I have learned a good deal - but I don't feel it. I feel as if I've been muddling along, occasionally getting things right, but mostly not doing my job. This also comes from the fact that I largely don't understand my job.
I spent 2 weeks on the FOB. I was surrounded by beautifully stark desert terrain, but I couldn't go anywhere but walk back and forth across the dust from sleep to work to food and back. This place would be interesting if I could drive or walk it on my own - have some training or time to learn what the hell my new job entails. Instead I was driven out of the box inside of a Stryker - unable to even see the terrain one last time.
Perhaps I need a some time to breathe and think about this place and the job I'm to do.
- - -
The above was written as I was leaving NTC in the back of that Stryker. I could see little more than slits of sky passing by - there are no windows. I was able to turn on a B/W thermal video image from a camera fixed on the front of the Stryker so I didn't get motion sick, but it was a far cry from satisfying, and intensely different from being a Platoon Leader in that hatch - in charge.
The following posts were all written at NTC, but as I lacked the ability to access blogger, I couldn't post them. They are, as I say often of this blog, an airing of grievances, not an objective review of the Army, NTC, or my new job.
The more I learn about the methods and systems of the Army Logistics system, the more I hate it. The physical systems – trucks, flat racks, wretches, etc, are all pretty cool, and fairly well designed, but the information systems, the methods we use are idiotic. They are cumbersome, archaic and arcane.
We just received a new computer with software called BCS3. It’s a fourteen thousand dollar system designed to do any number of things – from tracking vehicles and supplies to sending up reports on supply levels. In theory we can update our higher headquarters as to how much stuff we have. The thing is that it looks like parts of it were made in 1990, 1997 and 2003 and then kludged together. To get it to talk to anything it has to have 3 DOS windows open. Seriously. The only useful tool for me – enforced on me – is the Logistical Reporting Tool. The only decent way to input data into it is to export to excel and import after making changes. It rolls up my data and the data from all the parallel units and sums them at BDE. All of its functions could be accomplished with a cleverly designed spreadsheet using macros.
Of course, they won’t let us request any supplies using this system – we still have to submit an asinine form to get that
Even ignoring this new, and in my view, mostly wasted BCS3 system – Army logistics are dumb. Every system I have seen used is bloated, unnecessarily difficult to use and hopelessly opaque. An insane number of forms are required to do the simplest things.
Part of this screed is against the methods here at NTC – they use contracted assistance for almost every possible thing – from bringing us water and ammunition to putting up living tents to installing the Army laser tag systems (we call it MILES equipment) on our vehicles. These contractors are, at best, training distractors. An example: A Company in the Squadron goes to draw loaned vehicles. They identify a broken piece of equipment that had been installed by contractors. They annotate this fault and do not sign for this broken piece of equipment. They are told to take the vehicle to a different lot to the contractors who installed the equipment to get it fixed. Upon reaching the contractors they are berated and the contractors, who are paid exorbitant amounts for minimal work, refused to fix the equipment with a 5-day investigation process. I could fix the equipment with a soldering iron and a special screw driver and no training.
I was punished with this job for excelling at my previous position. I signed away three additional years of my life to this Army to avoid doing this kind of work. I knew it sucked and I wanted no part in it. It’s stupid, inefficient and painful. I feel cheated, and I’ll be dealing with this idiot system for the next year. In Iraq.
It looks like I'll be returning from my long hiatus... I'm heading to NTC very soon, and not too long after that, Iraq.
I'm still in 1-14 Cavalry - which is in the same Brigade as I deployed with last time, but in a new Squadron (see this for a useful, pretty chart. The Squadron is in yellow.) I'm the Squadron supply officer (S4). This is a move that looks good - it's a primary staff spot, it's a captain slot (I'll be making CPT in June or July) and it's a difficult and vital job. That said - it blows. S4 takes the best parts of being an XO and removes them; it takes the worst parts and multiplies them.
I'll be at NTC until the middle or end of May, and then I'll go straight into surgery for my wrist. For those of you who I may not have told, I broke the shit out of my wrist back in November. I fell and broke the end of my radius in to 4 pieces. My doctors cut me open back in December, put a titanium plate in and I went to rehab for a bunch of months. Sadly, the bones didn't heal properly in my wrist joint. This will lead to excruciating arthritis by the time I'm 35 if I don't get it fixed, and soon. So... a second surgery in May, recovery and then deploy. It will be exciting to be doing my occupational therapy in Iraq, but I'll get by.
I don't imagine there are a whole lot of you left reading this, but if you start wandering back in with later posts, I thought I would give you a little back reading to do.
Check out my flickr for photos from the Yakima Training Center from March, and some I'll post from NTC in California. And I'l see if I can get some of my CT/Xrays on here. Pretty cool looking.
The beginning of "Saving Private Ryan" features a letter from Abraham Lincoln to a mother (at the time) thought to have lost five sons in battle during the Civil War. It was written to Mrs. Lidia Bixby, a widow, and was later published in a Boston newspaper. The letter is simultaneously very (by modern sensibilities perhaps too) formal, and poignant.
Executive Mansion, Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
There is a beauty in the words, a visceral (however detached the reader may be) horror in the content. It has contains a terrible beauty that, in its small way, encapsulates a part of war.
Read the wiki. I dare anyone to read the sentences that follow the letter's text and not laugh. Horrible, yes. Funny (if only because of the shock), also yes.
Aside from the latest post, which is really about something that happened back in November, I've not posted in some time. Sorry. My job is certainly less interesting now (well it is for me, and I imagine it would also be for you), so less to post about. That said, I'm happy, enjoying my life, and generally enjoying the states. I've changed jobs, even units this week. I've given up my platoon, and am taking over as the executive officer in a different troop (Troop:Company::Cavalry:InfantryTroop:Cavalry::Company:Infantry - bet you never thought that construction would be useful again. And I thought I would get it right.). This means, of course, that I have moved out of 5-20 IN, into 1-14 Cav, the Cavalry Squadron in my Brigade. (See wiki for a pretty chart that will make much more sense). That said, I am now in a Cavalry unit. It's not too different from my previous unit, but there are differences, some of which I may blog about. The short bit; I get to buy a sweet hat.
To hails and farewells. A very belated welcome back to Audrey. She's back now, which is awesome, reunited with Rip, and now with a dog... adorable, hyperactive Zephyr. Also, a good luck, do good things, to both Elizabeth and Danielle. They're both deploying this month. Again, good luck, fun stories and a boring deployment to you both.
And finally, I entreat you all to comment. I know some of you are still reading this, and many new folk keep showing up. This month alone, I have visitors from all over the US and from Pakistan and Thailand. Those ones are new for me, so if I know you, say hi. If I don't know you, say hi and how you found your way here to my 40 acres.
At the beginning of November of last year all of our equipment arrived at the Port of Olympia by ship from Kuwait. Our Strykers, 18-ton armored vehicles, and the shipping containers that held all of our personal and military equipment, were unloaded over a couple of days. As soon as news of this got out, a series of demonstrations protesting the Army’s use of the port began. The protests were fairly large and usually entailed the protesters attempting to block the movement of military equipment out of the port, forming barricades using people and trash, once even blocking a portion of the I-5 Freeway. The Olympia Police used riot police, pepper spray and mass arrests to keep the port open.
I was only in Iraq for a very brief period, essentially a long summer, before I redeployed with my unit. There was some very intense fighting in Baqubah, a city about 30 miles north of Baghdad, especially before I arrived, but I didn’t experience any truly traumatic events that often cause soldiers to have problems readjusting to life at home. I led a platoon through a wide variety of missions, securing vital routes, raiding suspected insurgents, systematically clearing large parts of the city and conducting humanitarian aid missions. We spent most of our time moving on foot through the city, spending nights in Iraqi houses, periodically returning to a Forward Operating Base to rest and resupply. In the city we were constantly on guard, scanning everything around us for threats.
I returned to Fort Lewis, just south of Seattle, in October and quickly resumed my old life. One night the week our equipment arrived in Olympia, much of my Battalion moved by busses down to the port drive our Strykers the 15 miles to Fort Lewis. The atmosphere was chaotic, the entrance to the port blocked by more than 200 protesters, held at bay by a very significant Police presence. We prepared our vehicles to move, but had to wait several hours for the Police disperse the crowd. More than sixty people were arrested that night. By one in the morning we finally pushed out the gate with a heavy Police escort. It is a strange thing to see an 18-ton armored combat vehicle being escorted by a Police cruiser.
I was toward the front of a large convoy of Strykers, standing in the commanders hatch of my Stryker, the same place I had stood for countless movements in Iraq, wearing much of the same protective equipment, working with the same vehicle crew I had for months in combat. As we pushed through Olympia, protesters moved along our route in small groups looking for a gap in the police protection, trying to split and block the convoy. I naturally and continuously scanned the buildings, streets and roofs as we moved through the city. Obviously I knew that the protesters posed me no physical threat – I wasn’t even scanning for them. It had become ingrained. I was driving in a Stryker through an urban environment, strikingly similar to Baqubah, and the only natural response was to do what I had done for months – constantly look for the threat.
Once we reached the freeway the feeling of familiarity, of hyper-awareness, faded. I haven’t had any similar experiences since, and I doubt I will. I wasn’t scared or uncomfortable at the time, or now looking back on it. It simply was.
So many of you know that I really don't like country music much at all, with very few exceptions. This, however, is a fairly cool song. Video is pretty cool too.
So, Mother Jones, an interesting news magazine has, as it's cover story this month, an article entitled, "U.S. Out How?" using a play on the anti-war movement's phrase "US Out Now!" Interesting article, though it seems a little light on substance, relying mostly on sound bites from people to whom they sent a survey, and on half-baked statistics. Still and interesting article, but, as I plan to illustrate, they really didn't try to dig any deeper than what they had lying around.
To me, this seems to be attempting to point out some of the incongruity, the strange "comforts" that differentiate this war from previous ones. I can't impugn their intent because I don't know exactly what it is. However, I can impugn their use of their data, which is massively flawed. The numbers used in reference to facilities seem accurate enough. The number of night vision devices seems very low - it would give one set of NVD for every five or so US soldiers, one in six if you include marines. Plus "night-vision equipment," to me, should also include night sights for weapons and perhaps even vehicle-mounted sights. My company alone probably had 20-50 pieces of "night-vision equipment" in addition to the set of individual NVD that each person was issued. So that number seems rather low to me. The body armor number makes much more sense, and I wouldn't be surprised if the NVD number was much closer to it in reality.
The truely ridiculous number, however, is the Playstation/Nintendo/XBox figure. 48? Seriously? If this is meant to represent the number that US government owns in MWR-type facilities, I might buy it. It still seems low, though. However if it is meant to represent the number of game consoles in use in Iraq (which seems implied), it is off by orders of magnitude. Again, using my personal experience, no. Freakin'. Way. There were more than 48 consoles at FOB Warhorse. Hell, the Warhorse MWR had at least four, and it was a terrible, small MWR. My platoon (a very small platoon) had at least another eight. I really doubt that I've seen all the consoles in all of Iraq, but I saw at least 48 in person over there.
These are obviously trifling little complaints about an interesting article, but they speak to a lacksidasical way the whole article was put together... it seems to be more quotes and infographics than the type of deep, smart journalism we usually get from Mother Jones.
I have posted all of my Iraq photos on flickr. There 565 of them. Look down and to the left to see some samples. However, they are listed for friends and family only - this means that if you don't have a Flickr membership, you will not be able to see them. (Photos are private for all sorts of reasons.) However, being the clever chap that I am, I have made a work around: If you have a Flickr, friend me and you'll be able to see the photos. If you do not have, nor want to get a flickr account, I've made one for the use of my visitors. Just email me and i'll give you the account info.
