there was an IED on the corner next to the mosque- often, the wires ran inside the wall. Every night, the Explosives Ordnance Disposal techs blew up a little more of the mosque wall. No sense, after all, in moving the bomb too far from the site in the interest of preserving architecture. Every night, piss bottles sailed over the broken wall in a barrage directed at the IED triggerman.

Some parts of Iraq, most of the sprawling garbage is composed of old plastic bottles. Some places, the average IED has a few 1-liter bottles full of diesel fuel attached. The "accelerant", as the military calls it, doesn't usually make the bomb more deadly, but it sure becomes a hell of a lot more impressive. Less like fireworks, but less fun to encounter were the 1-liter bottles straddling artillery shells and filled with pesticide. We started wearing Nomex jumpsuits just in case, so the Army-issue brand new polyester-blend ACUs we went to Iraq in wouldn't melt to our skin if one of those impressive fireballs engulfed the truck.

Those tan Nomex jumpsuits were controversial, sure. We considered them important to our continued, unmaimed survival in our constant dealings "out there"- by a similar token, ice-cream licking desk jockeys considered those jumpsuits antithesis to good order and discipline "inside". I can see why: since we wore them to work in, those jumpsuits smell like work. It's best not to remind fobbits* too often of the vast difference in what you and they consider "work".

At Logistical Support Area Anaconda, the fobbit capital of Iraq (roughly equivalent to corporate headquarters in the Real World), no one knows how to address warfighters in jumpsuits. Little fobbit girls whisper in the back of the bus that those guys must be Special Forces! If they had been somewhere that actually sends men nightly into the breach, they might have known that SF and SEALs are more likely to be found wearing Carhartt and sporting a 4-day growth of beard.

I abused that look every time I found myself on a large base when I went back to Iraq as a photojournalist. The press ID that I picked up in Baghdad was virtually useless (and indeed virtually unused). Once I learned that displaying my press ID inevitably led to the same tired litany of questions and the same display of orders permitting my presence, I began strolling around in my Carhartts and goatee, flashing my military ID to the confused Specialist guarding the chow hall and the Ugandan mercenaries guarding the PX. I had more freedom in Iraq on my own presenting myself as a member of the military than I had experienced while deployed to Iraq on orders from the military.

My train of thought was interrupted here- by my girlfriend coming home from work to find me typing on her couch. That's a kind of distraction that I didn't have while blogging in Iraq. Frankly, I think I prefer the distractions of home to those of Iraq. ;-)


*Fobbit
Fob-bet
-Noun
1. A military member who works primarily on a Foward Operating Base
2. douchebag
a. A military bureaucrat concerned with style over substance
b. A soldier more worried about ice cream stocks than ammo stocks
See also: FOB Goblin, FOB Rat