Tag Archives: nelson lebron

November 12, 2009 · 02:01

Veteran’s Day: Goodbye to 666 Lake of Fire Circle, a Golf Outing and Remembering the Veterans in my Life

veteransday2009

Today was Veteran’s Day. Amid the solemnity of the day I am still in California where I came this week to try to help my mom with my dad’s affairs and to also see my dad who is definitely in the end stages of Alzheimer’s disease. This has been the hardest trip home in my life. I knew I had to come, although the Abbess was against it fearing for my emotional health and perhaps she was right. Tonight I sit in a hotel room self medicating and trying to regain some sense of sanity.

Me and last last pic Dad and Me back in May…He Still knew Me then

The past few days have been hell. My dad does not know me anymore; he has almost no response to anything and stares straight ahead. The hardest part is when I realized that he didn’t know me. So I asked if he had seen my mother who I had taken to visit him the day before and my brother. He said that he had seen them, and even seen my mom the morning I asked him the question. However she had not been there that day. So I asked if “Steve had visited yesterday.” He got agitated and said “I don’t know any Steve yesterday.” Today was much the same, I asked if he knew who Steve was, and he said “yes” and I asked if he had seen him and he said “no he hasn’t been here.” This whole trip he has probably spoken under 50 words in 4 visits. There is nothing left. For all practical purposes he is dead in a body that won’t die. If that was not bad enough my mother has not skipped any opportunity to attack and pick at me until I broke. I begged her to lay off, told her that I was not up to fighting with her and tried to keep my cool but she wouldn’t let up. I cannot deal with constant conflict and a mother who calls me “a weak, politically correct pansy.” I’m a combat veteran and went to war unarmed into hostile territory with little groups of Americans far away from the big battalions with all the heavy weapons and the women called me a “weak, politically correct pansy. She has put me down, belittled my education, vocation and career and insulted my wife for the last time. When I told her that “everything in her life that was wrong was somebody else’s fault and not hers” she agreed. I knew it was over at that point. This may sound un-Christian but I will not go see her again. Tomorrow I will see my dad for what it is worth, see my brother and his family and then early Friday I will get the hell out of Dodge. She had offered to pay for my trip out but I can’t prostitute myself for that kind of abuse. The next time I come back it will be for my father’s funeral. I love my brother and his family. He and his wife are saints. I couldn’t live that near my mother without ending up in a psychotic state, something that I came perilously close to this week. God bless Jeff, Mel and their kids.

Me and Jeff at mickey grove With my Brother back in May

I went golfing with my brother and nephews today. For much of the day I couldn’t hit water if I fell out of the damned boat. My mind was so gooned up and upset by the events of the week I couldn’t concentrate worth a shit. Even my well hit shots were mainly slicing to the right and I embarked on a tree killing expedition. I hit 7 trees solidly, took down a couple of decent sized branches, grazed three other trees and nailed an outhouse. However it was really good to be out with Jeff, Darren and Nate. Nate can really hit the ball for an 8 year old; he has the potential to be a really good golfer. Darren doesn’t really care and is out to have fun. He enjoyed my sarcasm as I commented on my shots and helped keep track of the number of trees that I hit and I told him that I would see how many I could try to kill before the day was out. By the end of the round I was hitting the ball a lot better and it was going more often than not where I wanted it to go, but the first 7 holes were hell. It makes me think of Robin Williams’ golf routine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDQd49rEF_0

As I mentioned today was Veteran’s day. After I got my hotel I went to a local Applebee’s where I had a sirloin steak and potatoes and a couple beers on their Veterans’ day salute. I sat at the bar with a couple about 10 years older than me; he had served on a Navy Minesweeper in Vietnam. They were nice; I think that is why I like sitting at the bar when I go out to eat, there is a sense of community that you don’t find a lot of other places.

As it is Veteran’s day I think I will take some time to remember some of the Veterans in my life who have helped my through my life and career. This is taken from a post that I did around Memorial Day.

I’ve been in the military for almost 28 years now. I enlisted in the National Guard while in college and entered Army ROTC back in 1981. Since then it has been to quote Jerry Garcia “a long strange trip.” My dad served twenty years in the Navy. He retired in 1974 as a Chief Petty Officer and did time surrounded in the South Vietnamese city of An Loc when it was surrounded by the North Vietnamese for 80 days in 1972. He didn’t talk about it much when he came back; in fact he came back different from the war. He probably suffered from PTSD. All the markers were there but we had no idea about it back then, after all he was in the Navy not the Army.

LCDR Breedlove and Chief Ness

My second view of war came from the Veterans of Vietnam that I served with in the National Guard and the Army. Some of these men served as teachers and mentors. LCDR Jim Breedlove and Senior Chief John Ness at the Edison High School Naval Junior ROTC program were the first who helped me along. They have both passed away in the past year and a half. I will never forget them. A post dedicated to them is on this blog. Colonel Edgar Morrison was my first battalion commander. He was the most highly decorated member of the California National Guard at that time and had served multiple tours in Vietnam. He encouraged me as a young specialist and officer cadet and showed a tremendous amount of care for his soldiers. Staff Sergeant’s Buff Rambo and Mickey Yarro taught me the ropes as a forward observer and shared many of their Vietnam experiences. Buff had been a Marine dog handler on the DMZ and Mickey a Forward Observer. Sergeant First Class Harry Zilkan was my training NCO at the UCLA Army ROTC program. He was a Special Forces Medic with 7^th Group in Vietnam. He still had part of a VC bayonet embedded in his foot. He received my first salute as a newly commissioned Second Lieutenant as well as a Silver Dollar. I understand that after the Army he became a fire fighter. He had a massive heart attack on the scene of a fire and died a few years later from it. Sergeant Major John Butler was our senior enlisted at UCLA. He served with the 173^rd Airborne in Vietnam. Sergeant First Class Harry Ball was my drill sergeant at the ROTC pre-commissioning camp at Fort Lewis Washington in 1982. He was also Special Forces and a Ranger and served multiple tours in Vietnam. He was quite influential in my life, tearing me apart and then building me back up. He was my version of Drill Sergeant Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman. Like Zack Mayo played by Richard Gere in the movie I can only say: Drill Sergeant “I will never forget you.”

As I progressed through my Army career I encountered others of this generation who also impacted my life. First among them was First Sergeant Jim Koenig who had been a Ranger in the Mekong Delta. I was the First Sergeant that I would measure all others by. Once during a ARTEP we were aggressed and all of a sudden he was back in the Delta. This man cared so much for his young soldiers in the 557^th Medical Company. He did so much for them and I’m sure that those who served with him can attest to this as well as me. Jim had a brick on his desk so that when he got pissed he could chew on it. He was great. He played guitar for the troops and had a song called Jane Fonda, Jane Fonda You Communist Slut. It was a classic. He retired after he was selected to be a Command Sergeant Major because he valued his wife and family more than the promotion. It hurt him to do this, but he put them first. Colonel Donald Johnson was the commander of the 68^th Medical Group when I got to Germany in January 1984. Colonel “J” as well all called him was one of the best leaders I have seen in 28 years in the military. He knew everything about everything and his knowledge forced us all to learn and be better officers and NCOs. On an inspection visit you could always find him dressed in coveralls and underneath a truck verifying the maintenance done on it. He served a number of Vietnam tours. He died a few years back of Multiple Myeloma and is buried at Arlington. Chaplain (LTC) Rich Whaley who had served as a company commander in Vietnam on more than one occasion saved my young ass at the Army Chaplain School. He remains a friend and is the Endorsing Agent for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. As a Mormon he was one of the most “Christian” men that I have ever met. I know some Christians who might have a hard time with that, but Rich demonstrated every trait of a Christian who loved God and his neighbor.

Me with Major General Frank Smoker USAF (Ret) and Colonel Tom Allmon 2005

When I was the Installation Chaplain at Fort Indiantown Gap PA I was blessed to have some great veterans in my Chapel Parish. Major General Frank Smoker flew 25 missions as a B-17 pilot over Germany during the height of the air war in Europe. He brought his wonderful wife Kate back from England with him. Henry Boyd who I buried was one of the 101^st Airborne soldiers epitomized in Band of Brothers. He had a piece of shrapnel lodged next to his heart from the Battle of the Bulge until the day he died. Scotty Jenkes was an Air Force pilot in Vietnam flying close air support. Colonel Ray Hawthorne served several tours both in artillery units and as an adviser in 1972. CWO4 Charlie Kosko flew helicopters in Vietnam. All these men made a deep impact on me and several contributed to my career in very tangible ways.

Ray and his Crew from The Vietnam Veterans of America at Harbor Park

My life more recently has been impacted by others. My friends of the veterans of the Battle of Hue City including General Peter Pace, Barney Barnes, Tony “Limey Cartilage ” Sergeant Major Thomas and so many others have become close over the years, especially after I did my time in Iraq. They and all the Vietnam vets, including the guys from the Vietnam Veterans of America like Ray and John who man the beer stand behind the plate at Harbor Park all mean a lot to me. My friends at Marine Security Forces Colonel Mike Paulovich and Sergeant Major Kim Davis mean more than almost any people in the world. We traveled the globe together visiting our Marines. Both of these men are heroes to me as well as friends.

USS HUE CITY Boarding Team 2002

Finally there are my friends and brothers that I have served with at sea on USS HUE CITY during Operation Enduring Freedom and the advisers on the ground in Al Anbar mean more than anything to me. Perhaps the most important is my RP, RP2 Nelson Lebron who helped keep me safe and accompanied me all over the battlefield. Nelson who has done Iraq 3 times, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Balkans is a hero. The men and women of Navy EOD who I served with from 2006-2008 have paid dearly in combating IEDs and other explosive devices used against us in Iraq and Afghanistan are heroes too. There is no routine mission for EOD technicians.

With 1st Brigade 1st Iraqi Division Advisers in East Ramadi January 2008

I give thanks for all them men that I mention in this post, especially my dad. God bless all of you guys. Please honor the Veterans that you know not only on Memorial Day or Veterans’ Day but every day. Honor also those who gave their lives in the defense of liberty in all of the wars of our nation. They have earned it.

Today as I write many of my friends serve in harm’s way. I hope that my recovery, spiritually, emotionally and physically goes well enough that I can go back with them. For now I need to recover. My boss is right about that, if this week is any indication I’m in no shape to go back to a combat zone, bit Lord willing I will be so I can be with those I care for and serve alongside.

Peace,

Padre Steve+

Post Script: I do pray that no one takes offense at my words regarding my dealings with my mother. If someone thinks that I am wrong, or out of line they can contact me privately. However, I have to protect me now. I can’t help her or save her so I’m done.

12 Comments

Filed under alzheimer's disease, golf, iraq,afghanistan, Military, PTSD

Tagged as 1st sgt jim koenig, 557th medical company, abusive parents, advisers, afghanistan, al anbar province, alzheimer's disease, an loc, an officer and a gentleman, applebee's, army rotc program, battle of hue city, chaplain rich whaley, colonel donald a johnson, colonel edgar morrison, colonel mike paulovich, colonel raymond hawthorne, cwo4 charlie kosko, eod technicians, fort indiantown gap, fort lewis wa, general peter pace, golf, iraq, lcdr breedlove, major general frank smoker, major scotty jenkes, navy, navy njrotc, nelson lebron, PTSD, robin williams' golf skit, rotc advanced camp, senior chief john ness, sfc harry ball, sfc harry zilkan, sgt henry boyd, sgt maj kim davis, tony limey cartilage, veteran's day, veterans, vietnam, vietnam veterans

October 28, 2009 · 22:05

Going to War: Life at TQ, Chuck Norris Visits and Mass Casualties

While we prepared for our first mission we adjusted to what life was like on a large airbase and logistics hub. Ta Qaddum is one of the larger Iraq Air Force bases from Saddam’s time but has a history going back to the old Royal Air Force base at Habbinyah which is just down the hill. In 1941 the Iraqi Army laid siege to the British forces in Habbinyah from the escarpment that overlooks the town from what is now the northern edge of TQ. One only has to imagine the feelings of the Iraqi soldiers short on supply and exposed to air attack on the escarpment while waiting for German intervention only to be driven off by the British when their relief force arrived from Jordan.

Wrecked Iraqi Bomber at TQ

The Iraqi legacy on the base looms in some of the infrastructure as well as the hulks of Soviet made Iraqi Air Force bomber and fighter aircraft near the edge of the airfield. When I was there in 2007-2008 the base was under the command of the 2^nd Marine Logistics Group or 2^nd MLG. The MLG is a command and control headquarters for logistics support units of the 2^nd Marine Expeditionary Force. It is tailored to support the Ground Combat Element, the 2^nd Marine Division and the Air Combat Element, the 2^nd Marine Air Wing and attached units. Its function is similar to an Army Corps Support Command or whatever the Army calls them now. TQ was also the home of several helicopter squadrons Marine and Army as well as a local defense force at the time made up of the 1^st Battalion 11^th Marines from Camp Pendleton. 1/11 was an artillery battalion but was being primarily used as a security and convoy protection force. Other units including Navy Seabees and Army logistics units operated from TQ. A Marine Infantry Battalion was stationed in Habbinyah while elements of a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) were operating in the area as part of the surge.

The base is about mid-range on the amenity scale for troop comfort. At the time we were there the only non-DFAC/ Chow Hall was the Green Beans Coffee trailer as opposed to places like Al Asad and Camp Victory which had a multiplicity of fast food places for the troops. The Marines are tougher on communication security than the Army and many websites which troops could use on other bases were unavailable unless one went to the Iraqi internet café or the MWR computer and phone center. The Iraqi run shop had the fastest internet on the base but you had to contend with huge amounts of second hand smoke and pay a nominal charge to use it. The MWR facility often had broken machines, had a waiting list to use them and the connections were very poor with pages slower to load that the old dial up days. On the plus side TQ did have a relatively decent Marine Corps exchange, not as big as Al Asad or Camp Victory, but one of the larger exchanges in Iraq and second only to Al Asad in the West. Most places including Ramadi had pretty small and not well stocked exchanges. TQ had nice fitness center facilities which I used a lot being coached by Nelson.

060 Chaplains and RPs with Chuck Norris

The base MWR worked with the USO and other agencies to bring sports stars or celebrities to the base. Just before we left on our first mission Chuck Norris came through. Chuck was made an “Honorary Marine” a few years back and has made it his task to try to meet every Marine deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, shaking the hand of each one he met. The chapel was the host facility for the visit which last about 2 hours in which Chuck pressed the flesh and had his picture taken with probably close to 5000 Marines and other personnel, maybe more. The Chaplains were drafted to be the photographers and I lost count of how many different types of digital cameras that I took pictures with. Chuck enjoyed the heck out of Nelson and was impressed with his fighting resume. I think that Nelson got more face time with Chuck than anyone on the base and he deserved it. Chuck was accompanied by Chaplain Langston and RP1 Roland our friend from Fallujah. After they were done he had to get on the waiting helo and fly out to his next stop.

058 Chuck and Nelson

The chow halls, of which there were two, were large and usually had a pretty good menu. I especially came to like the Indian nights where Indian specialties were served. Since many of the cooks employed by Gulf Catering who had the contract were Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or from Ceylon so it generally was pretty good unless they had to scrounge for suitable ingredients. I like the curry chicken, but occasionally it was made with chicken nuggets when the real chicken was in short supply. It almost reminded me of the Spam Lamb in the TV series M*A*S*H or the great quote out of the movie Meatballs: “Attention. Here’s an update on tonight’s dinner. It was veal. I repeat, veal. The winner of tonight’s mystery meat contest is Jeffrey Corbin who guessed “some kind of beef.” I think that there were a number of times when I really wondered what the meat was. They usually had a pretty good salad bar unless resupply convoys were interrupted and fresh vegetables had run out. There were a number of times where the pickins were slim and Nelson and I had to get creative. Breakfast was usually good with a good choice of food choices, some even healthy. The workers were great, always friendly despite working 12 hour days 6 days a week for $300 a month. Many had signed up through agencies which cost them $4000 so the first year that many worked was for nothing. It was in my opinion a case of a KBR/ Halliburton subcontractor using them in effect as indentured servants and pretty well damned close to slaves, all legal by the US Government. I thought that it was pretty immoral and certainly a case of a company contracted by the government reducing labor costs on the back of some of the poorest people in the world. Back at the end of the Cold War the military downsized and eliminated most of the Army and Marine mess specialists which paved the way for the contracting industry, led by the former Secretary of Defense and his Halliburton team to begin their massive contracting operations with the Bosnia deployments back in 1995. They were limited to their own compound far away from anything and were always the last to eat. They were polite and really tried to accommodate sometimes rude and condescending Americans, the local management did the best they could to give them good accommodations but were limited by their parent company. Many of the workers were Roman Catholic or Anglican Christians and Fr Jose had a great ministry that he took on to support them by going to their camp a couple of times a week to celebrate Mass. His masses were packed and what a source of life and the love of God he was to so many people at TQ, Americans and non-Americans alike.

988 Fr Jose on the bank of the Euphrates at Habbinyah

About a week after we got to TQ Marines from the battalion in Habbinyah were hit in an IED complex ambush while on patrol. A couple of vehicles were hit, Jose was across the base celebrating Mass and Pat was in Fallujah. A chaplain was needed in the Shock Surgical Trauma Unit or SSTP. Wounded were being brought in, the platoon had been hit hard, 14 wounded and a couple killed. I figured that since I was a pretty experienced trauma and critical care chaplain who had dealt with over 500 deaths, many traumatic with bullet wounds, burns and the host of other types of trauma, and tended to probably twice that many who did not die that I could handle this. When I got to the SSTP I was greeted by a couple of nurses and docs and briefed as to what was going on. Within a few minutes the casualties were beginning to roll in as the UH-60 Dust-off MEDIVAC helicopters landed and teams went out to meet them. Some were ambulatory, or walking wounded bandaged with lacerations and burns on their faces and upper bodies, other were brought in on stretchers and ushered into the treatment beds in the area outside the OR. It was like a scene out of M*A*S*H as the well honed surgical teams, surgeons, anesthetists, nurses and corpsmen went to work. I now work with a number of these fine people. I was able to make my way about to the wounded Marines, praying with some, holding hands as and with a couple performing the sacrament of healing, or the anointing of the sick. As I listen to Marines, prayed with them or anointed them there was a tremendous sense that this was different than what I did at Parkland or Cabell-Huntington. These young men wore the same uniform that I wore, served the same country that I served and travelled the same roads that I would soon be on. As each was assessed and moved off to surgery, prepared for further evacuation or treated and sent to a ward I noticed the little things about each of them. The wounds, the torn uniforms, the burns and even the tattoos, these were our guys, they weren’t gang bangers or criminals but young Americans fighting a brutal war against a enemy that had terrorized Iraqis and found devastating ways to kill Americans. Some of the Marines asked if they would be okay, others asked about friends and in those moments I learned what it was to care and be with men traumatized by the violence and brutality of war against an enemy that would not fight by our rules, much as the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong refused to fight our war. The enemy was clever and determined and his weapons were deadly.

Stars and Stripes sstp TQ Surgical During Mass Casualty Event (Stars and Stripes Photo)

The teams did their work quickly and soon the event in the ER was done as the Marines were moved off to OR, the ward or further evacuation. I spent some time talking with unit Corpsmen and less wounded Marines and learned about the attack. They were in a convoy heading back to Habbinyah when the there was an enemy contact ahead of them. As they moved forward to engage a primary and secondary IED hit the convoy heavily damaging two trucks with an ensuing firefight. The Marines fought off their attackers, the wounded were treated and security set up as Dust-off came in to evacuate the wounded. I thought back to my days as a Medical Service Corps Officer in the Army and remembered my friends who had elected to apply for flight school to become Dust-off pilots. I remembered learning to call in MEDIVAC missions and some of the Army MSC aviators that I knew; some had flown in Vietnam, being a Dustoff pilot can be a sporty occupation. They fly an unarmed bird into hot landing zones and get badly wounded troops to medical facilities in 100 degree plus weather without killing them enroute, those guys are good. As the crowd dissipated I spend so time with some of the staff. Eventually with night having fallen I began the walk back to my office in the Chapel. I looked up at the night sky, in the darkness a another UH-60 sat down to pick up others being evacuated on to Baghdad or Balad. I looked up at the sky and saw more stars than I had seen at any time since I was at sea on the USS HUE CITY. It was amazing; it looked like you could almost walk across them from horizon to horizon. When I got to my office I checked on my our mission status, I had submitted our first Air Support Request earlier in the day, of course it had not moved yet, but at least it gave me something to do. I checked my unclassified e-mail and knew that there was nothing that I could share with anyone so I looked at baseball scores, checked a couple of news sites and headed off to my “can.”

medivac Packaging a Casualty for Further Evacuation on the TQ Surgical Pad

That night I did not sleep well, the images of the wounded Marines were burned into my mind; I could see their faces, their wounds and their tattoos. I prayed the office of Compline from the Book of Common Prayer using Psalm 91 and the prayer “Be our light in the darkness, O Lord, and in your great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of your only Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.” I took some comfort in this, walked out again into the night to see illumination rounds in the vicinity of Habbinyah and the distant sound of automatic weapons fire. For once my insomnia was not related to jet lag or exhausting night flights, it was instead a realization that what happened to these Marines could well happen to me as I we launched later in the week.

The next morning another eight or ten Marines from the same company came in, this time I went to the SSTP with Jose and we did a tag team match, we tried to determine religious affiliation of the wounded Marines with him taking the Roman Catholics to provide sacramental needs and me taking the rest. Once again the images were vivid; these Marines were on a mission to recover the damaged vehicles and were hit by IEDs on their way back to base. This time one Marine was killed. I walked to the graves registration and mortuary affairs team with the battalion surgeon and a corpsman who were to identify the body. I listened to their frustration and heartache as they described what they had been through the past two days. The company had taken over 20 casualties including 3 dead. A high percentage of casualties for a unit that probably numbered about 120 men. Once again I walked back, this time in the hot mid-morning sun with Jose to the Chapel. We talked for a while about the past two days, he knew the battalion that had been hit well as he supported them as well. The surgeon was one of his parishioners. After we went our separate ways I did my morning prayer and settled in to study more about where we were going. Nelson and I got PT later in the evening and I spent a restless night in my “can” playing computer Maj-Jong and Chess on my laptop deep into the morning. Once again I spent time walking in the dark looking at the vast sea of stars above me.

3 Comments

Filed under iraq,afghanistan, Military, Tour in Iraq

Tagged as 1st bn 11th marines, 2nd marine divsion, 2nd mlg, 2rd world national contract employees, al asad, al taqaddum, book of common prayer, cabell huntington hospital, camp victory, chuck norris, compline, dfac, dick cheney, dustoff, fallujah, gulf catering company, habbinyah, halliburton, ied, ii maw, II MEF forward, iraq, kbr, marine corps exchange, MASH, mass casualty events, meatballs, meu, mwr facilities, mystery meat, nelson lebron, parkland memorial hospital, seige of habbinyah 1941, sstp, surgery shock trauma platoon, uh-60 blackhawk, US Marine Corps, uss hue city

September 13, 2009 · 23:15

Going to War: Tripping into Ta Qaddum

helos at night CH-53s and CH-47s

Our interlude in Fallujah over we waited in a tent outside the helicopter terminal operations building after RP1 Roland dropped us off. Roland was good and helped hook us up with some of the Marines to get the Gator to put our ton of gear on to get it out to the helicopter. I looked around and noted that both here and a Camp Victory most passengers had a significant amount less gear than us of course all had deployed with units and not as individuals thus the load that had to pack on their person was not exorbitant. I thought of all we had been issued as individuals and the fact that I did not take everything that they wanted me to take and thought crap…what is wrong with this picture? Of course whining about it does no good and if my lot was to suffer dragging all of this around then I would try to do so in good humor. I pondered this and began to think of the movie Kelly’s Heroes and how the character played by Don Rickles Staff Sergeant “Crapgame.” I kind of chuckled as I thought of how he complained to “Kelly” played by Clint Eastwood and Master Sergeant “Big Joe” played by Telly Savalis when after their vehicles were destroyed by American aircraft when saddled with a .30 caliber machine gun and its associated ammunition.

I looked in one tent which was full and eventually found another we a couple of open seats for us. I sat my ass down on the wooden bench grounded the gear that I had with me, a back pack, and two briefcases now with 3 computers. My Mass kit was packed in my rucksack and all of my personal gear that could be placed on my flak vest was there including two knives…I was not allowed to pack a weapon but figured that these were simply to keep my fingernails clean and shave when I had nothing else to shave with. Nelson of course was loaded for bear, dual armed he had an M-16A2 and a Beretta 9mm pistol and packed a significant amount of loaded clips of 5.56 and 9mm rounds in his ammo pouch. He sported two K-Bar fighting knives. He also had his “game face on, the same look of determination that he sports when he fights. Having an assistant who actually could kill someone to protect me was comforting. There are some that I have met in both the Army and Navy that would have been as capable as Barney Fife if they were in a combat zone. Of course Nelson and I knowing that we would be out in isolated areas with small teams of Americans had worked out a deal. If were got into a bad situation he would toss me the 9 mil and we would defend ourselves and the people on our team figuring that since I was a chaplain that if I was captured that I would be used for propaganda purposes and executed on TV. The plan was that if this happened that he would get credit for anything that I hit and no one would ever know that I did it. I would not be like a few chaplains in the 2003 invasion of Iraq who carried and fought and then put it on their web sites, I figured that if this happened I would go to confession and ask for forgiveness rather than having to explain to Judy why I was dead.

The time passed slowly though it was only a couple of hours it felt like forever. The tent was stuffy with a good number of people in it, Nelson found a corner and threw his gear down laid down comfortable. I was a bit on the hyper-aroused side of life despite being tired so I got up and took a walk outside in moonlight. The night air though still pretty warm felt better than that of the tent, as sweat dripped down my face I took a drink out of the liter bottle of water that I had pulled out of a cooler in the tent. The airfield was busy, pairs of helicopters, 46’s, 53’s, and Army MH-60s and CH-47s landed and took off staying just long enough to disgorge their passengers and cargo and then pick up their next load before lifting off. I watched in fascination as Marines and other passengers were led by ground crew staff to and from the aircraft, their shadowy figures blending into the illumination provided by the moon. A couple of AH-1 attack choppers sat down for a few minutes and then took off. I wondered if they would find targets or be called to respond to attacks on Marines or Soldiers in the area. As I walked back to the tent I heard the boom of our artillery in the distance.

After a while they called for our flight. We gathered up the gear that we had and Nelson got with the Marines to make sure that we were on the same flight as the “gator” was taking our gear to. When we flew our “ticket” to get on a flight was the two letter code for our destination with the number of the flight such as 26 or 54 or whatever the mission or route number was. In our case it was “TQ” and the number was either 54 or 56 which was from HMH 463 flying CH-53-Ds out of Al Asad. Their flights were known as Kahuna followed by the number. This was written on our left hand with a black marker. As passengers we staged by our flight by young Marines with flashlights shaded by red cones. We got in a line with about 30 other passengers, Marines, Sailors, Soldiers and civilians and moved out for the 53 which had just landed coming in from the east. The companion bird was forward of ours. The Gator move alongside of us and reached the helicopter just before we did. Amid the din of the rotor blades and engines the Marine on the Gator got off and called out “Is the Chaplain that this gear belongs to here.” I called out that I was and Nelson and I moved to the Gator and began the off load of four “super sized” suitcase shaped canvas sea bags and two flight bags. To get an idea how big our bags were you have to think of something about a third bigger than the biggest suitcases that you can buy only soft sided with no wheels. No they did have straps that you could try to carry them with, but they were not the greatest. Also note that we had a full deployment worth of gear in those bags and were expected to lug them across Iraq and you can see that this was a less than fun evolution and why I thought of Staff Sergeant Crapgame. We dragged our gear aboard the aircraft moving toward the center of the bird placing it on the deck under the rotor blades where we took our places in jump seats and strapped ourselves in. I felt something warm dripping on me and looked up, it was hydraulic fluid coming from the transmission of the bird which was located above me. There is an old joke among those who fly in Marine Corps helicopters: “How do you know when a Marine Helicopter is low on hydraulic fluid? When it stops leaking.” I thought of the joke but this time it wasn’t funny. I’ve never been a big fan of rotary wing flight and the fact that I was exhausted, sweaty and sitting in a cramped hot, leaky, dark and heavily loaded helicopter in a combat zone made the experience less than fun.

It was about 0200 when we lifted off into the night on what we understood to be a short flight to TQ. Admittedly it was, if you only count the flight time from Fallujah to TQ itself. As we flew in I could see the sprawling airbase below but we flew off to what looked like the other side of the airfield. As we flew in I thought of the Army bird that had gone down earlier in the day. I wondered what had caused it to crash and my pucker factor went up just a bit higher as I wiped more hydraulic fluid from my face.

When we landed we told to exit the bird without our gear. We released ourselves from our seats and stumbled over our gear and that of the rest of the passengers that was in the middle of the deck. We exited out the rear of the aircraft down the ramp into the rotor wash. Turning left we moved off about 70 yards from the fifty-three and looked around. A few crew members and ground crew personnel moved in and out of the bird. At first I wondered if we had been moved off to refuel but there was no fuel in view. We waited for about 25 minutes in the dark as Marines moved in and out of the fifty-three. Finally a crew member came over to us, and motioned us to follow him back into the aircraft. Once again we negotiated the gear and found our seats. Once we were back in the fifty-three lifted off and flew a short distance across the airfield where were instructed to exit the bird with our gear. For most of the passengers this was a fairly easy evolution, for us it was not so easy. We had to take one bag at a time down the ramp and get each a decent distance from the bird before returning for the others. We got our gear off the bird and found that the rest of the passengers were already being herded the 200-300 yard hike to the paved area near the terminal. Nelson and I each packed one of the large bags on our back and began to pull the other bags behind us as another group of Marines walked out to the fifty-three. Eventually about a third of the way to the terminal a Marine on the ground crew came and asked if we needed assistance. I replied that it would be appreciated. He instructed us to wait where we were and about three minutes later a forklift with a large plywood box on the forks. The Marine who had asked if we needed help instructed us to place the gear in the box and proceed in the direction of the terminal with another member of the ground crew. As the birds lifted off behind us we set off for the terminal area. When we got there we had to wait again. A Marine collected our ID cards and walked in the building telling us to remain where we were.

About this time, our gear on the ground again with us there with our helmets off and sweat pouring down our faces a female petty officer came up to us. It was the 2^nd Marline Logistics Group senior RP. Nelson knew her from Afghanistan so our welcome was pleasant. The RP had a Chevy SUV in front of the terminal. The Marine came back with our ID cards, I grabbed a bottle of water and the three of us began to move the gear to the truck which was about 50 years away via the closed route through the terminal. After loading the gear she drove us about 10 minutes to the other side of the base where the billeting area was. She got the truck as close as she could and once again we lugged the gear about 100 yards to our new homes which were called “cans.” These are like a storage container with a window and linoleum floors. Unlike some of the places I had been recently this also had a small wall unit air conditioner that worked. It was now about 0315 and I stank to low hell. I dug through my bags, found my shower gear and towel and got a shower. Finally about 45 days after we detached from EOD with stops in Norfolk, Fort Jackson, Kuwait, Baghdad and Fallujah we could get to work. On my return to my new home I did the office of Compline from the Book of Common Prayer, laid down on the bed and passed out.

Leave a comment

Filed under History, iraq,afghanistan, Military, Tour in Iraq

Tagged as 2nd mlg, ah-1 W, barney fife, book of common prayer, camp victory, ch-46, ch-47, ch-53, clint eastwood, compline, don rickles, fallujah, hmh 463, iraq, kelly's heroes, m-9 beretta, m16a1, master sergeant big joe, mh-60, nelson lebron, staff sergeant crapgame, ta qaddum, telly savalis, tq, uh-60 blackhawk

September 11, 2009 · 22:46

The most dangerous assignment: 4 More Advisers Die In Afghanistan

Isolated Embedded Training Team Base

Once know and relatively unglamorous group of American military men have suffered multiple casualties in a single engagement. These men belong to are small units that do not have a lot of organic firepower. They usually operate in remote areas far from immediate assistance if they get in trouble. When one of these units suffers casualties, especially where they lose 3-5 men in one engagement they might have lost 20-25% of their unit.

On September 8^th a team of these men was ambushed while on foot going to an Afghan with Afghan soldiers to meet tribal leaders with the intent of establishing a government presence in a hostile area. In the ambush four were killed, three U.S. Marines and one U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman attached to them. On Tuesday the 8^th Gunnery Sgt. Edwin W. Johnson Jr., 31, of Columbus, Ga., 1st Lt. Michael E. Johnson, 25, of Virginia Beach, Va., Staff Sgt. Aaron M. Kenefick, 30, of Roswell, Ga. and Petty Officer 3rd Class James R. Layton, 22, of Riverbank, Calif., were while working as trainers to Afghan soldiers on a mission to search for weapons and then meet village elders under an agreement to establish government authority there. They were killed in “a complex attack according to a U.S. Military spokesman. According to McClatchy news service who had a reporter that accompanied the mission, insurgents had set up positions in the village and in the mountains on both sides and apparently attacked as the men neared the village. 1st LT Johnson was wounded and while being attended Navy Hospital Corpsman Third Class James R. Layton when they both came under attack. Both were killed. Another Marine told the McClatchy reporter that they’d found the wrappings of bandages and other medical gear strewn around Layton and Johnson. Eight Afghan troops and police and the Marine commander’s Afghan interpreter also died in the ambush and the subsequent battle that raged from dawn until 2 p.m. around the remote hamlet of Ganjgal in eastern Kunar province, close to the Pakistan border.

traiining team with afghan army USMC Advisers with Afghan Counterparts

The McClatchy reporter said: “We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition.” The reporter said that “U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.”

The battle must have been intense. I have been on foot patrols in areas crowded with Iraqis far away from significant support where if an insurgent group had attacked us we would have easily been overwhelmed. This is part of the world of the U.S. Military in the embedded training teams which work closely with Afghan and Iraqi soldiers. I spent a lot of time with the advisers to Iraqi Army. Border and Port of Entry troops, Police and Highway Patrol spread across the entirety of Al Anbar Province. These men and women are seldom thought of or mentioned by the press or even the military. . They come from all branches of the military and serve as advisers, trainers and mentors to these nations’ security forces. The duty is dangerous. The advisers, be they to the military, police, or civil administrations often work in the most isolated places in these countries and are stationed in small teams with the Iraqis and Afghans that they advise. They are often far from the “big battalions” that have lots of firepower available and often operate out of larger and more secure bases with air support close at hand. Earlier in the year there were a number of incidents where advisers were killed by renegade soldiers or police, or by infiltrators posing as security personnel. Two soldiers were working with an Iraqi unit in doing humanitarian work in a village when attacked and killed by someone who had infiltrated the Iraqi security forces. . On March 27th Navy LT Florence Choe and LTJG Francis Toner IV were killed by an Afghan insurgent posing as an Afghan Army soldier. All of these events triggered anxiety in me as I remembered how many times I was incredibly exposed to danger conducting similar operations.

This incident was especially chilling as I read the reporter’s account of the ambush. “Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five minutes away.” According to the reporter Marine Maj. Kevin Williams” the commander of the team said: “We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We’ve lost today, through his translator to his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter’s repeated demands for helicopters.” When I read this my mind flashed back to being in the middle of a massive crowd at the border crossing of Waleed on the Iraqi-Jordanian border. There were about nine of us, of which only 8 were armed as I am not allowed by the U.S. interpretation of the law of war to carry a weapon. There were thousands of Iraqis and others around us, very few border troops or port-of-entry police anywhere near us. The port of entry had been the scene of numerous attempts to smuggle weapons, materials, and other supplies, drugs and to Iraq insurgents and Al Qaida. Very few US troops were stationed there and many of these were dispatched off of the base at any given time.

The advisers are drawn from all services. They are all Individual Augments that come from both the Active and Reserve components. They do not deploy with their own units, which means that they go to war with people that they might have trained alongside getting ready for the mission, but otherwise have not served with. When they come home they go back to their old assignments or new orders and are separated from the men and women that they served alongside for 7 to 15 months. In other words they are isolated when they return home and go back to places where the majority of personnel, even those who have been “in country” have no earthly idea or appreciation of the conditions that they served in and dangers that they faced. This happened to me when I returned and I went through an emotional collapse as the PTSD that I did not know I had kicked my ass. Sights, smells, noises, crowds, airports and in fact almost everything but baseball diamonds caused me to melt down as they all brought the danger back to me. Don’t get me wrong, my tour in Iraq was the highlight of 27 plus years in the military, the part of which I am the most proud.

I have a special place for these men and women. I served with them in Iraq’s Al Anbar Province as the first Navy Chaplain, and one of the first chaplains of any service to be assigned to cover these teams since Vietnam. My assistant, RP2 Nelson Lebron and I deployed together from out unit. I had prepared well. I had been on the bubble to deploy for months. My background in military history and past service with both the Army and Marines helped me. Likewise my military and civilian education helped me. Shortly before we were notified of the deployment I went to the Jordanian Army Peace Operations Training Center course on Iraqi culture, religion and society. I had served as a chaplain in the trauma department of one of the largest trauma centers in the country. RP2 Lebron had deployed multiple times to Iraq, Beirut and Afghanistan where he was awarded the Defense Meritorious Service Medal (no small feat for an E-5). He is also an incredibly gifted boxer, kick boxer and martial artist who has fought on Team USA and holds more title belts than I can count. He most recently won the Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic. I had served with him before and he knew that his mission was to keep me safe. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but the Chief of Staff of the Iraq Assistance Group said that we were “the best ministry team he had seen in 28 years in the Army.”

When we went to Al Anbar we were sent out with the Marines and Soldiers advising the 1st and 7th Iraqi Army Divisions, The Iraqi Police, Highway Patrol, the 2nd Border Forces Brigade and Port of Entry Police. We operated in a area the size of the state of Oregon. In some cases it would take us 2 days by air and convoy to reach isolated teams on the Syrian border. When you travel by air in Iraq you are always at the mercy of the weather and aircraft availability. I had the rare privilege as a Lieutenant Commander to be able to arrange all of my own air transportation. Most people, including people higher ranking than me had to depend on others to do this for them. We worked with our advisers to get out to them. We would be out 5-12 days at a time with anywhere from 4 to 7 days between missions. In our 7 months we traveled over 4500 air miles and 1500 ground miles. Almost all of our air travel was rotor wing. We flew in CH-46, CH-47 and MH-53s and the MV-22 Osprey. Our convoys were usually not larger than 3 American HUMMVs and sometimes a few Iraqi vehicles. Our biggest guns were .50 cal or M240B machine guns.

Dinner with Geneal Sabah Dinner with General Sabah in Ramadi

Many places we served were in places that had no large forces in position to help us if we got in trouble. Even on the bases we were isolated. Our teams were with the Iraqis in almost all cases. We often ate in Iraqi chow halls and used Iraqi shower trailers. Our advisers had us meeting their Iraqi counterparts. We met and dined with Iraqi Generals, had ch’ai (tea) with small groups of Americans and Iraqis and got out with the Bedouins. We were in a number of particularly sensitive and dangerous situations with our advisers; one which I cannot go into great detail involved a senior advisor having to inform a new Iraqi Brigade Commander that a member of his staff was engaged in illegal activities and who had put out contracts to kill the American officer. The bad Iraqi officer was confronted and relieved in a tense meeting where both Nelson and I were with that Colonel and two other advisors as they made the confrontation in the Iraq C.O.’s office, a confrontation that got quite heated until the Iraqi C.O. shut him up. At one point the cashiered officer appealed to the American “Imam” that he was a faithful Moslem, to whit the American Colonel and I asked him how a person who was living a good Moslem life could steal from his own countrymen and supply his county’s enemies with what they needed.

Waleed trip 006 Team at Waleed on the “secure” side of the Port of Entry

It was an incredible, once in a lifetime tour serving with some of the greatest Americans and Iraqis around. Iraqi soldiers in with our convoys would ask me to bless their trucks with Holy Water like I was doing with the American trucks. I came to admire many of the professional Iraqi officers that I came to know and pray for the people of Iraq, that God would grant them peace. They are wonderfully hospitable and gracious. We were often treated to food and tea by Iraqi soldiers, and civilians. After nearly 30 years of nearly continuous war, dictatorship and terrorism, they deserve peace and security.

Me BTT CO and Iraqi Leaders Advisers and Iraqi Border Troops near Syria

I had one Iraqi operations officer, a Sunni Muslim tell me that he wished that his Army had Christian priests because they would take care of his soldiers and had no political axe to grind. He said that the Army did not trust most Imams or Mullahs because they had compromised themselves during the civil war. Another officer, a Shia Muslim came to me to thank me for being there to take care of our Marines. He said that he, an Iraqi Shia Arab, hoped that if they had any problems from the Persians (Iranians), that we would help them. These is little truth to what is floated that Iraqi and Iranian Shia like each other. The memories of the past die hard in the Middle East. When Persia ruled Iraq they treated the Arabs like dirt. Likewise the memories of the Iran-Iraq war are still alive. Iraqi Arabs, Sunni, Shia and even Christian have little love for the “Persians.” General Sabah of the 7th Division had us to his quarters for dinner. We had a wonderful and friendly discussion about similarities and differences in Christianity and Islam. We departed friends. The last time I saw him ws in the Ramadi heliport. He saw me, ran up to me in from of his staff and Americans in the little terminal and gave me a bear hug, telling all that I was his friend. Another Iraqi General told me just before we left to come back as a tourist in 5 years because everything would be better. I honestly think that he is right. I hope to go back someday. It would be a privilege to see my Iraqi friends again.

Me and BTT with Bedouin Kids With a Bedouin Family

At the same time Afghanistan is a different animal. Iraq was not as easy of place for Al Qaida to work in and the Iraqis have a much more developed national identity which they trace back to the Babylonians and Chaldeans. They also have adopted a lot of western ways. Insurgents there once they had lost the confidence of the Iraqis lost traction. In Afghanistan there is no real collective national identity and the form of Islam is much more severe than almost all Iraqi variants. The Afghans insurgents have also due to the terrain; climate and inability of invaders to gain the confidence of the population have used the inability of invaders against them as they bring the population back under their control, sometimes quite peacefully. The Taliban have secure bases on the Pakistani side of the border as did the North Vietnamese and they have the support of much of the population due to the unpopularity and corruption of the Afghan government. The Taliban have begun to operate in larger better organized units and last year a battalion sized element attempted to overrun a small NATO base. They did this with the Russians as well. One troubling comment was reported about something overhead on the Taliban radio: “We will do to you what we did to the Russians,” the insurgent’s leader boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.” They also have outlasted or defeated a host of powerful empires. The war in Afghanistan has much more in common with Vietnam than it does with Iraq. Counter Insurgency techniques learned in Iraq will be helpful but because of the terrain, climate and nature of the opposition will be tougher to execute and in order to have any chance of getting out of Afghanistan having accomplished the mission we will end of taking more casualties, especially in the teams of advisers. Iraq was different, despite the problems and having to be rebuilt the Iraqi Army has a long history and tradition dating back to the Ottoman Empire, they led the way to westernizing Iraq and helping build an Iraqi identity, this is not the case in Afghanistan. What happened to this team could easily happen to others and it looks to me like someone set them up to be hit, probably a Taliban sympathizer in the Afghan security forces or government. Afghanistan is much more treacherous than Iraq and in my view will be much more difficult.

What happened at Ganjgal is being investigated and in our area it is front page news as 1st Lt Johnson was from Virginia Beach. The Taliban want to use events like this to break down the American home front and 8 years after the attacks of 9-11 2001 with that a fading memory they may well do this. If they do Afghanistan will become Vietnam in the mountains. We will be forced to withdraw and and the NATO alliance will be severely tested. A defeat would have wide ranging consequences beginning in Afghanistan as it would fall back into the medieval world of Taliban rule, and would likely spread to Pakistan which which is already under severe strain. This could threaten the Pakistani nuclear weapons.

Our advisers build bridges between peoples of different history and culture. They are the unsung heroes of these wars and will likely never get credit for all that they have done. Operating in isolation they are exposed to more danger that the average unit. They have my highest admiration and I hope that if you know one of these men or women that you will thank them. I pray that they will all come home safe and be blessed with success. I would certainly serve with them again at any time and in any place.

Please keep the families of the most recent casualties in your prayers. Peace, Steve+

1 Comment

Filed under iraq,afghanistan, Tour in Iraq

Tagged as 1st Lt Michael e johnson virginia beach, 9-11 2001, advisers, afghan army, afghanistan, al qaida, al waleed port of entry iraq, ambushes, babylonians. persians, chaldeans, counterinsurgency, ganjgal, gunnery sergeant edwin w johnson jr columbus ga, hosital corpsman, individual augmentee, insurgency, iraq, iraq assistance group, iraqi army, lack of air support, lt florence choe, ltjg francis toner, major kevin williams, marines, mcclatchy news service, nato, navy, nelson lebron, ottoman empire, pakistan, pakistan nuclear weapons, peace operations training center, petty officer 3rd class james layton riverbank ca, PTSD, rules of engagement, russians, shia moslem, soviet defeat in afghanistan, staff sergeant aaron keneflick roswell ga, sunni moslem, taliban, training teams

September 6, 2009 · 14:09

Going to War: Interlude in Fallujah Reunions, Redirection and a Stay at the Ramadan Inn

USMC 155mm Howitzer firing on Insurgents at Fallujah in 2007

Note: This is the latest installment of my “Going to War” Series. Other postings in this series are located in the Subjects section under “Tour In Iraq.” The series chronicles the tour of Religious Support Team-2 of the Iraq Assistance Group in MNF-West from July 2007-February 2008. We were the first Navy Chaplain and Assistant to work supporting advisers since the Vietnam War.

We woke up to the sound of more outgoing artillery fire. The sun was shining outside as I look out my window at the sky above the California Barrier that protected our “suite” in the south wing of the Ramadan Inn. Climbing out of the decrepit Iraqi bed with the fresh sheets I stumbled over my two tons of gear to look at the time while Nelson slept like a baby in his equally decrepit Iraqi bed. My ever trusty alarm clock showed that it was about 0830, which meant we had gotten maybe 5 hours sleep and missed breakfast. Thankfully I had stockpiled a few pop-tarts and granola bars from the Camp Victory chow-hall the day before. Opening the door and peering out into the hallway I saw it empty and walked across the hall to the head, shower and laundry room to do my morning business. Despite being a Baath Party playground the suites at the Ramadan Inn were not furnished with their own toilet or shower, just a small sink and mirror.

Ramadan Inn

Though the Ramadan Inn had seen better days it was certainly, despite being the playground of Uday and Qusay Hussein it was not exactly a palace like those of their father Saddam. It was somewhat reminiscent of an old and run down motel along Route 666. The floor was a marble type tile and the sand painted concrete building with a flat roof. I strolled over to the head in my PT-sleep clothes and was relieved to be able to relieve myself in a facility that had actual porcelain shitters which flushed using real water. If you have been to Iraq or Afghanistan you know that this is not always the case. The showers were passable being a more European design and the water was hot. I guess even the cold water was hot in Fallujah with temps in the 120s. Once I had gotten up I awakened Nelson, the sleeping beauty. He then went through his morning ritual to make himself presentable to the world. Those who know nelson know that if he can he will take care of his personal hygiene. I ate one of my Strawberry Filled frosted Pop Tarts washed done with water and when Nelson was ready we walked over to the Chaplain office. It was like a maze to get there. We walked across the way a bit, took a right, made a left and went through the normal transient quarters area, took a right went up a block or two, took a left, made another left, wound our way past a decorative lake, took a right, went past a number of buildings before passing a final bank of green porta-johns finding the MEF- Forward Chaplain Office to our right. The sun shone brightly and though not a long walk was relatively warm and by the time we got to the Chaplain Office I was sweating.

fallujah pond Pond at Fallujah

The Chaplain office was like every other facility and was protected by California Barriers or Hesco’s. We were met by RP1 Roland and the Deputy MEF-FWD Chaplain CDR J.P. Hedges. They were most hospitable and offered us water as well as coffee, which my caffeine deprived brain needed badly. After introductions Nelson got together with RP1 Roland and I met with Chaplain Hedges doing the usual butt-sniffing that military professionals engage in when meeting someone for the first time. This ritual usually consists of learning who our mutual friends are, where and with whom we had served in the Navy, where we went to school, something about our families and for Chaplains our faith tradition or denominational affiliation. This is a customary act for chaplains as it is for other communities and specialties in the Navy. On the positive side it is a way of making connection with each other and building relationships. It is also a way or self preservation within the system as sometime there are people that do not have your best interests at heart. However for J.P. and I the meeting was very friendly. We d a lot of shared experiences in the types of duties we had done and we had mutual friends. While we enjoyed conversation he began to introduce me to some of the things that had been going on in country the last few months. After about 30 minutes Chaplain Mike Langston came in. It was Mike who had worked with Peter Dissmore and the Corps Chaplain to bring us out to the west to cover the Marine and Army advisors in Al Anbar Province.

Mike had a couple of orders of business to take care of before he brought Nelson and I into his office and had our reunion. Nelson and I had both worked with Chaplain Langston. It was good to see him again. Nelson had worked for him in Afghanistan and I had been with him at 2nd Marine Division in 2000-2001. He and Chaplain John Kaul arranged for me to take over Headquarters Battalion upon my return to work in a quasi-regimental billet with oversight of the independent battalions Religious Ministry Teams, though not the actual supervision of them. In addition to my regular duties counseling Marines, doing suicide interventions, conducting classes and supporting field exercises they used me, because of my experience to assist and evaluate chaplains who had been fired or relieved of their duties. I got each one for 30-60 days to see if they could be recovered for further service or not. In a sense this transformed me from a relief pitcher to a pitching coach. Chaplain Langston was at a school when 9-11 occurred and during this time I was used as the Deputy Division Chaplain looking at readiness, training and potential deployment of our religious ministry teams with their units. Both Nelson and I had experienced Chaplain Langston as a tough but fair chaplain. What he did expect was that we would be out doing our job and keeping him or his office in the loop on our operations and issues facing us. He did not attempt to micro-manage us.

bunkers_everywhere.jpg.w300h225 Bunkers to Protect Against Indirect Fire at Camp Fallujah

Mike Langston is a prior Marine Corps Infantry Officer who had been a been a Company Commander and battalion staff officer as well as instructor at “The Basic Course” which is the leveling field for all Marine Corps officers regardless of their commissioning source. He played football in college and still has the physique of a defensive lineman. He left active duty and went to seminary and when he was ordained and graduated from seminary entered the Navy Chaplain Corps. He had since risen to the pinnacle of a career for most chaplains having been promoted to Captain, the same as a Colonel for the other services and assigned as the 2^nd Marine Division Chaplain. He is a no-nonsense kind of guy and kind with a high level of energy and emotion. He explained the current situation in the Province was, the locations of the various Marine Regimental Combat Teams (RCT-2 and RCT-6) as well as the one Army Brigade Combat Team, 3^rd Brigade, 4^th Infantry Division as well as the 1^st Light Armor Reconnaissance Battalion and the MEF Aviation and logistics assets were located. He then got down to the specifics of our mission which were pretty simple and suited to our personality as a ministry team. Basically he expected us to manage our own operations in the MEF area of operations. He expected that we coordinate our operations with the teams that we would support and keep his office informed of where we were going and what our general plan of operation was. Since he had worked with both of us and we were both known and trusted quantities he gave us a tremendous amount of operational freedom to do our job. His expectation was that we would be active and get out to the remotest places that we had training and assistance teams of advisors. He told us about an Army team that had been based in Ramadi to do the job with the advisors. He confirmed what Peter Dissmore had told us about this team. They had never left the base in 4 months and basically hung out at the Ramadi main chapel. They managed to get their orders curtailed and left theater never once having contacted or visited any advisory teams.

ega fallujah Monument in the Traffic Circle at Camp Fallujah

We were also told of a change to our projected base of operations. Our original plan of operations had us working out of the former British and Iraqi base at Habbinyah the location of the headquarters of the 1^st Iraqi Division and the Advisors assigned to it. Instead the Colonel in charge of those teams made the call that he could not support the operations of a Chaplain from his location. He held firm on this and the plan was changed so that we would operate from Ta’Qaddum a large air and logistic hub about equidistant between Fallujah and Ramadi. Ta’Qaddum is adjacent to Habbinyah on the south side of the Euphrates. It sits atop an escarpment overlooking the town to the north and Lake Habbinyah in the South. In 1941 it was the site of a siege when the Iraqi military launched a revolt against the British who occupied the country despite it being given independence at the end of World War One. The British we besieged in Habbinyah and the Iraq forces had the high ground atop the escarpment. Unfortunately for the Iraqis and fortunately for the British the British forces had support from the Royal Air Force and the Iraqis had no logistics ability to support their units atop the escarpment. The Iraqi forces were pounded and eventually a relief force arrived from Jordon to break the siege. At TQ as it is known by most Americans we would be housed and taken care of by the 2^nd Marine Logistics Group Chaplain, Commander Pat McLaughlin and his team. We were instructed to make coordination to plan work with the teams supporting the 7^th Iraqi Division, the 2^nd Border Brigade, Iraqi Highway Patrol and the Provincial Police forces while working to build a bridge to the teams of the 1^st Iraqi Division. The change was momentarily upsetting but ultimately it opened the door to the entire province where if we had been co-located with the 1^st Division we may not have gotten out of its operational area.

Following the briefing, he, J.P, RP1 Roland, Nelson and I went to lunch at one of the two major chow halls on the camp where I met up with an old friend. The friend was Captain Luke Fabiunke with whom I had served for 2 years at Marine Security Forces Battalion. Luke was our S-6 and the Communications officer at Security Forces. He was always fun to hang out with and was very supportive of my work as a chaplain there. Luke was in the G-3 Operations shop t the MEF and specifically was working with the section that dealt with the training and advisory teams in the province. It was good to see him and he immediately upon learning our mission asked how he could help. This hook up was one that paid off in spades in the next 6 months. It is a lesson that Chaplains need to build relationships with other staff officers in order to be successful, not just in their current assignment but in many cases later in their careers when they need assistance the most. For me it helped meet my mission of finding and making contact with advisory teams of all types as soon as we hit the ground rather than operating blindly trying to figure our way around the labyrinth that was the operational setting for these teams. I think that I owe Luke a beer or two for his assistance.

Following lunch we got to work. Helped by Chaplain Hedges and RP1 Roland we were issued flight suits and Nelson a couple of sets of Marine Pattern Camouflage uniforms and I was issued two elderly Panasonic Tough Book laptops. One was set up for regular unclassified traffic and the other for classified work dealing with intelligence reports, weather and planning and submitting air movement requests. Despite being a highly technological military when one gets into a combat zone technology assets for oddball teams like ours are sometimes scarce. In fact I understood from Peter back at IAG that most of the Army teams had to share assets with others just to communicate. Chaplain Langston and his staff ensured that we had freedom to be able to do our job without having to inconvenience others to do it. They laptops may have been elderly but they worked. Chaplain Hedges taught me the ins and outs of planning and coordinating the air support from Marine, Army and Air Force aviation assets and helped get us set up to do this. Once again we got what we needed to do our mission.

We spent another three days in Fallujah preparing for the mission and making coordination with staff sections and others that we might have to call upon. We also had a number of reunions with others that both of us had served with. I met Major Andy Niebel and Lieutenant Colonel Dave Ottignon who I had served with a Second Combat Engineer Battalion. They were good friends then and are men for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect. I also met a number of Chaplain with whom I had previously served or knew from other duty stations. One of these was LT Joe Buenviaje, who had been my RP at 1^st Battalion 8^th Marines when I had done my relief pitching job there. Joe had cross-rated from being a Boiler Technician to the RP rating not long before I had met him. We had qualified for the old FMF qualification together and I was able to help him begin his journey to be a Navy Chaplain. I was also blessed and honored to baptize his children at Camp LeJuene. Joe has a heart of gold and did well in Iraq. He got out with his Marines a lot, once almost getting blown up by an explosive device which blew up a highway overpass where they had just been conducting services. With them was a Catholic priest who had likewise just celebrated Mass. They were leaving the site when the explosion hit and following the attack helped to take care of the wounded.

Having a cross on your uniform in a chow hall can lead to interesting situations as well as ministry. Some people will automatically avoid you when they see the cross as if faith and religion was some sort of communicable disease. I admit that there are some religious people and groups across the faith continuum that I think are toxic so I understand this. Likewise there are people have been used, abused or burned by religious leaders or groups and thus want nothing to do with organized or even disorganized religion. There are other people who are afraid that if they say something wrong that the chaplain might come down on them. There are still others who when they see that you are a chaplain ensure that they get together with you and some will even pray for you. Regardless of the situation I always try to be friendly to those around me in a chow hall despite my preference for my introversion. In fact I will attempt to start up conversations with anyone around me if nothing else to let them know that I know that they are there and that they can talk with me.

Some of the people that we supped or dined with were Religious Programs specialists like Nelson….well actually not so much like Nelson. Nelson is one of those one of a kind animals that the Deity Herself cracked the mold when he was out of the oven. These young men and women had been in country various lengths of time and were having as happens in almost every case good or bad experiences working with their chaplain. There are unfortunately a few bad apples that mistreat their RPs and give the rest of us a bad name. Likewise there are bad RPs in the force. Some actually set new lows for military conduct and discipline and give a bad name to the good sailors in the rating. I had one that stole from the offering in Okinawa, forged offering forms, leave papers and burned up a new pickup truck to try to get the insurance money. I had another who tested positive for cocaine upon arriving to my ship and yet another who pretty much stayed one step ahead of the law. I guess it is human nature that we get such folks and unfortunately because there are people like this who serve as Chaplains and RPs there is kind of a guilt by association. As such RPs question the RPs that they know as to how their chaplains treat them and are often wary of a chaplain that they do not know. Nelson assured them that I was “cool” and we had a couple of interesting meals together.

There were a number of times in Fallujah where young sailors or Marines approached me about spiritual issues, family problems or prayer requests. There were even some young men and women who were interesting in becoming chaplains. It was neat to be able to be there in those moments where our lives intersected, maybe for the one and only time.

We spent our last day in Fallujah getting ready for our flight, another really late flight. During the day we heard that an Army CH-47 Chinook had crashed at TQ killing the crew and that the cause was undetermined as to whether it was due to hostile fire or a mechanical problem. Such incidents raise your pucker factor especially when you will be flying into the same place that they crashed. With this in mind we picked up our laundry had some chow, made some final coordination, called and e-mailed our families, did some PT and settled in for the evening waiting for RP1 Roland to pick us up. While outgoing artillery boomed in the distance we sat back in our room at the Ramadan Inn and discussed our plans, as well as wondered out loud what was in store for us.

3 Comments

Filed under History, iraq,afghanistan, Military, Pastoral Care, Tour in Iraq

Tagged as 1st bn 8th marines, 1st iraqi division, 2nd iraqi border brigade, 2nd marine divsion, 2nd mlg, 3rd bct 4th id, 7th iraqi division, 9-11 2001, advisors, al anbar province, baath party, camp fallujah, camp victory, ch-47, chaplain j p hedges, chaplain joe buenviaje, chaplain michael langston, chaplain Pat McGloghlin, fallujah, habbinyah, iag, ii mef, ii mef fwd, iraq, iraq assistance group, iraqi highway patrol, iraqi provincial police, ist lar, ltcol dave ottignon, luke fabiunke, major andy niebel, marine artillery, marine security forces, military training teams, nelson lebron, panasonic tough book laptop, pop tarts, porta-johns, ramada, ramadi, rct-2, rct-6, religious ministry team, religious program specialists, rmt, route 666, rp1 donnie roland, seige of habbinyah 1941, ta qaddum, the basic course, tq, uday and qusay hussein

August 24, 2009 · 20:50

Going to War: A Reflection so Far, Memories, PTSD and hopes and fears Past and Present

964

As I have been writing of my experience in Iraq it is amazing to me the amount of emotions that I have experienced. It is strange to feel like I am back there as I write. I know that this is necessary but at times it is unnerving especially as I talk to friends who are going through much the same experience that I had coming home and sometimes worse. I have been in e-mail contact with a friend from a NATO ally who has done a couple of tours in Afghanistan. I can really feel for him as he is in a smaller military with a lot few resources that the Americans to deal with PTSD and other maladies from this war which seems to drag on without end. Another friend on the West Coast has been dealing with the ravages of both PTSD and TBI and another Army Chaplain friend who has 2 Bronze Stars to his credit deals with PTSD as well as a very rare and eventually fatal lung and brachia condition. Friends from my medical center are being deployed, I’ve been told that I am too valuable and needed where I am to deploy. I do understand that at the same time deep in my heart I want to be with my friends from my ICU as they go to war.

The emotions took a big turn as I actually started writing about being in Iraq, beginning with the C-17 ride in to Baghdad. In some sense the mirrored what I was going through two years ago. It kind of came to a head the other night when I wrote about the rocket that went over my head at Camp Victory while waiting for my ride to head to the Camp Liberty heliport. Then there was the flight to Fallujah and I can remember that flight. I have never really liked flying in general and ancient helicopters in particular. Thinking that many of the CH-46s that I flew in while in Iraq had been in service in the Vietnam era was none too comforting. They were almost as old as me. Marine Helicopters are notorious for hydraulic fluid leaks. The old joke goes” “How do you know when a Marine helicopter is low on hydraulic fluid?” “When it stops leaking” is not entirely in jest. I guess you can say that most of my career flying rotary wing aircraft in the Army and Navy has been just this side of terrifying. I manage to survive every time but it takes forever to come back down from the anxiety of the preparation for and actual flights themselves it is no wonder that I still have problems sleeping and going on alert any time I hear a helicopter overhead.

Faith at times is an ongoing struggle. While I believe I question God more, especially when I see little kids suffering or read about young men and women killed in action or maimed by combat. I find that I am less compassionate toward those who have not deployed who make suicide gestures and screw with their friends and families and then blow off help. It angers me that their narcissism takes time and resources away from people who have been in the shit who need help and have to wait to get help. I also find that religious people who have trite answers for everything really annoy me, especially those that are constantly talking about “spiritual warfare” when they have no clue about war, suffering and death. They are what Luther called the “theologians of glory” and they have no real answers, just platitudes that work fine until a real crisis comes. Despite this I believe somehow in the God who is willing to be with me in the middle of the Valley of the Shadow of Death and at the foot of the Cross.

One of the things that tears at me now is the deep division in the United States as the obviously enlightened zealots of the extreme right and left push their agendas so hard that it seems impossible to find and amicable solution. I wonder if we have entered “Weimar America.” I guess I can understand how the moderates of the conservatives and socialists in Germany were ground to dust beneath the anvil of the Communists and hammer of the National Socialists in the later years of the Weimar Republic. I really understand the military men who found both alternatives distasteful and tried in vain to seek the middle ground and maybe restore some sanity to the country. That article is yet to be written. I think I will call it “Weimar America?” What really gets me is that both the right and left have dropped all pretense of civility and are now engaging in physical altercations at political meetings or “town hall” meetings and some have even be brandishing automatic weapons near venues where the President is speaking. I have seen the results of this type of no-quarter politics in the Balkans and in Iraq. I wonder what the hell all these demigods on both sides are thinking and if they in their devotion to their alleged “principles” would attempt “to destroy the country in order to save it.” I have become ashamed of the leadership of both political parties as well as the special interest groups that drive the agendas of both extremes, especially as in the case of some who use the Christian faith to justify their actions. When I see these people in action my anxiety level often returns to what it was in Iraq and on my return. I can honestly say that the people on the extremes make me fear for my country. I feel that they are pushing us to the abyss and that I can’t do a damned thing to stop it. I’ve matured enough to know it is not simply the fault of one side or the other; as both are at fault and it seems that the most extreme on both sides have actually been wanting this to happen, at least from my viewpoint as a passionate moderate.

I have come to realize that my true countrymen are those that I have served with to defend this country and protect others abroad, especially as the insanity continues to spread. Though I struggle and have to deal with emotions as if they were brand new every day just as I think that I am getting better I know that I have to keep going. I owe it to my brothers and sisters from the current war and wars such as Vietnam. Sometimes I wonder if all of us PTSD afflicted vets are the only sane people in the country. We are a brotherhood. “We we happy few, we band of brothers.”

brothers

I’m glad that I have friends, especially vets from Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf and Vietnam. Limey and Barney with the Hue City Vets, Ray and Charlie the Vietnam Veteran of America brothers who man the beer stand on the concourse behind home plate, and so many others like my trusty assistant Nelson Lebron who helped keep me safe and sane in Iraq.

In the middle of all of this I grieve for my Vietnam Vet and retired Navy Chief dad who wastes away in a nursing home with end stage Alzheimer’s which according to his doctor should have killed him months ago.

I’d better stop while I’m ahead. I need to catch myself, maybe have a beer and focus on some baseball for a while before I get ready for work. I have duty tomorrow and I expect that I will be busy the next couple of days. I hope when I get off Wednesday afternoon that I will be able to see the Tides play. I can use the view of the diamond at Harbor Park that helps calm my soul about now. Maybe between no and then I can get in with my buddy Elmer the Shrink.

pub2

Pray for me a sinner,

Peace, Steve+

7 Comments

Filed under alzheimer's disease, Baseball, iraq,afghanistan, Military, Political Commentary, PTSD, Tour in Iraq, vietnam

Tagged as afghanistan, automatic weapons, baseball diamond, c-17, camp liberty, camp victory, ch-46, fallujah, foot of the cross, harbor park, icu, iraq, Martin Luther, nato, nelson lebron, norfolk tides, PTSD, radical groups, spiritual warfare, struggles with god and faith, theologians of glory, united states, valley of the shadow of death, vietnam, vietnam veterans, we happy few we band of brothers, weimar germany, weimar republic

August 22, 2009 · 20:21

Going to War: It was Just a Rocket and a Night Flight to Fallujah

Typical LZ at Night

That evening Nelson and I said farewell to our new friends at Iraq Assistance Group, went and got chow at the large Camp Victory chow hall. What is interesting on some of the larger bases is just how well fed the troops are. Of course there are those who are better fed than others who could use the “wide load” convoy signs hanging off of their asses. The main chow hall at Victory has a number of serving lines and drink, salad and dessert islands. It has the main serving line, a fast food short order line, a Mongolian BBQ line as well as variations of Giros, Indian food, pizza bar and of course soft serve as well as Baskin and Robbins Ice Cream. Breakfast is another “feeder” with almost everything imaginable to eat. I am not a big breakfast eater by and large so for me black coffee, hot or cold cereal and fruit was a normal breakfast. After dinner we went and finished our packing and waited for our ride to take us to the Camp Liberty airfield. Had I been stationed at Camp Victory I would have probably outgrown my uniforms as I look at food wrong and can add a pound.

We had a very late flight, about 0200. Since you normally need to manifest for a flight two hours prior it means that you back up at least a hour before the manifest time. This particular evening there was not much cooling going on and there was little illumination which meant in most places it was very dark. Especially in troop the billeting areas. We dragged our gear to the entrance to the billeting area. Nelson went back to his tent and I plopped my ass down on my bags. About 2300 I heard and felt a rush over my head. It was a rocket, probably a 107 mm rocket which is one of the most popular indirect fire weapon used by the insurgents or possibly a 122 mm rocket. Both are former Soviet systems and not very accurate but still the fact that a rocket has buzzed me was disconcerting. A few seconds later I heard an explosion. I later heard the rocket had continued on and hit an uninhabited area of the camp. Soon after it went over my head a very young looking soldier came running up to me in his PT gear with an M-16 at the ready. He shouted “Sir, what was that?” The young man appeared to be a bit scared to I simply quipped “Only a rocket son didn’t hit us.” He seemed to relax just a bit and I said “You okay son?” the good thing about being as old as I am that you can get away with calling the young guys “son” because in most cases they I’m old enough to be their father. I stay in game too much longer and the new kids could be grandchildren. This young soldier said, “Well sir I’m on the quick reaction force and that sounded close.” In the background to the east machine gun and small arms fire could be heard. A pair of gunships buzzed us going the general direction of the gunfire. Baghdad was definitely not a violence free school zone. I replied to the young soldier. “Son, if I were you I’d report to where you need to go, better grab your helmet and flak.” The young man looked at me in the dark, assuming I was a Marine officer since I was in my Marine Desert digital cammies, saluted and said “Yes sir” to which I replied “be safe soldier and God bless, keep up the good work.” Once again he thanked me and hurried off into the night.

CH-46 Landing

A few minutes later, Nelson who has been in some pretty sporty situations in Afghanistan including once where he took out a knife wielding assailant at a checkpoint in Kabul with his fists, came up to me. “Hey Chaps, did you hear that rocket? Sounded like a 107.” I said to him, “Shit brother, it felt like it went right over my head. “ He responded quickly “Boss I think we’re in a war here.” And I said “sounds like it partner, definitely sounds like it.” Then he said “Chaps, you wouldn’t believe what I just saw.” I said “Really, what?” And he told me the story. “I was over looking for our boy when I needed to go to the head, so I opened one of the port-a johns and when I opened it saw this guy and girl having sex in it, like they didn’t have the door closed and you know how nasty those things are.” I said “Partner you’ve got to be kidding me” and Nelson said “Chaps I wouldn’t do that to you, those people looked at me like I was stupid when I opened the door and I just said excuse me and closed the door. That place stank sir; I don’t know how they were doing it in there.” I replied “Partner, I guess after a year of more here some folks will take whatever they can get.” “But, you’d think that they would find some dark spot rather that a port-a-john,” replied a thoroughly disgusted Nelson. As I laughed at the misfortune of my little buddy, bodyguard and protector I simply said “There’s no accounting for taste my friend, no accounting for taste.”

We sat on our gear and waited, and waited. The time when we should have been picked up went by and after about 15 minutes of chatter about not being picked up on time, Nelson said. “Boss you want e to go find our ride?” I responded that I wanted him to as it was so dark that he might not know where to find us. A few vehicles had come and gone but none were our assigned wheels. Finally after about 45 minutes our ride showed up, Nelson had found him on the other side of the compound in his truck listening to AFN radio. He had come to the wrong side of the billeting area and was chastising me for not being there. I said, “Sergeant, I said to meet us over here and I’ll be damned f we have to lug our gear a couple hundred yards to make you happy.” I paused as he started to interrupt and then cut him off “Sergeant, don’t go there, you’re talking to a field grade officer who wasn’t always a chaplain, you went to the wrong place and you didn’t take the initiative to try to find us. We had to find you so don’t push your luck.” He replied, almost dejectedly, “Yes sir” and I said, “consider this matter ended, get us to the airfield, we have a flight to catch.” Nelson and I piled our gear into the back of the truck, got in and rode the airfield.

The Camp Liberty airfield, which deals exclusively in rotor wing aircraft, is one of the busiest heliports in the world. Hundreds of flights go through it every day. They are primarily Army, but a fair amount of Marine aircraft pass through as well. We were flying Marine air tonight. When we got to the heliport our chauffer had a difficult time finding a place to park. Eventually we sort of double parked and Nelson and I and Nelson and I unloaded our gear with a bit of help from our chastened chauffer got up to the manifest desk where we were greeted by a civilian. He took our names and our mission number and then took out a marking pen and wrote it on the back of our hands. I found that that at each place this was the primary way to identify who was getting off where or if you should even be on the aircraft. I found a seat and then because I couldn’t get comfortable walked outside for a while. Nelson on the other hand, ground his gear, threw himself upon it pulled his cover over his eyes and took a power nap. He can sleep almost anywhere.

With about 10 minutes to go I woke up Nelson, and I find it amazing how he can wake back up the way he does. When I take a nap I am useless for about 30 minutes after I wake up as my body tries to figure out what time it is. We both took turns guarding our gear as the other hit the head, once again a darkened port-a-john that stank to low hell. When done we staged our gear near the lineup point. Our mission was called and we lined up with about 30 others, a mixture of Marines, Sailors, contractors and a few soldiers. We geared up, securing helmets, flaks, our packs as well as our massive EOD issue sea-bags. Nelson helped me with mine as we got ready to walk, once was over my back and the second strapped across my chest, actually going from my chin to just above my knees. Many of our fellow passengers had very little gear, and one fairly large contractor offered to help me with my gear. I took him up on it about half of the 100 yards to where our bird had landed.

Watching our aircraft come in, a flight of 2 Marine CH-46s which date back to Vietnam service I was amazed at how surreal they looked coming in out of the night, their haze gray fuselages almost having a ghostly appearance as they set down. Of course we had the bird that was farthest from the line up point and I was really glad for the help of this generous contractor. As we loaded our bags onto the aircraft, stacking it in the center of the deck with everyone else’s gear, we each took one of the jump seats along the side and strapped ourselves in. Sweat was pouring off of me and I felt totally winded, no amount of running, pull ups, pushups and crunches had prepared me to lug our heavy and ungainly gear around. The dimly lit troop compartment was hot and I looked around the aircraft. I noted the machine gunners in the front doors and the crewman in the back who took a seat with a 240 series machine gun mounted on a swivel. It reminded me of the films I saw of the inside of World War Two B-17s, except that the flight suits were different. The crew gave the let the pilots know that we were ready, and I wondered what we were heading into. Nelson got my attention and gave me a “thumbs up” and I returned it as the lights went out that our flight lifted off.

CH-46 Door Gunner

Banking around to the left the 46 gained altitude and flew back across the camp as it did so I got my first view of Iraq after dark. As we flew into the city of Baghdad there were lights and sometimes lit streets. In a few places I could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles. We soon began to descend into the city surrounded by tall buildings, mainly hotels and government buildings and I knew that we were in the “Green Zone.” We sat down on a small landing pad, the dim lights came back on and a couple of passengers got out of our bird which a couple of more boarded the flight. The scene from Camp Liberty was repeated and gear was off and on loaded, passengers boarded and debarked from the flight and the lights went off and the bird lifted off. Gunners took their positions and chatted on their headsets obviously scanning for threats and assessing what was going on, or they could have been talking about the new video game one of them had bought at the exchange.

Banking left we gained altitude heading east, with Baghdad fading into the night the lights of the communities along the Euphrates came into view as we flew on toward Fallujah. For me it was a fascinating experience, surreal and a bit of anxiety making but interesting as I thought of the history of the ancient civilizations who had settled here, the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians and the fact that the faith of the Christian Church through Abraham and later the people of Israel began here with Abraham’s obedience to the Lord.

The flight only took about 16-18 minutes and we flew into Fallujah. The bird sat down on a large tarmac and the crew motioned us to get up grab our gear and get off of the aircraft. I was praying desperately that it would not be a long walk to the terminal from the helicopter pad. As we hauled our gear off the 46 to get to the terminal I was about tapped out. The 46 had landed about 100 yards from the terminal where our ride waited. It might as well have been 100 miles. I loaded one bag on my back and commenced to drag the other. Nelson was ahead of me and realized that his old Padre was not doing well. I was about halfway to the terminal when Nelson showed up with a Marine on a John Deere Gator. My gear was loaded aboard the Gator; I gave a hearty thank you to Nelson, the Marine and to the Deity Herself as I dragged my sorry ass to the terminal.

The Fallujah terminal like most terminals at heliports in Iraq was a plywood building constructed by the Seabees. It was well lit inside, had air conditioning which I sucked up and a large refrigerator with bottled water stashed in it. Once inside I took off my helmet as we checked in at the desk. By now it was about 0245, I had been up since 0530 the previous day, done PT a Camp Victory, had a rocket fly directly above me and dragged 200 pounds of gear more places than I wanted to in 100 degree heat and I was a spent round. War is a young man’s game and even though I am in good shape for someone my age, the key is that I am in good shape for someone my age, not a young guy. Sweating profusely I found a liter bottle of water and downed it. About that time a large African American 1^st Class Petty Officer came in the door. RP1 Donnie Roland was the LPO of the II MEF Forward Chaplain’s office and worked for Mike Langston. Donnie, who is now a Chief is a guy that you definitely want on your side. He hooked us up. Normally personnel in a transient status in Fallujah are housed in tents with cots in varying degrees of disrepair. Donnie got us rooms in the VIP quarters, nicknamed by the Marines the “Ramadan Inn.” The place had once been the haunt of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddaam’s sons. It had a pond in the center of the court yard and was reputedly a place where they would entertain senior members of the Ba’ath Party amid scenes of debauchery. We were given a small room that had a desk and two small Iraqi beds, both of which had thin concave mattresses which had little support but were a definite step up from a cot. Sheets, pillows and a blanket were included. Our gear took up the majority of the room but it didn’t matter. After a shower I crashed hard. The bed might have been from a 5 star hotel, all that mattered at 0330 was that I could get to sleep. RP1 Roland told us that Chaplain Langston said that we should get some sleep and come in when we could. With outgoing artillery fire going off in the background I laid my worn out body down on the waiting mattress, I thought about the day and it came to me that the rocket that had went over my head could have killed me and a chill went down my tired spine. Another salvo of artillery lashed out at the enemy, and my mind drifted back to the present. I was now in Fallujah. One more stop on the way to my war, Nelson was already asleep, I am amazed at his ability to go from 0-60 and 60-0 so fast. More artillery fire boomed and as a former forward observer I found outgoing artillery fire to be comforting, amid it’s lullaby I went to sleep.

Leave a comment

Filed under History, iraq,afghanistan, Military, Tour in Iraq

Tagged as .50 cal machine guns, 107 mm rocket, 155mm artillery, abraham, afn radio, assyrians, babylonians. persians, baghdad, camp liberty, camp victory, ch-46, fallujah, green zone, helicopter gunships, II MEF forward, iraq, iraq assistance group, john deere gator, m-240 series machine guns, marine pattern digital uniform, nelson lebron, pot-a-johns, qusay hussein, ramadan inn, saddam hussein, uday hussein, us army, us marines

July 27, 2009 · 20:45

Going to War: Ministry amid Training

Two years ago my group of Individual Augmentees was leaving Ft Jackson South Carolina on the way to Kuwait, which was our final training site before going on to our assignments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and other locations in the CENTCOM Area of Operations. In the two weeks prior to our departure we received training in a number of areas, especially weapons which I was exempted from as a Chaplain, though I did fire the crew served weapons for the fun of it. I wasn’t always a chaplain and have a hard time not enjoying a Mk 19 Automatic Grenade Launcher, M-240 series machine gun or the classic .50 caliber Machine Gun. Since I used to call in 155mm Artillery fire these are little guns, but still fun to play with. When you are chaplain and are exempted from actual training it does not mean that it is time to go to the Food Court at the Post Exchange to chow down on Pizza and Ice Cream. Ministry abounds if you want to go hang out. One of the fun things about hanging out with Navy guys unfamiliar with small arms is to watch them trying to clean them and get them past an Army armorer in an Arms Room. To see the looks of shock as my fellow sailors brought back their M-16s and M-9s for more cleaning. They had not yet learned the dirty little secret that a good armorer can find things dirty on a weapon that you didn’t even know existed. It was at this point with me calmly pointing out tricks of the trade that a physician who I had gotten to know looked at me and said: “Chaplain, you were in the Army weren’t you?” He looked at me as several others who had just had their weapons rejected stopped what they were doing and waited for my response.

I was kind; I acknowledged that indeed I had served in the Army and that I was not always a Chaplain. I then looked at the physician and said “Give me the weapon.” I took it from him, broke it down and gave a quick lecture on how to clean a weapon of the M-16 series. The dirty secret on these things is that you almost never get your weapon through the inspector on the first try. There are more places for carbon to hide on an M-16 than places you can find Waldo. Thus a good inspector knowing that he has a bunch of novices coming through simply rejects every weapon. I think that it builds character. I showed those around me all the little places where carbon was hiding on this officer’s weapon and how to get it clean to pass inspection. Knowing such things gives you additional “street cred” as a chaplain as you go off to war. It shows that you care about what your guys have to do enough to teach them. This is really vital when your Navy or Air force guys are training with the Army. It opened doors to ministry with these men and women. So if any of my deploying friends need some pointers on the care and feeding of an M-16 let me know.

Additionally, ministry seems to happen when you stay engaged with people. I was blessed that two additional chaplains, Commander Kyle Fauntleroy and Command Dave Rodriguez who were heading off to manage the “Warrior Transition” program in Kuwait. Together we figured out how best to care for our sailors including how we did services as well as counseling. We had a pretty good amount of business. It seems that life and tragedy happens even in training. We had a young hospital corpsman who was diagnosed with Leukemia during our first week there. Both the Navy chain of command and Army trainers expected us, in between and after training to make sure that she and her family were cared for. Other sailors found out that their husbands, wives or significant others were cheating on them. Still others were hurt in training accidents and could not deploy. In every case one or more of us took care of the sailor in question. It was a community of individuals that for a brief two weeks began to gel together despite the fact that when the training was completed we would go separate directions, some for more training at other bases and others directly to the Middle East.

Apart from the young woman with Leukemia the most notable thing that I got to do was baptize a young Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer who had been raised in the Episcopal Church but who’s parents had forgotten to have him baptized…oops. The subject came up when he became engaged to a Catholic girl. He needed to prove that he was a baptized Christian, only problem when he went to his parish they could find no record. So he inquired of his parents when he learned of the “oops we should have done that” situation. I like to baptize people, they way we do it you don’t have to wear hip-waders or make up anything because it is all in the Prayer Book so it’s not that hard. So I did it on our last Sunday morning with his fiancé present. It was really cool. The young officer had the bunk next to me in the barracks so we had gotten to know each other during conversations as we checked or put together equipment, packed gear, washed clothes or went to chow. He was very smart and friends as well as unassuming. When asked what he did in civilian life he simply said that he worked intelligence and foreign policy in DC. I figured as most would infer that the young man was with the CIA or DIA or some other outfit. We saw each other a couple of times as Nelson and I traveled about Al Anbar Province the last time in the Wal-Mart sized chow hall number three at Al Asad as we waited for a flight out west. After I returned and was having my PTSD meltdown I found that the young man was then Senator Barak Obama’s senior National security adviser. We had stayed in touch in the following months but finding out this was a surprise. We have remained in touch and he now serves as Chief of Staff for the National Security Council. I think it’s cool that he is up there working with General Jones on the NSC. He’s a good man who despite his high position remains active in the Naval Reserve. He is doing well in his marriage and remains in contact with guys like me. It makes me even more prayerful for him as he advises the NSC and President. It was one of those moments when I knew that the Deity Herself had placed me in a person’s life that due to his office needs prayer more than we can imagine.

Ministry of all types continued to happen our entire time at Fort Jackson, we dealt with family deaths, birth notifications and medical emergencies. We counseled, prayed and assisted sailors in need and looked out for each other. Nelson was engaged not only receiving training but also giving it having run something like 400 convoys in Afghanistan. He ended up as one of the honor graduates and won a leadership award from the Army staff. It is really great to have an assistant of Nelson’s caliber when you go to war. As we got ready to leave Ft Jackson my young friend went off for more specific training at another base with many of the other Intelligence Officers and specialists. Nelson and I packed up our gear, stacked it and helped load trucks which would take us to our flight.

Leave a comment

Filed under iraq,afghanistan, leadership, Military, philosophy, Tour in Iraq

Tagged as baptism, barak obama, cia, dia, fort jackson sc, general james jones, m-16 rifle, m-9 pistol, ministry, national security council, nelson lebron, PTSD, weapons cleaning, weapons training

July 17, 2009 · 23:14

Going to War: A Bus Ride to the Carolina Countryside

This is part four in my “Going to War” series. Previous parts are noted here:

Part One:Going to War: Reflections on My Journey to Iraq and Back- Part One

Past Two: Going to War: Interlude July 4th 2007

Part Three: Going to War: Wills, Living Wills, Immunizations Gone Bad and Christmas in July

Part Four: Going to War: Last Night together and a Kiss Goodbye

Nelson and I staged our gear as we waited for the buses to arrive to take us to Fort Jackson South Carolina where we were to receive our training for the deployment. As we talked other sailors arrived and gear was stacked in rows of sea bags just off of the sidewalk. Nelson’s parents, brother and sister were on hand to see him off. His brother is a First Class Petty Officer and his dad a former Vietnam era Marine Recon NCO who made several deployments “in the shit” as many Vietnam vets call tours in that combat zone. They were really nice folks. Over the years I had heard much about them. They are close to each other and all are supportive of Nelson.

Nelson is a career amateur boxer; kick boxer, martial artist and more recently MMA fighter. He is active in children’s martial arts instruction and has been on Team USA and fought internationally. During his Afghanistan deployment before he and I hooked up again he helped coach the fledgling Afghan National Boxing Team. His last major title was just this year when he won the Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic. The guy has more titles than you can imagine, his title belt collect could fill a room. However, he was raised by a boxer, his dad. His dad taught him and coached him growing up and helped Nelson win multiple New York State Golden Gloves titles. His dad is a congenial man and who was very friendly, speaking English with a heavy Puerto Rican accent. Nelson’s mom speaks some English. Nelson tells a great story of the only time he was knocked out in a fight. This happened at the Fort Apache Gym in the Bronx after Nelson had gone picking on his little sister when Nellie was about seventeen. Nelson’s dad found out, told him to put on his gloves and get in the ring. Nelson proceeded to talk trash to his dad as he got ready to fight and the first round got quite a few hits in on his dad. In between rounds according to Nelson’s account he told his dad to quit, that he was too old to be in the same ring with him. Nelson said that his dad simply commented “I was just letting you taste the water.” The second round began and Nelson was hit by a combination from his dad, which he says “rung his bell” and made him “see stars.” He remembers trying to get up and not being able to while his dad was talking trash to him. I cannot do the story justice but meeting Nelson’s family was a joy.

So we waited while the other sailors gathered, some individually and some with family. Some stood alone as couples while others mingled with each other. For most this was a new way to see their sailor deploy. No pier side goodbyes, no banners, no manning the rails by the crew as the ship was nudged away from the pier by tugs. When you have a “normal” deployment of a ship or something like a Marine battalion it is a big deal. Media is there, sometimes there are speeches, but most of all there is the understanding that we are all in this together. The families say goodbye to their Sailors, Marines or Soldiers who are going to war together and leaving some kind of familiar support system for the families. This is not so when you deploy individually. We may have been going off to train together, but few would stay together on the deployment. Normally as a chaplain you are a known quantity to the people that you go to war with. I was going to war with Nelson but we would not remain with any sailors who were going through this process with us. I know that was the case for others who would serve in isolated posts, often without any other Navy personnel, mostly working with the Army in support roles, and specialized roles such as the Electronic Warfare Officers detailed to work on defeating IEDs and roadside bombs. As others said their goodbyes and hugged each other I thought of Judy and knew that she was going to be down for some time but I felt that for once that she had an adequate support network.

I looked at our gear as opposed to the others. Our gear was in different deployment bags, ours were large and rectangular and more of a coyote or sand color while most everyone else had traditional green sea bags, or what are known in the Army as “duffle bags.” We had all of our personal protective equipment or the EOD/Special Warfare type while others would receive some variation of Army issue at Fort Jackson. There are pros and cons to such a arrangement. The pro is that we had great gear certainly some of the best in theater. The con was that we had to lug the great gear everywhere we went going to and coming back from war. This would get old, but the benefits do outweigh the advantages when you are actually in a combat zone.

Finally an officer came out and began calling role and giving us our signed “official” orders. After we were accounted for we were told to load our gear on the buses that would take us to Fort Jackson. I think there were four or five of these chartered tour buses which as it turned out would be the first of many tour buses, roll calls and gear loads in the coming months, especially as we entered and exited theater. Nelson and I got on the same bus which was not full and took seats near the front. I got a seat alone because I was the senior officer on the bus and a chaplain to boot. This was not because I asked for it or hogged the seat. It is actually fairly typical in such a setting where young enlisted guys don’t want to sit next to an officer and some are afraid of chaplains because of experiences that they have had in civilian churches. Some of the young folks have never darkened the door of a church and many of those that have been in church have been burned in relationships with pastors or really over the top religious people. I have found in my career that until they get to know a Chaplain a lot of them will be very careful in how they approach a chaplain, even those with a vibrant faith. Some are afraid that the chaplain might try to convert them or disapprove of the manner in which they live their lives. So as a chaplain I need to be cognizant of this fact and be friendly and caring without scaring them away. Of course I did build relationships with a quite a number of these sailors during the next few weeks but on this bus I was still an unknown quantity to them. Sitting alone however was good for me since I general despise bus travel regardless of the company I keep. For some reason my height works against me, I can never get my feet comfortably on the ground on these new tour buses and I have a terrible time getting comfortable. Since bus travel takes forever to get anywhere the discomfort is palpable. Now I did a three month tour on buses in 1979 while touring as a spotlight tech for the Continental Singers and Orchestra across the US and in Europe. Somehow the old Greyhound buses were more comfortable than the new tour buses. Maybe I’m just nostalgic but they somehow fit people like me better than the fancy new buses.

When you travel by bus with a bunch of sailors, the majority of whom are at least 20 years younger than you, the experience can be entertaining to say the least. Part of course is a generational thing. I am from the 60’s 70’s and 80’s. These guys and gals are from the 90’s and 2000’s. Music is different, culture is different, and the internet, cell phones, i-phones and Blackberries have revolutionized communications and life. The trip was a chance for me to observe a lot about these sailors just by watching. Some had their portable i-pods and MP-3 players going, others spent time talking on cell phones, a few read or talked among themselves, but the sailors near me gravitated to the DVD movie which was 300 the comic book style account of the Spartan’s defense of Thermopylae against the Persians. As the Spartans made their stand I could see the young sailors who were going to war taking inspiration from King Leonditis of Sparta. Since we were going into a place where 50-100 Americans a month were being killed and many others wounded and maimed I could understand the need for inspiration along with entertainment.

The bus ride itself was a lot like what I imagine that Minor League teams take in the Carolinas like in the movie Bull Durham, the coaches and older players mixed in with a lot of young guys. The older guys staying pretty quiet and to themselves and the young guys having fun, playing games and joking around with each other, We made a couple of stops, one at some little Interstate town with a fair amount of gas stations and a few fast food places. About half the folks went to the McDonalds where we pulled in while the rest ran down the street to the Burger King and Taco Bell. Once everyone had their fill the buses pulled back out onto the interstate. When we finally got near Columbia the buses got of the Interstate highway and onto some small two lane state highway. We drove down this road about twenty to thirty minutes and pulled into what appeared to be a tiny out of the way base. I wondered where the hell we were. Fort Jackson is a fairly large training base where thousands of recruits are trained every year. Where we were certainly was not the Fort Jackson that I had imagined.

Instead of the main post we were at the South Carolina National Guard training facility called Camp McCready. It is here that the Naval Expeditionary Combat Command has a training center set up with the Army to train sailors in basic combat tasks.

Our welcome that first night was simple. We formed up, checked in, got our linens for our standard issue military beds and were marched to dinner at the chow hall or in the Army vernacular the DFAC by our newest and bestest buddies, our Army Drill Sergeants. In the chow hall or DFAC we were met by a civilian running the line. I can’t remember his name but this guy was really nice and put the RED in “Redneck.” He made jokes with everyone that came through the line, asked where people were from and what they did. When he found out that I was a chaplain he began to ask me for a joke every meal thereafter. As Nelson and I sat down for chow with a couple of other sailors we looked at each other. He said: “Boss I don’t think some of these guys know what is coming.” I said “I think that your right partner, hopefully they adjust and do well.” The other sailors, both more senior petty officers nodded in agreement.

Going back to the barracks I met some of the other officers enjoying their first night at Camp McCready. More sailors to fill out the class were due later coming in from San Diego. I introduced myself to a number of the officers near me and when lights out was called lay down on the same type of bed that I had first encountered some twenty five years before at Camp Roberts California and Fort Lewis Washington. I swear the sheets, blankets and pillowcases were of the same vintage. Despite that I fell asleep fairly quickly.

Leave a comment

Filed under iraq,afghanistan, Military, Tour in Iraq

Tagged as 300, Army, bull durham, camp mccready, camp roberts ca, chaplain corps, chow hall, continental singers, deployment, dfac, electronic warfare officers, eod, fort lewis wa, fot jackson sc, golden gloves, ied, iraq, king leonditis, Military, minor league baseball, mma fighter, navy, navy expeditionary combat command, nelson lebron, schwarzenegger classic, south carolina army national guard, spartans, vietnam, vietnam veterans

May 21, 2009 · 19:08

Remembering the Veterans in My Life…Memorial Day 2009

Today has been a day of rest and recovery from the past 10 days, especially the past 3 days when Judy had to be hospitalized. She is recovering nicely and may actually visit her friends at her church choir practice tonight even if she does not sing. I’m now finishing this post a Harbor Park, the Tides are up 1-0 and going to bat in the bottom of the 2^nd.

Also please see Judy’s blog at http://abbeynormalabbess.wordpress.com/ for a good patient eye view of Epiglottitis.

Old Glory, the POW-MIA and Honor and Remember Flags

Monday is Memorial Day and I will be both on duty at the medical center as well as participating in a Memorial Day ceremony at the historic Naval Cemetery located on our grounds. Memorial Day means a lot to me, probably more each year. This is personal, more personal than at any time in my life. I guess it comes with experience and maturity as well as a lot of reflection.

My second view of war came from the Veterans of Vietnam that I served with in the National Guard and the Army. Some of these men served as teachers and mentors. LCDR Jim Breedlove and Senior Chief John Ness at the Edison High School Naval Junior ROTC program were the first who helped me along. They have both passed away in the past year and a half. I will never forget them. A post dedicated to them is on this blog. Colonel Edgar Morrison was my first battalion commander. He was the most highly decorated member of the California National Guard at that time and had served multiple tours in Vietnam. He encouraged me as a young specialist and officer cadet and showed a tremendous amount of care for his soldiers. Staff Sergeant’s Buff Rambo and Mickey Yarro taught me the ropes as a forward observer and shared many of their Vietnam experiences. Buff had been a Marine dog handler on the DMZ and Mickey a Forward Observer. Sergeant First Class Harry Zilkin was my training NCO at the UCLA Army ROTC program. He was a Special Forces Medic with 7^th Group in Vietnam. He still had part of a VC bayonet embedded in his foot. He received my first salute as a newly commissioned Second Lieutenant as well as a Silver Dollar. I understand that after the Army he became a fire fighter. He had a massive heart attack on the scene of a fire and died a few years later from it. Sergeant Major John Butler was our senior enlisted at UCLA. He served with the 173^rd Airborne in Vietnam. Sergeant First Class Harry Ball was my drill sergeant at the ROTC pre-commissioning camp at Fort Lewis Washington in 1982. He was also Special Forces and a Ranger and served multiple tours in Vietnam. He was quite influential in my life, tearing me apart and then building me back up. He was my version of Drill Sergeant Foley in An Officer and a Gentleman. Like Zack Mayo played by Richard Gere in the movie I can only say: Drill Sergeant “I will never forget you.”

As I progressed through my Army career I encountered others of this generation who also impacted my life. First among them was First Sergeant Jim Koenig who had been a Ranger in the Mekong Delta. I was the First Sergeant that I would measure all others by. Once during a ARTEP we were aggressed and all of a sudden he was back in the Delta. This man cared so much for his young soldiers in the 557^th Medical Company. He did so much for them and I’m sure that those who served with him can attest to this as well as me. Jim had a brick on his desk so that when he got pissed he could chew on it. He was great. He played guitar for the troops and had a song called Jane Fonda, Jane Fonda You Communist Slut. It was a classic. He retired after he was selected to be a Command Sergeant Major because he valued his wife and family more than the promotion. It hurt him to do this, but he put them first. Colonel Donald Johnson was the commander of the 68^th Medical Group when I got to Germany in January 1984. Colonel “J” as well all called him was one of the best leaders I have seen in 28 years in the military. He knew everything about everything and his knowledge forced us all to learn and be better officers and NCOs. On an inspection visit you could always find him dressed in coveralls and underneath a truck verifying the maintenance done on it. He served a number of Vietnam tours. He died a few years back of Multiple Myeloma and is buried at Arlington. Chaplain (LTC) Rich Whaley who had served as a company commander in Vietnam on more than one occasion saved my young ass at the Army Chaplain School. He remains a friend and is the Endorsing Agent for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. As a Mormon he was one of the most “Christian” men that I have ever met. I know some Christians who might have a hard time with that, but Rich demonstrated every trait of a Christian who loved God and his neighbor.

When I was the Installation Chaplain at Fort Indiantown Gap PA I was blessed to have some great veterans in my Chapel Parish. Major General Frank Smoker flew 25 missions as a B-17 pilot over Germany during the height of the air war in Europe. He brought his wonderful wife Kate back from England with him. Henry Boyd who I buried was one of the 101^st Airborne soldiers epitomized in Band of Brothers. He had a piece of shrapnel lodged next to his heart from the Battle of the Bulge until the day he died. Scotty Jenkes was a Air Force pilot in Vietnam flying close air support. Colonel Ray Hawthorne served several tours both in artillery units and as an advisor in 1972. CWO4 Charlie Kosko flew helicopters in Vietnam. All these men made a deep impact on me and several contributed to my career in very tangible ways.

Marines at Hue City Tet 1968

Finally there are my friends and brothers that I have served with at sea on USS HUE CITY during Operation Enduring Freedom and the advisers on the ground in Al Anbar mean more than anything to me. Perhaps the most important is my RP, RP2 Nelson Lebron who helped keep me safe and accompanied me all over the battlefield. Nelson who has done Iraq 3 times, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Balkans is a hero. The men and women of Navy EOD who I served with from 2006-2008 have paid dearly in combating IEDs and other explosive devices used against us in Iraq and Afghanistan are heros too. There is no routine mission for EOD technicians.

I give thanks for all them men that I mention in this post, especially my dad. God bless all of you guys. Please honor the Veterans that you know this weekend. Honor also those who gave their lives in the defense of liberty in all of the wars of our nation. They have earned it.

Peace, Steve+

Post Script: The game went to extra innings and the Tides lost 5-4. They left the tying run at 3rd base in the bottom of the 12th. That ended a 8 game winning streak. On a positive side I was able to get a ball autographed by former Dodger’s pircher ill Singer and Pirate’s Pitcher Bob Kison. Singer pitched in the Dodger’s rotation with Drysdale, Koufax and other greats. He threw a no-hitter in 1970 against the pirates and now is a scout for the Nationals, Kison won game one of the 1971 World Series in six innings of releif against the Orioles who he now scouts for the Orioles.

2 Comments

Filed under Baseball, History, iraq,afghanistan, Military, vietnam

Tagged as al anbar, b-17, band of brothers, battle of hue city, bill singer, bob kison, eod, harbor park, honor and remember flag, iraq, nelson lebron, norfolk tides, peter pace, PTSD, the battle of the bulge, uss hue city, veterans, vietnam, world war ii

Tag Archives: nelson lebron

Veteran’s Day: Goodbye to 666 Lake of Fire Circle, a Golf Outing and Remembering the Veterans in my Life

Going to War: Life at TQ, Chuck Norris Visits and Mass Casualties

Going to War: Tripping into Ta Qaddum

The most dangerous assignment: 4 More Advisers Die In Afghanistan

Going to War: Interlude in Fallujah Reunions, Redirection and a Stay at the Ramadan Inn

Going to War: A Reflection so Far, Memories, PTSD and hopes and fears Past and Present

Going to War: It was Just a Rocket and a Night Flight to Fallujah

Going to War: Ministry amid Training

Going to War: A Bus Ride to the Carolina Countryside

Remembering the Veterans in My Life…Memorial Day 2009

Welcome!

Subscribe to Padre Steve's World

Comment Policy

Padre Steve’s World on Facebook

What’s Hot

Padre Steve's Inglorius Statistics

Recent Articles

The Vault: Padre Steve’s Archives

Categories

Blogs I Follow

Tag Archives: nelson lebron

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Welcome!

Subscribe to Padre Steve's World

Comment Policy

What’s Hot

Padre Steve's Inglorius Statistics

Recent Articles

The Vault: Padre Steve’s Archives

Categories

Blogs I Follow