Magic Kingdom Dispatch

Yes...

2006-09-13T10:34:00.000+07:00

I am still alive.

Just been busy....and I got burnt out on this blog for awhile.

I have been hearing from a lot of folks, however, many of whom have sent photographs and recollections.

I will resume posting....in a few weeks. Have to focus on other priorities at the moment.

For those of you who have written to me asking for new posts, please accept my sincere regrets for not writing here in so long.

I hope that the new material will please you.

Mail Bag 5

2005-03-22T15:18:00.000+07:00

I received an email from Ranger Hal a couple of weeks ago.

I have lightly edited this letter, anonymizing where appropriate.

On Mar 5, 2005, at 6:02 AM, Hal wrote:

Steve,

Just wanted to drop a line to let you know how much I appreciate your posts. I find it interesting for 2 reasons.

One, I served with 1st Plt, A Co. 1/75th, Sept. 78 - March 81. It was an interesting and heady time to be a Ranger. C Co. drew the straw for Iran, so missed that one. Later, I was in the Aviation WOC (Warrant Officer Course), Ft. Rucker, when the TV news flashed that Rangers had parachuted into Grenada. Myself and other Rangers there thought it was a 'typo', as the Batt was very careful about what was disseminated regarding operations. But the more we heard, the more the truth sunk in. Here were our brothers and comrades doing the real deal.

I know I felt tremendously proud to call myself a Ranger, and we all wished that we could have been there. Outside it was 'Hooah's' all around, but inside ourselves the best we could do was to silently wish Godspeed, and reflect on the meaning of Rangers Lead the Way.

A few years later I was assigned to the 2/187th ABN in Panama, and met several Rangers assigned there that made the Grenada jump. One in particular was a SSG (name redacted). While a rock on the outside, on a couple of occasions we would have a drink, (okay, several), toasting the Batt and fallen comrades, and it was during those times that he would open up a bit, and I could see how it affected him on the inside. There is something painful yet comforting when grown men cry together, mourning those gone, while trying to purge the pain of battle. As is to be expected with such events, I wasn't terribly surprised to hear that Rangers I knew to be somewhat egotistical, shrunk under the veil of combat, while the quiet or 'average' (if there is such a thing), Rangers carried the load. I ETS'd from Panama 5 months before Rio Hato and the invasion.

I never got to prove my combat skills and I have no regrets. That's just the way the dice rolled for me. But in reflection, I'm fortunate to have served in a period which helped lay the foundation for the Special Operations community we have today. A community I'm intensely proud of. I share that bond with my dad, former SF, and my brother, former SF/Delta. (Yeah, I'm the 'black sheep).. So to close, I raise my glass to you Steve, not just for a gripping story, but having been there as well. And I raise it to our brothers that carry the legacy with them today on the fields of Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

Keep Driving On Ranger

Hal M
IT Manager

Hal, thanks for writing, and thanks for living your life the way that you do.

You are correct: those who went before us created something that we refined, and passed on in our time to those who are fighting under our Regimental colors today.

There is an unbroken unity between Rangers of the Vietnam era and Rangers in Iraq and Afghanistan at this very moment. Hell, if you think about it, the bond reaches all the way back through the Korean War-era Ranger companies to the Ranger Battalions of World War II.

We could sit down, all of us, over beers, and we would be the same. Just a bunch of grunts. Special grunts.

The Regiment is forever, brother.

God bless you, and stay in touch.

Rangers Lead the Way, and Sua Sponte,

s.

Dude, You Seen My Hair Gel?

2005-03-10T13:36:00.000+07:00

A 2d Ranger Battalion gun jeep somewhere on Point Salines.

I have no idea who the long-hair was, nor what he was doing in a 2d Battalion gun jeep. He could have been a student. Or a member of a classified unit. No idea.

Some of us did see a female intelligence officer, from afar, and briefly, and unless I am mistaken, there has been some discussion of intelligence community support for Operation Urgent Fury in open source media over the long years since 1983. I believe that that officer was identified, and her mission revealed.

Now....remembering where I encountered that revelation...is another matter.

If your memory is better than mine, feel free to help me out here.

DOD photograph courtesy of Joe Muccia.

It was a Long Morning.

2005-03-07T15:15:00.000+07:00

Marine captain Tim Howard's SeaCobra burns on Tanteen Field after it was shot down by Cubans battling with the 1st Ranger Battalion at Little Havana.

Howard made repeated gun runs in support of the 1st Battalion, which was engaged in a ferocious battle. I do not know any other way to describe it. It was a full-blown pitched battle. Bill Sears called in repeated volleys from Spectre on the Cubans, and they persisted. They refused to surrender.

A pair of SeaCobras rolled in several times, firing 2.75-inch rockets and nose guns. They flew in low and nasty, right over our heads. Both were shot down.

Joe Muccia has done some amazing research on the events of that morning, and some fine interviews. I cannot do the incident justice. We will have to wait for Joe's work, which will memorialize for history the actions of these brave pilots.

Rest in Peace, brothers. I loved you as you fought, and I wept when you went down.

Photograph courtesy of Joe Muccia.

The First of Many Dog and Pony Shows

2005-02-10T15:24:00.000+07:00

From left to right, Lieutenant Raymond ("Tony") Thomas, Sergeant Mike Cameron, and Specialist Al Bishop.

This photograph was taken within minutes of our return to American soil after our three day little war.

We were tired, angry about our dead, and not really in the mood for a Public Affairs Office song and dance.

Someone had to be selected to receive their Combat Infantryman's Badges, though, so it was decided that one officer, one NCO, and one junior enlisted man would step up to meet and greet the Army Chief of Staff, John Wickham, who kindly came to Hunter Army Airfield to meet us when we disembarked from our C-141's. (We were grateful that we took C-141's back home, as the long unpleasant flight down on C-130's was still fresh in our memories).

It was a little sad when we arrived, though, as the crowd went crazy....and everyone was expecting the 1st Ranger Battalion. Their family members were standing in the rain, in the middle of the night, waiting for their sons and fathers and brothers and husbands to come home. Instead, they got us grouchy bastards from the 2d Ranger Battalion. Our family members were still waiting for us, all the way cross country, back at Ft. Lewis, Washington. It would be a couple of days more before we finally made it back there.

I remember....when I walked off the airplane at Hunter...I was still carrying a full load of ammunition. I had flat refused to unload my ammo back at Point Salines, as I had been through that drill before, and been sent to Calivigny in the Ultimate Mind Fuck of all time. I told myself, "this time, I will unload when I am back in the states, and not one minute before."

So, there I was....stiff-legged, blinking half in sleep, and someone was trying to shake hands with us as we walked out the door of the bird. I just walked right past him. I was in no mood. Of course, it turns out that it was the Army Chief of Staff that I snubbed. It was nothing personal.

Gerry Holt does recall some lively debate over who was selected to go receive their CIB's. As he recalls, Al Bishop was selected because he was the youngest Ranger to participate in the operation. Come to think of it...Bishop might have been a PFC at the time. I believe he was Captain Kearney's RTO, his radio operator...or he was an FO, a forward observer. Something to do with a radio. He was a good guy, though I did not know him well.

Mike Cameron, I did know well, and he was a superb Ranger sergeant. He later went on to greater things as a federal law enforcement officer. And Tony Thomas...well, many of us are still watching his career from afar, and silently wishing him well. He is a Colonel now, and we hope that he is not quite finished.

Newsclipping courtesy of Joe Muccia.

Pardon Me

2005-01-20T21:49:00.000+07:00

Faithful readers:

As you no doubt know, a tsunami recently hit portions of southern Thailand.

I am involved in some recovery operations at the moment that are very time-intensive, and so have not had time to update this blog.

Regular blogging will resume in a week or two.

I appreciate your patience.

Ranger Art

2004-12-28T16:55:00.000+07:00

The Ranger tab, and the scroll of the 2d Ranger Battalion surmounting the beret flash and Regimental crest of the 75th Infantry. The Regimental motto, Sua Sponte, "Of Their Own Accord," is at the bottom.

No, the face peering out is not part of the formal crest.

There is lineage and tradition behind every color and device on these insignia, and young Rangers appearing before promotion boards had to know them all.

This painting was on the side of one of the barracks on the Pre-Ranger side of the RIP compound back in the early 1980's.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

No "Legs" Allowed.

2004-12-28T16:33:00.000+07:00

Just in case you happened to be a "leg," and were wondering where you were when you walked past the RIP compound, the Rangers thoughtfully put up a sign to help orient you.

The term "leg" is of airborne origin, meaning that it has been used by paratroopers since the World War II-era, when American airborne units were created.

I am not aware that any formal etymological studies explaining the origins of the term have ever been done, but presume that the term "leg" refers to the fact that "straight leg" infantry walked everywhere, while the airborne, meaning parachutists, were flown to their target areas, jumped in, and then walked everywhere.

The term "leg" has a negative connotation, at least when used among Rangers and other airborne troops.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

LTC Hagler's Finest Hour

2004-12-28T15:19:00.000+07:00

The commander of the 2d Ranger Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Hagler, addresses students rescued from the Grand Anse campus on 26 October, 1983.

As I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the Grand Anse raid long stood as a model of quick decision-making and improvisational planning. LTC Hagler had rich experience with heliborne operations from his 30 months commanding infantry units in combat in Vietnam.

Colonel Granville Amos, the commander of the USMC aviation unit that flew the 2d Ranger Battalion to Grand Anse, and the students out, was known as "Granny" to the Marines who worked with him. Colonel Amos was an infamous, no-nonsense professional aviator with very large juevos.

You have got to love it when a plan comes together.

DOD photograph by way of Joe Muccia.

Trespass on Pain of Death

2004-12-28T14:03:00.000+07:00

RIP, as it appeared from the sidewalk, to outsiders.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

A Yeti What?

2004-12-28T13:54:00.000+07:00

This picture is interesting not so much because of the sign, but because of what is hanging beside the sign.

George Conrad termed the device the "yeti net," and he claimed that he learned the secret of its use and design from the Viet Cong.

In the hands of a practiced professional, it could be used to spectacular effect for personal camouflage.

I learned at the knees of masters. It works.

I am not going to get any farther into it than that. At least, not in this forum.

But all you old guys reading out there: you remember how to make this thing.

Good times.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

We Had Our Own Gardens of Stone

2004-12-28T13:52:00.000+07:00

Another shot of class rocks from the Ranger Indoctrination Program, aka RIP, on North Fort Lewis, Washington.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

Be Good Or You Can Sleep Outside.

2004-12-28T13:44:00.000+07:00

A survival shelter at the RIP compound.

There were a number of static displays around the compound, all built using natural materials scavenged from the woods nearby.

This one, a simple lean-to with a fire pit backed by a fire wall, actually worked pretty well. I used variations of this design myself over the years, with good results.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

How About a Rematch?

2004-12-28T13:39:00.000+07:00

Score keeping, Ranger-style.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

What Happened to Our Shirts, Again?

2004-12-28T13:34:00.000+07:00

From left to right, John Tolan, myself, and Kurt "Max-T" Sturr, during a weekend off in the middle of the Pre-Ranger course, sometime in 1981.

I have no recollection of this photograph, nor of Pre-Ranger, for that matter, beyond having attended the course. I also remember going through it with Max-T, and with John Tolan, who was a really good guy who got DX'd from the Battalion for some reason, and sent "down the road."

Bizarrely, good old Max-T remembers things a little bit better. He writes:

"We were cut loose for the weekend from Pre-Ranger to finish OPORD (Operations Order) planning prior to Field Week (I am pretty sure), and we spent time working out the details.

(We) did the hooah photos, of course, and then went out to the Gorilla Room and saw (a band called) "Visible Targets," which I think was an all-girl band. Some local college punks were getting obnoxious in the bar, and Tolan went up to the bartender and said that we were going to take them outside (they were breaking beer bottles). With the semi-approval of the establishment to clean house, we proceeded to "invite" these four guys outside (since there were three of us, we had them outnumbered). When the door opened, they bolted. We could not even catch them, and thus returned to the bar emboldened with our bloodless victory."

Shit. Sounds good to me, Kurt. And plausible.

I was a known offender at the Gorilla Room, an infamous early 1980's punk rock venue in Seattle run by an entrepreneur named "Hugo," who also ran a couple of other establishments in town. This was all "pre-grunge." I even seem to remember the band "Visible Targets." Vaguely. And now that you mention it....I may even recall the event in question...where we chased some frat boys out of the club, and took their beer away from them. In fact, I think I remember picking their pitcher up, standing in front of their table, and drinking from it like it was a large beer mug. Vaguely.

But I am disturbed by this photograph, Max.

What the hell happened to our shirts?

And who took the photos, and why?

Brrrrr.

Photograph courtesy of Kurt "Max-T" Sturr.

They Were "Training Aids." Really.

2004-12-28T13:26:00.000+07:00

A "spider hole," and pungi stakes, elsewhere on the RIP compound.

As I have said, Rippies were forbidden to play around on the "training aids," as they were characterized, and for good reason.

But many funny things happened at RIP.

I remember walking past the barracks one day, between classes, and hearing dim voices saying "rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat." I paused, and listened, thinking, "what the fuck?" And it happened again: "rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat."

Eight to nine round bursts, just like maggots, meaning '60-gunners, were taught.

I ducked and looked under the barracks, and underneath, in the cobwebs and mud and slime, crouched a gun team, a pair of Rippies caught between classes, obviously ordered by a member of the cadre to wait in ambush and initiate on anyone who walked by.

They had sticks for guns, and were smeared with mud, and they were taking it seriously, as God help them, the cadre would smoke them if they did not.

Crazy stuff.

I remember when we got too tired to do push ups effectively any more, we would switch to flutter kicks. When it was physically impossible to do those properly, we would switch back to push ups. When we were limp, completely weak, and incapable of doing anything, we would be put into the "dying cockroach" position, on our backs, with our legs in the air. I remember cadre members strolling around, cups of hot coffee in hand, while we suffered.

It was awesome.

It was a laboratory.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

Thunder From The Sky

2004-12-28T13:24:00.000+07:00

This close-up photograph is of the third BTR-60 nailed on the first day at Point Salines, this one by Spectre.

An ammunition belt can be seen dangling from the hatch.

Spectre gunships were the stars of the show, as far as we Rangers were concerned.

A more wicked weapons system has never been devised.

DOD photograph by way of Joe Muccia.

It Would Behoove You To Comply

2004-12-28T13:19:00.000+07:00

An alternate view of the man traps at RIP.

Rippies were forbidden, upon pain of horrific unnamed punishment (even more horrible, precisely because it remained undefined), to mess around with the man traps.

Of course, we were all fascinated by them.

This is as close to them as any of us ever came.

That is my story, and I am sticking to it.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

STAY OUT

2004-12-28T13:14:00.000+07:00

Some of George Conrad's man traps, distributed around the RIP compound on North Ft. Lewis, circa early 1980's.

These contraptions actually worked.

George Conrad built them, or rather, had Rippies build them, under his expert guidance and loving supervision, as educational teaching aids.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

Where Old Rangers Were Made

2004-12-28T13:03:00.000+07:00

The exercise pit at the old RIP area on North Fort, circa early 1980's.

It looks innocuous.

An old World War II-era barracks, with plastic over the windows to help keep the heat in during the cold Ft. Lewis winters.

Pull-up bars, on the far right-hand side.

Parallel bars.

An elevated platform for the instructor who would lead the Rippies in calesthenics.

A small set of bleachers.

Some ropes.

And of course, the ubiquitous sawdust pit itself.

All done in Ranger colors of Black and Gold.

A pale imitation of the more famous "gig pit" at Jump School, or the large round area used by the Morgan team during City Phase at Ranger School. (I can hear the public address system echoing, even now, "what is the spirit of the bayonet?").

But this place was the gateway to the 2d Ranger Battalion in the early 1980's. You did not go to a line platoon until you had graduated from RIP, and this course was a smoker.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

Damn Good Shooting, Mens

2004-12-28T11:08:00.000+07:00

Another photograph of the Cuban BTR-60's killed by sergeants Bazemore and Pickering, 90mm recoilless rifle gunners from the 1st and 2d Ranger Battalions respectively, on the afternoon of October 25, 1983.

Joe Muccia has interviewed a number of participants in this firefight, and posted a preliminary draft on a thread on the Ranger forums on SOCNET.

In an example of the sort of history that can be lost without the efforts of historians like Joe, it turns out that the firefight was preceded by a short engagement fought by a small recon element from 1st Ranger Battalion commanded by Lieutenant Syd Farrar. This element, from 2d platoon, Company A, 1st Ranger Battalion, was searching for "Juliet 5," Randy Cline's ill-fated gunjeep, which had been ambushed by Cubans earlier that morning and gone missing.

Lieutenant Farrar's team detected the Cuban force as it made its way towards Point Salines, and opened up with LAW rockets and small arms, throwing everything that they had at them, calling back to the commander of Company A, 1st Battalion, John Abizaid, the alert that a counterattack was underway.

Incidentally, the title of this post includes an intentional grammatical error. Rangers of this era will recognize the term "mens," meaning the plural for "men," as it was used by Command Sergeants Major Leon Guerrero and Palacios. Both natives of Guam, they often said "hooah, mens, hooah," or used the term in other contexts.

If it was good enough for them, it is good enough for me.

DOD photograph by way of Joe Muccia.

Is He Camouflaging His TEETH?

2004-12-28T10:56:00.000+07:00

An old newspaper clipping from the January 21, 1982 edition of the Ft. Lewis, Washington, post newspaper, The Ranger, sent in by Jim Hutton.

The photographs in this clipping depict Jim's RIP class, number 4-82, with shots of Rippies during weapons familiarization (Rangers rarely used shotguns, though we did have them in the arms room), elevated push ups, and Rippies camouflaging one another before heading to the field.

The elevated push up in particular had a long tradition in the old Ranger Battalions, which endures today, in the modern-day Regiment, where grizzled sergeants will growl "elevate your feet" at their "newbies" when they fuck up. Somehow, doing standard push ups just is not and was not adequate for Rangers. We had to make them more difficult.

The feet could be elevated on anything, including your buddy's shoulders, a tree, anything, as long as the goal of raising the feet as high as possible, and getting the body as nearly vertical as possible, could be attained.

It got to be funny, after awhile.

Clipping and scan courtesy of Jim Hutton.

The End of An Era

2004-12-28T10:40:00.000+07:00

The picture that exorcised the spectre of Vietnam.

The Grenada invasion marked the turning point, many observers of American history believe, where American public opinion left behind the "malaise" of Vietnam.

It is important to recall that Operation Urgent Fury took place at the same time that well over 200 US Marines were killed by Shiite truck bombers in Beirut.

Grenada, in crude terms, was a "win" for "our side," and was presented that way by that ultimate spin doctor, Michael Deaver.

Initially, the US media was critical of Urgent Fury, but the publication of this photograph, and interviews with students who had plainly been in fear for their lives, changed the tenor of news coverage.

In later days, pundits and "talking heads" commented that the "spectre of Vietnam" had been exorcised.

I do not know the name of this student. If you know, please write to me and fill in the blanks. Thanks.

DOD photograph by way of Joe Muccia.

There's a Second Campus?

2004-12-28T10:26:00.000+07:00

A shot of the St. George's School of Medicine, Grand Anse campus.

The mission to rescue students held at this campus mounted up late in the afternoon of October 26, 1983.

Planners initially were not even aware of the existence of a second campus of the St. George's School of Medicine, and were appraised by a phone call.

Bob Hensler, then a Major, Executive Officer of the 2d Ranger Battalion, remembers that "someone," he never learned who, somehow reached commanders at Point Salines. This mysterious person, to use Colonel Hensler's phrasing, "had his shit together."

I have not been able to determine at this point who this person was, whether the individual was "on the payroll" of the US government, or was a former soldier turned student, or had just watched a lot of James Bond movies, but the mysterious person reported the number of students, got them organized and under cover, and warned them before Rangers flew into the beach at Grand Anse.

We were briefed that there were US government assets on the ground, and some Rangers reported seeing a woman, apparently an intelligence officer, at one of the TOCs reporting in. Like so many other stories about Urgent Fury, it is difficult to know at this late date what is factual and what is mythological.

Someone knows, however. If you know, please feel free to drop me a line, and tell me what you would like history to record. I will post it here, and pass along your account to Joe Muccia, who is writing the definitive history of the invasion.

DOD photograph by way of Joe Muccia.

Welcome to the House of Pain

2004-12-21T21:52:00.000+07:00

Tombstone from the rock garden at RIP, Ranger Indoctrination Program, circa 1982.

Every RIP class acquired a rock.

The rock was inspected by the cadre, as the rock had to be sufficiently large, and heavy, to be suitable to be a Ranger rock.

The class would carry the rock with them through training. The rock would navigate every obstacle, make every parachute jump, and be humped on every mission and on every road march.

Rocks were painted, often with camouflage motifs, and emblazoned with the class motto and class number.

When the class graduated, the survivors would solemnly add their rock to the rock garden at the RIP compound on North Fort Lewis, where the pile grew and overflowed with the passage of years.

After the activation of the Ranger Regiment, the RIP programs run by the respective Ranger Battalions were consolidated, and Regimental RIP was begun on Ft. Benning.

I have no idea what happened to the Ranger rocks from North Fort, after the program was moved to Ft. Benning, but I highly doubt that they were thrown away, or abandoned.

They are a part of Ranger history.

I do not know where they are, or who has them. But I know that they are safe.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hutton.

Let's Walk to Grand Anse. Good Idea!

2004-12-19T13:34:00.000+07:00

Another shot of Charlie Company, 1st Ranger Battalion, moving on Point Salines, with a C-141 landing in the background.

On October 26, 1983, commanders became aware that American students were holed up at another campus of the St. George's School of Medicine.

Initially, Rangers began a "movement to contact" to extract them, walking overland towards the Grand Anse Campus.

Fortunately, LTC Ralph Hagler, commander of the 2d Ranger Battalion, had a brain storm.

Putting his head together with a legendary Marine aviator named "Granny" Amos, he loaded up Rangers from the 2d Battalion onto CH-46 helicopters and flew to Grand Anse.

Duration of the mission: 29 minutes.

DOD Photograph courtesy of Joe Muccia.

No Plan Survives First Contact

2004-12-19T13:12:00.000+07:00

Charlie Company, 1st Ranger Battalion, goes for a walk in the sun beside the runway at Point Salines on D+1, October 26, 1983.

The rucks were heavy, the sun was hot, and we were bone tired, and short of water, after just 24 hours in what was first combat for most of us.

The Ranger approach to training in peacetime, where we always did Whatever Sucked The Most, and learned to always, always expect the Mind Fuck, paid off.

Folks kid us about Grenada, about how the Ranger operations there only lasted a few days, before we were redeployed back stateside. It was enough to give us a taste, and make us appreciate what veterans of other wars had experienced.

Our war, the only one that we had, was a little war, true.

But you can die in a little war, just like you can in a big war, and some of us did.

The performance of the Ranger Battalions under fire during Operation Urgent Fury underscored the need for more Rangers, and for a more robust special operations capability.

It was not much later that another Battalion, the 3d Ranger Battalion, was activated, and the modern-day Ranger Regiment, formed.

The next time that America went to war, in Panama, during Operation Just Cause, in 1989, the Ranger Regiment was ready.

The Ranger Regiment spearheaded the invasion, with combat jumps onto the airfields at Rio Hato and Tocumen.

Someone else will have to write about those wars.

DOD Photograph courtesy of Joe Muccia.

Mail Bag 4

2004-12-19T04:37:00.000+07:00

I received this from a Ranger from a younger generation. It turns out that we have a common acquaintance.

Thanks for posting the link to your blog. I have always looked forward to your posts (in a non-Navy sort of way) due to your great skill as a writer. Thank you for sharing what it was like back when it was hard.

I noticed several references to SFC Jim Pickering. When I first got to A/3/75 in the fall of 91', SFC Pickering was a PSG. That was one crusty old fucker. We called him "Dinosaur Man" (behind his back of course) because he was so old and yet so fucking hard. We used to marvel at the lengths he would go to to be hard. I can remember the first time I saw 2nd Plt dragging in on Friday night after a week in the field and found out they put their patrol base in a swamp every night. When I asked how they slept in a swamp, they said they tied themselves to trees a couple of nights. It was definitely a wake up call for what I had gotten myself into.

Anyway, that was one tough bastard and he was highly respected. Any combat scroll carried a lot of weight for us, but especially an "old scroll".

Just wanted to let you know I appreciate you capturing your experiences for others to read.

RLTW

I can just imagine what it was like in that platoon.

Jimmy Pickering was known as "Yoda" in other incarnations. He was definitely one of the hardest individuals that I have ever met. I will never forget this one day (not at Band Camp), when he and I were on the cadre at RIP together, and he cordially invited me to join him on a run out to Shit Lake with the Rippies.

That sounded good to me, as I had been out drinking beer the night before, and I needed to clear my head. A nice moderate five miler sounded just about right.

It started out that way.

We ran out to Shit Lake (actually, Lake Sequalichew, but being Rangers, we abbreviated it), ran around it, then ran back to the barracks. The pace was brisk, but moderate.

As was normal, we ran right past the barracks.

We always did this, just to inure the Rippies to the Mind Fuck.

I figured that we would run a race-track, and maybe run around the block once, maybe twice, just to make the point, and if the Rippies were running strongly, in ordered ranks as a unit, with no stragglers, then we would bring them into formation and release them to get cleaned up and go to chow.

Well, that was not on the agenda for Sergeant Jimmy Pickering that day.

Indeed, we ran around the block, and past the barracks. Once. Twice.

Then a third time.

Ok, Jim, I was thinking, they get the point. Let's cut them loose, and go eat some breakfast. I was thinking about everyone's favorite Army breakfast, "shit on a shingle," sausage gravy over fried eggs and biscuits.

This last race track, instead of turning the corner to return to the barracks, we headed out the back gate of North Fort Lewis, and then headed towards Solo Point, a round trip of some twelve miles.

No way, I am thinking, there is no way that Jim is going to take the Rippies, and me, on a run to Solo Point, after we have already run to Shit Lake, and back, which was itself a good five miles and then some.

That is exactly what he did.

We ran to Solo Point.

The Rippies "reconned for Jaws" in the salt water of Puget Sound at the bottom of the hill, then ran up that monstrous incline to the top. Then, of course, just because we were Rangers, we turned around, went back to the bottom, and we did it again.

When we finally returned to the barracks, a long, long time later, I was no longer hung over. My head felt fine. But my legs were rubberized.

As I stepped up the stairs to walk into the cadre hut, into my office, my right knee locked. It had never, ever, done that before.

Thanks, Jim.

The Mind Fuck was not just for Rippies.

I loved that man. He was a good friend, and a great, great Ranger.

Mail Bag 3

2004-12-17T21:05:00.000+07:00

I received the following email from a young man named Thomas. I found it thoughtful, and honest, and I congratulate you, Thomas, on assessing your future path with such authenticity.

You don’t know me, sir, but I felt the need to send some sort of comment your way.

I have just finished reading your online book on Operation Urgent Fury in your personal blog, and I must admit, I shed a few tears and was forced to pause and think.

I’m currently a college student working his way towards an associate’s degree in general education and after the additional year and a half that it takes me to earn it, enlisting in the United States Army is one of the options I foresee myself taking.

Like every other good teenage idiot who thinks about the Army, I aspire to force the recruiter to give me either an 18x slot or an 11B Option 40 contract (Editor's note: an "18X contract" refers to a Special Forces option, while an "11B Option 40 contract" refers to Military Occupational Specialty 11B, Infantryman, guaranteeing the enlistee the opportunity to attend Airborne school and the Ranger Indoctrination Program); I don’t know exactly why I cannot be content being a simple grunt or even something non-combative in nature, but I feel as if I need to try.

There are days I wonder how badly I’ll hate myself for having not ever tried, for having never pushed myself to see just how far I can go.

Your book is making me think.

The pain and death you and your brethren endured in Grenada awoke a lot of what I suppose are healthy doubts, or at the very least, thoughts.

The part where you mention that you positioned yourself inside the helicopter so that your Lieutenant would take the bullets instead of yourself, and how treacherous you felt, really hit me hard, as it’s a feeling and situation I seem to be able to very easily imagine. I felt guilty and I wasn’t even there.

Whenever you mentioned the death of someone you knew and went into what you saw, heard, smelled, and felt, I did well to feel what little amount of tears welling up as I did.

I’ve always wondered if I could handle being shot at and being shot and feel I could do well enough, but the thought has never occurred to me what might happen to me to see those that would become my family severely wounded or dead or worse. I have to wonder if I can endure that and the answer isn’t coming to me easily. It probably shouldn’t.

Despite the fact that I’m just another punk-ass 18-year old kid who lurks around SOCNET, talking about how he wants to be a Special Forces operator – or an Airborne Ranger, for that matter – I just wanted to let you know that your experiences, albeit in text form, have opened at least one aspirer’s eyes and given him pause to stop and think if the job itself is worth the heavy price.

Thank you,

Thomas

And that, folks, is why I write, and why I post my work on the internet, rather than trying to flog it to agents and editors and publishing houses.

What this young man wrote tells me that I am scoring hits, my rounds are not going wide.

I wanted to help others, principally civilians, understand what happens to soldiers when they do their duty.

We all of us grew up watching movies, thinking soldiering would be "like that."

I seek to share a little more realism. The fact that my writing has made this young man think about whether he truly wants to enlist is a good thing. Thinking back, frankly, I myself joined for a mix of reasons, and becoming a professional soldier was not one of them.

Not all soldiers cross the threshold and become professionals, but the number of combat soldiers who one day wake up and find themselves committed to the military as a career choice, and a lifestyle choice, is high. Once you make the leap, you never really stop being a professional soldier, in my personal opinion.

It stays with you, it changes you, for the rest of your days.

It colors your outlook on life, it skews your values, I think primarily in good ways, though I do not pretend to be objective about these things. I am dimly aware of them, myself, though the fact that I am only comfortable and relaxed around other soldiers is, perhaps, telling.

There is no doubt that we are all the sum of our experiences, but professional soldiers are more so, I believe, than "regular folks" who pursue conventional career paths.

So one reason why I write, is because I think that many people, civilians in particular, have an erroneous impression of what soldiering is about, what soldiers are like as people, and I am convinced that civilians do not understand the price that professional soldiers pay when they choose the path of the warrior.

Thanks for reading.

And Thomas: Thanks for writing. Good luck to you, whatever path you wind up following in life.

Only Rangers and Sasquatch Out Here

2004-12-15T16:50:00.000+07:00

Rangers at play in South Ranier Training Area.

The rain forest of the Olympic peninsula was a perfect Ranger playground, as it had mountainous areas, it was lushly overgrown, and it was very, very wet, and often cold.

And yes, Rangers from the 2d Battalion really do believe in Sasquatch. We have heard him scream.

That is no shit.

Photograph courtesy of Dale Killinger.

Where You There "BG," or "AG?"

2004-12-15T16:37:00.000+07:00

Rangers at play somewhere in Washington state.

From left to right, then-Lieutenant Mark Mahoney (aka "Slushy Peaches"), "Lucky' Luciano, and Russ Barker, all members of the Bad 'Muthers in the early 1980's.

Rangers of this era will inevitably ask one another one question, as they drink and rough-house and torture one another: "Were you there "BG," or "AG?"

Ignorance of the abbreviations instantly brands you as a cherry.

You see, you were either in the Battalions "Before Goretex," or "After Goretex."

Life changed dramatically for Rangers in the Era AG, and the miracle fabrics were much beloved by us.

Life as an Airborne Ranger meant that you were incessantly wet, and you were usually cold, and you were almost always hungry, humping a heavy ruck, and for some reason, you always took the hard way to your destination. We used to ask Sergeant Birch, when given an option, "which way sucks the most?"

He would smile and nod approvingly.

That would be the way that we would go. Every time.

The question came, in time, to be codified as a motto among the Bad 'Muthers: "Whatever Sucks The Most."

Good times.

Photograph courtesy of Dale Killinger.

A Date with Destiny

2004-12-15T16:00:00.000+07:00

1st Battalion Rangers marshal at Point Salines as Rangers from Company A, 2d Ranger Battalion, fly into history.

This first sortie of four Blackhawks into Calivigny would crash and burn, with only one helicopter, the lead bird, the one that I happened to be on, making it back to Point Salines.

Each Blackhawk had fifteen combat-loaded Rangers aboard. The choppers and crews were from the 82d Airborne.

In chalk one, fifteen Rangers from the 1st platoon, Company A, "Bad 'Muthers."

In chalk two, fifteen Rangers from the 2d platoon, Company A, "Black Sheep."

In chalk three, fifteen Rangers from the third platoon, Company A, "Earth Pigs."

In chalk four, weapons platoon, Company A.

The Rangers slated for the follow-on sortie were bumped, with the call coming back from Calivigny to "send medics and ammo."

The 2d Ranger Battalion medical section loaded up, with surgeons Captain Bob Kane and Major Glenn Deyo aboard, and they flew into Calivigny to do what they could do. The 2d Ranger Battalion PA, Steve Brick (he had replaced Frank Wallace shortly before Urgent Fury), completed the amputation of Bill Eskridge's severed leg (it was hanging by mere shreds of flesh), and then took over the casualty collection point from Gerry Holt, who moved forward to rejoin the other members of the Black Sheep on the forward edge of Calivigny as night fell.

Sergeant Fred Olmstead, a sniper who racked up many kills on D-Day, was evacuated with a concussion from a rotorstrike that was deflected by his helmet.

Staff Sergeant Bill Sears, Company A Fire Support chief, who probably accounted for more enemy dead than any other single Ranger on Grenada by calling in spectacular fires from Spectre gunships, was evacuated, crushed and mangled, after a helicopter rolled over on him.

And of course, Bill Eskridge was evacuated, grittily denying his rendevous with death that day, despite the loss of much blood, but there was not much else to do. The dead were dead.

I have been told that the Rangers at Point Salines, waiting their turn to attack, felt the touch of doom as they saw the remnants of the lead sortie return.

A friend of mine told me, with devastating understatement, "what can I say, T. Eight birds left, five came back."

DOD Photograph by way of Joe Muccia.

When He Makes "Crazy Eyes" You'd Better Run

2004-12-15T15:50:00.000+07:00

Greg Birch and TC White, when they were young staff sergeants.

I no longer remember when or where this photograph was taken. It may have been at Greg Birch's little house in Steilacoom, or at Steve Perlo's place in Tillicum. I remember my old squad leader, though, "Sergeant Fucking Birch" it said on his coffee mug, and God help you if your boots did not shine, or if you did not shoot straight. A better Ranger sergeant never lived, and he is the Command Sergeant Major of the Ranger Regiment today.

No one knows where the hell TC White is, though I heard a rumor that he is teaching HALO in Yuma.

Figures.

Photograph courtesy of Dale Killinger.

Can a Guy Get a Little Peace and Quiet?

2004-12-15T15:37:00.000+07:00

A C-141 roars into the wild blue yonder from the newly liberated runway at Point Salines, free Grenada.

Birds came and went without pause, twenty four hours a day, for days, bringing in vehicles, fresh troops from the 82d Airborne, and supplies.

I have no idea who the tents in the foreground belong to, and do not remember seeing them.

I can remember trying to catch a nap on a couple of occasions, though, and being awakened by the roar of aircraft engines as birds landed, or took off, even at night. It never stopped the entire time that I was on the island.

Photograph copyright Marshall Applegate via Joe Muccia.

The Wrecking Crew

2004-12-15T13:33:00.000+07:00

A photograph of Rangers from B Company weapons platoon (aka "WEBCO"), some of whom later went on to become legends in the special operations community.

Joe Muccia notes, from left to right, SGT Steve Griffin (now a training sergeant for the Jeffersontown Police Department in Kentucky); SP4 Mike Emerling; SP4 Harold Hagen (HH not only was a towed jumper over Fury DZ, he broke his leg after he was cut away and landed after a second pass); PFC John Macejunas (an assistant gunner for Operation Urgent Fury, "Mace," as he was known, later went on to bigger and better things, inspiring movie characters in the process); SSG Mike Keith (formerly USMC, but we still loved him).

The only poor bastard in this photograph who did not get to go to Grenada is Blair Hall, depicted kneeling front and center.

Goddamn, you guys look young.

Sua Sponte.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks by way of Steve Griffin and Joe Muccia.

The Airbridge

2004-12-15T13:17:00.000+07:00

A C-130 lands at Point Salines on D-Day, October 25, 1983.

The control tower is visible behind the bird.

In the early hours of the battle for Point Salines, a lone US Air Force MACO (Marshaling Air Control Officer, if I have my acronym correct) stood alone on the tarmac with a set of headphones on his head. He had the longest hair that I had ever seen on a guy in the armed forces, and he carried an absurdly small HK MPK submachine gun under his armpit. His real weapon was the radio on his back.

This lone guy had a pair of orange batons in his hands, and where he stood was the control tower. He was a one-man control tower, and he pulled off the most amazing feat of calm coordination under fire that I have ever seen.

The control tower depicted in the photograph had been shot to hell, and besides, it was still somewhat contested terrain at that time. There was no way that I wanted to go up there. None of us did. Besides, this guy had no ground crew. He was it.

This guy had jumped in with the Rangers, with one of the early sticks. He had C-130's and C-141's stacked up over Point Salines, orbiting at different altitudes, and he brought them in, one by one, landing them and directing them to aprons where they could unload.

I remember watching him, he would be talking to one pilot through his head set, directing him to an open space on the tarmac with his orange batons, then he would talk to another pilot, this one still orbiting his bird out to sea in the pattern, and then bring him down right behind the other one. He had planes coming in every ten minutes.

As soon as the planes unloaded and turned themselves around, engines roaring, the MACO cleared the decks and the birds flew out of Point Salines, back to Barbados, or back to the states, to pick up the 82d Airborne, or more equipment.

He did all this while the 1st Ranger Battalion battled with Cubans at Little Havana, a few hundred meters away, and two SeaCobras were shot down, making gun runs over his head. Other helicopters came and went through the air space, Spectre gunships loitered overhead engaging targets "danger close," and Naval fast movers swooped through, dropping 500 pound bombs and firing cannons in close air support. Our snipers were trading volleys with Cuban snipers, we had mortar rounds in the air, and bullets were whipping right past this guy. He was heedless of it all, focused on the remote voices in his headset, talking to pilots, being the control tower. He was the MACO.

It was a smoothly orchestrated performance, and I was in awe of the man. All I could think at the time, as I hugged dirt, and bullets cracked, and he stood alone in the open, bringing the birds in, was finesse, sheer finesse.

I never learned his name, and I sure wish that I had a photograph of him.

The success of the early hours of the invasion rested on his shoulders, and he carried the weight like he personally managed the invasion of small countries all the time.

Hell, maybe he did.

Whoever you were: well done, Zoomie. Well done.

DOD Photograph by way of Joe Muccia.

Again With The Ranier Beers!

2004-12-13T21:30:00.000+07:00

Members of A Co, 2d Ranger Battalion, on the summit of Mount Ranier, circa September 15, 1983.

TC White can be seen, top row, far left. Scott B is depicted in the top row, fist raised. Kevin Lannon is front and center, leaning on his ice axe. Killer (Dale Killinger) writes that he is "behind the beer."

It was during this trip to Mount Ranier that Lannon made the Ft. Lewis post newspaper, sewing up a nasty gash in someone's leg with parachute gut pulled from his boot laces, soaked in isopropyl alcohol. Expedient, but effective. I no longer have the article at hand, but remember that the surgeon who inspected the work left the sutures alone.

Lannon was just one of those guys....exasperating at times, but just when you were really pissed off at him, he would go and pull a whopper and get himself a nice write-up in the post newspaper. I seem to recall that he got a letter of commendation from some General out of it, too. Typical.

I cannot be certain after all these years...but I believe that the Ranger depicted at the far right of the photograph, kneeling, is Bill Eskridge.

Good times.

Photograph courtesy of Dale Killinger.

Step AWAY From the Pony, Sir

2004-12-09T15:40:00.000+07:00

Colonel Robert M. Hensler (Retired), riding a ...pony somewhere in Mongolia in 2003.

It was Bob Hensler who informed me, in the gentlest way possible, that Bill Eskridge had survived his injuries from the Calivigny raid, and had been safely evacuated from Grenada.

I will never forget the night that Bob made it a point to come and find me....I was a mere sergeant in the Rangers, a buck sergeant, in fact, and Bob was the Executive Officer of the Battalion, second in command, on a level with Jesus Himself, as far as I was concerned.

We were in a hangar on Hunter Army Airfield. I was still in a daze....it was the very same night that we had returned from the island.

I had seen (then) Major Hensler around, of course, but had never really presumed to speak to him, other than to say "Rangers Lead the Way, Sir," when saluting him in the Quad back at garrison. So it was with some trepidation that I stopped to talk to this officer that night, when I was still numbed out, unable to feel much more than gratitude and surprise to even be alive.

Robert Hensler had a storied career in the US Army, receiving his commission from the US Military Academy at West Point in 1968. After completing the Infantry Officer Basic Course and Ranger School, he was stationed in Germany for a short time, before heading to Vietnam as a small unit infantry advisor.

After Vietnam, Bob punched his tickets in rapid succession, completing the Infantry Officer Advanced Course, getting his company command and staff time out of the way, knocking out a master's degree at Indiana University. He then returned to West Point, this time as an instructor.

After promotion to Major, Bob did his time at the Command and General Staff College, then reported to the 193d Infantry Brigade in Panama, where he served as the Brigade S-3. It was from Panama that he was sent by General K.C. Leuer to Ft. Lewis, Washington, to become the Battalion Executive Officer for the 2d Ranger Battalion.

After Operation Urgent Fury, Bob went "down the road," as we used to say in Battalion, to the 9th Infantry Division, where he was Executive Officer of the 1st Brigade. From there, he was selected for battalion command, and commanded the 1st Battalion, 22d Infantry, 10th Mountain Division, at the time when that unit was just coming on line. From there, Bob was hand-selected to command the 3d Ranger Battalion.

Commanders of Ranger Battalions are rare creatures, and Bob was more unusual than most. An extremely moral man, he is not given to profligate swearing or profane behavior, unlike the vast majority of Rangers, but he is far from a snob, either. He tolerated us slimeball Rangers just fine, and his heart was always with the men of the line companies, and we knew it.

After commanding the 3d Ranger Battalion between 1987 and 1989, Bob went to the Army War College, then was selected for brigade command, taking the 3d Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, on the big island of Hawaii. Commanding for two years, he retired out of the J5, PACOM, as a full bull colonel, in 1995.

Bob stays in touch with his old Ranger buddies, and good naturedly puts up with our teasing about his time commanding 3d Ranger Battalion. There is great rivalry among the three Battalions of the modern-era Regiment, with most comments relating to sexual orientation, genetic disorders, and lack of teeth.

It is an honor to know you, Bob.

Thanks for all that you have done, all the small, quiet acts of a professional infantry commander taking care of troops, thanks for the example that you have set for us all, and thanks for the battles that you fought, even when you knew that victory was impossible. Loyalty is more than just a word with you, and we know it.

"Rangers Lead the Way," Colonel.

Photograph courtesy of Bob and Randi Hensler.

Quiet Heroism

2004-12-08T16:27:00.000+07:00

I think, after forty four years of association with the best men that a man could hope to know, that I have learned a thing or two about heroism.

It is not demonstrative, or blustering.

Rather, true heroism is quiet, even anonymous.

Bill Eskridge, whose life became linked to mine some 21 years ago, epitomizes such quiet heroism.

Bill was grievously injured in a helicopter crash on October 28, 1983, during the raid by elements of the 2d Ranger Battalion against a Cuban-held compound at Point Calivigny, Grenada.

This raid, the final major combat action of Operation Urgent Fury, took the lives of several Rangers from the 2d Ranger Battalion. Bill Eskridge, then a platoon leader in Company A, lost a leg.

I was convinced that day that he was a dead man. He had lost a lot of blood, and he had a long while to wait before the follow-on medics in the second sortie would arrive. I did what I could for him, and operating under the cold-blooded calculus hammered into all trauma specialists, I moved on to seek other patients.

I was astonished, days later, to learn from the Executive Officer of the Battalion, (then) Major Bob Hensler, that Bill Eskridge had lived.

I never saw Bill Eskridge again.

In the bizarre way that the Army handles its casualties, Bill was moved from Ft. Lewis, where he was stationed with his family, to a VA hospital nearer to his "home of record," in Falls of Rough, Kentucky. Few of us ever saw Bill again. I heard rumors about him. All good ones. I hoped that they were true.

Fast forward a few years.

Bill had been living quietly, making a life for himself, raising children, being a husband, a good neighbor, a good friend.

When I caught up with Bill again, via email, it was through John Czarnecki, my brother from B Company, 2d Ranger Battalion, who I ran into in Baghdad this time last year, who closed the loop and put us back in touch.

Bill had been teaching high school, quietly making a difference in the lives of scores of young people, when he yet again inspired someone.

This article, from the Grayson County News-Gazette of Leitchfield, Kentucky, tells the tale of Bill and his brother Carl, and their bike ride across America.

Thanks are owed to Joe Muccia, USMC, who forwarded the article on to me. Joe has helped all of us early modern-era Ranger Battalion veterans get back in touch with one another, and it is a good deed that can never be repaid.

It has been said that the greatest art is the living of a good life.

Thanks for showing us the way, Bill.

And God Bless.

Who Brought Those Ranier Beers to the Bush?

2004-12-08T13:29:00.000+07:00

B Company Rangers from the 2d Battalion in Wenatchee National Forest, circa early 1980's.

Frank Morales is depicted top row, first from the right.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

This Way to the No-Tell Motel

2004-12-07T17:35:00.000+07:00

Frank Morales and Michael Moore at the Special Forces Medical Aidman Course (300F1), Ft. Sam Houston, Texas, June, 1982.

Frank was assigned to B Co, 2d Ranger Battalion, as a platoon medic. He was one of those rare Ranger medics who somehow never made it to Ranger school, but went to combat not just once, but twice.

Frank Morales may have been, until the contemporary Ranger combat jumps in Afghanistan and Iraq, the only guy in the entire US Army authorized to wear "headlights" on a set of novice parachutist wings. Frank never went to the Jumpmaster course, and so never qualified for Senior Parachutist or Master Blaster wings. But his jump wings had two gold combat jump stars on them.

Frank jumped onto Point Salines with B Company, 2d Ranger Battalion, in 1983, and onto Rio Hato airfield in Panama, with HHC, 2d Ranger Battalion, in 1989.

Mike Moore....was one of those good guys....one of those great medics who failed in MedLab.

I have no idea where he ended up. He was a good medic, a fine soldier, and a good man and friend. The Army does this....you meet meet fine men, become close...and then, you deploy, you transfer to another unit, you separate from the service....and you are left with memories, and if you are lucky, with old photographs.

Sometimes, you run into one another again, years later, and you catch up. Somehow, as good as those reunions can be, they fail to capture the sweetness of days past.

As I wrote about MedLab, the attrition rate was spectacular. There were twenty nine of us in the classroom on the first day. Eight weeks later, nine of us remained.

Mike Moore was one of those guys who failed a death board.

We were sorry to see him go.

Photograph courtesy of Frank Morales.

"Dude, the Monkey Butt is Killing Me"

2004-12-07T17:28:00.000+07:00

Rangers in Panama, November 1982.

Panama meant being wet.

Being continually wet in the triple canopied jungles of Panama meant being a walking petri dish, a host, for fungi and bacteria that medical science had yet to classify.

Depicted, according to Jim Hutton, are "Jerry Hiyatt on the '60, and Tom "Sea Biscuit" Selander" (rear).

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hutton.

And Now For Something Completely Different

2004-12-07T17:19:00.000+07:00

Jim Hutton, Panama, November, 1982, just after the infamous Gatun to Ft. Sherman "death march."

Jim reminisces that he deployed to Panama about ten days after graduating from Ranger school, class 14-82.

Killer.

He further notes, not specified, "Glenn Webb behind me and Tim Holt in the background, behind him."

Just a walk in the sun.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hutton.

God Help You If You Have to Piss

2004-12-07T17:05:00.000+07:00

Jim Hutton at Camp Ripley, Minnesota, during a winter warfare training deployment in January, 1983.

Jim is stylish in the latest winter fashions, wearing the issue white smock with white rucksack cover. Always ready for action, he is depicted with snowshoes at the ready, rigged in his parachute harness.

All silliness aside, arctic parachuting was no joke. You were the equivalent of a human door bundle, barely maneuverable. If you thought ambient air temperatures were cold, try them at jump altitude, with the aircraft doors open, and agonized Rangers laboring to fall out the door without getting hung up on something.

After you landed on what appeared to be an empty, smooth expanse of whiteness, you soon realized that tundra is not even, or smooth, or even regular in consistency. Tundra consists of innumerable small hillocks, and the snow merely prevents you from seeing where they are.

So you trudge, wearing impossibly awkward pneumatic white "Mickey Mouse" boots and snow shoes, up and down small tufts of vegetation growth, doing the equivalent of one-legged presses repeatedly, with all your equipment on, and your parachute and reserve in your kit bag on your back.

Welcome to Camp Ripley.

We hated this place, too.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hutton.

Who Were We Kidding? It Could Not Last...

2004-12-07T16:48:00.000+07:00

Ranger comes in for a smooth "stand up" landing at Yakima, Washington, October, 1983.

For those of you who are interested in the gear of the day, note the short-celled canopy. These were modified Hawk XXX parachutes, the exact nomenclature escapes me, two decades later on a cloudy day in Bangkok, but they were fast as hell.

We hated them. In contrast to the Hawk Unit 4's that we trained on at the HALO course at Ft. Bragg, these parachutes were fast, fast, fast, and we often ended up digging ditches with our faces when we tried to flare them to land.

The Ranger is wearing the characteristic jump coverall, sky blue in cover. We were mystified by them. I can still remember Sean Bray wondering, "could they have picked a gayer color?"

Still, this was a phenomenal deployment.

We jumped high performance airframes several times a day, C-130's and Chinook helicopters. Even if you bolo'd out of the HALO Jumpmaster course, which happened to many of us (including yours truly, on JMPI), you still stayed and jumped, and served as a training aid for those few guys who managed to graduate.

As Rangers, we were attuned to the lurking Mind Fuck, alert for the cynical reversal of fate which meant that regardless of how good things seemed, we would always end up doing Whatever Sucked the Most.

We were not disappointed.

We just had no appreciation for the monstrous dimensions that the Mind Fuck would assume in this case.

Live and learn.

You get lulled into a false sense of serenity, of security, you will get slammed.

And we did.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hutton.

Yes, Kids, the Army PAYS You to Do This Stuff

2004-12-07T16:42:00.000+07:00

Rangers at the HALO Jumpmaster MTT at Yakima, Washington, in October, 1983.

Myself and other members of the 1st and 2d Ranger Battalions were hurriedly redeployed from Yakima back to our parent units for Operation Urgent Fury.

Sure was fun while it lasted.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hutton.

A Portrait of the Artist, In a Simpler Time and Place

2004-11-26T16:20:00.000+07:00

Ron Braughton and myself, at Al Stalling's place, Wilmington, South Carolina, circa 1987.

We were much younger then, and life seemed....much simpler.

In short order, it got much more complicated.

Ron was a Physician's Assistant assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group at this time, and I had just finished the Operations and Intelligence course at the JFK Special Warfare Center and School. I was officially in limbo, heading either "down south" for an assignment to "3/7," the 3d Battalion of the 7th Special Forces Group, or.... leaving active duty, to accept an ROTC scholarship.

As events transpired, I won the scholarship, and I returned to college, yet again. It might have been better if I had gone to Panamá. You may agree, after you begin reading my work on Operation Snowcap.

No, I am not flexing.

Ron is, though.

And he still has chicken legs.

Photograph courtesy of Dan Silliman.

This Guy Has Seen Some Mean Streets

2004-11-26T15:53:00.000+07:00

A more recent photograph of Dan Silliman, now a hale, wizened warrior, taken last year in Afghanistan.

Photograph courtesy of Dan Silliman.

A Great American

2004-11-26T15:34:00.000+07:00

A very young Dan Silliman, medic with B Co, 2d Ranger Battalion, circa 1981.

Dan was the prototypical surfer from Malibu, literally, and went on to a career that spanned Special Forces in Afghanistan, and East LA with the LA County Sheriffs Department.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

Rangers At Play

2004-11-26T15:17:00.000+07:00

Rangers are trained mountaineers, with the intent that no terrain will ever be dismissed as impassable.

The Nisqually River can be glimpsed at the bottom of the photograph.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

A Great Ranger

2004-11-26T15:06:00.000+07:00

I believe that this photograph is of then Staff Sergeant Edward "Scott" Watson, my former supervisor at Ranger Indoctrination Program.

No one ever called him "Ed," or "Edward," and I have no idea how I even learned his formal name. He was a great Ranger, and a great boss. He was uniformly calm, very competent, and a great instructor. Scott had been hand-selected by George Conrad, plucked from the ranks at B Co to run the RIP side of the house up on North Fort.

Scott is depicted here wearing a monkey harness on the ramp of a C-130, cruising at altitude over the wilds of the South Ranier Training Area, aka the Ranger Play Ground.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

Home, Sweet Home

2004-11-26T14:52:00.000+07:00

Rangers fill the sky over Abrams West Drop Zone, just behind the barracks on Fort Lewis, Washington.

Whenever we deployed somewhere, we jumped in. Likewise, when we returned home, we jumped in, typically on Abrams DZ, right behind our barracks. It was a simple matter to stack parachutes on trucks, form up by units, and then road march home.

I remember being told that jumping in everywhere that we went made it possible to pass the bill for deploying the unit to the Air Force, as their pilots needed to log a certain number of missions ferrying parachutists to retain their qualifications. I have no idea if this was true. I was a a mere enlisted man in the Rangers, and in those days, ignorance was bliss.

We did rack up a lot of parachute jumps, though.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

They Had To Make It Real

2004-11-26T14:34:00.000+07:00

The rappel was just the warm up to the main event, which was, after all, titled "Rangers in Action."

The 2d Ranger Battalion hand-to-hand combat team, predictably enough drawn from B Co, practiced for days preparing for this event. When the big day came, they did not disappoint. The blood was real.

As I recall, there were several letters written by irate members of the public to the local Tacoma News Tribune, decrying the violence of the intermission entertainment.

We thought that it was funny.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

"Think We'll Get Laid After This?"

2004-11-26T14:28:00.000+07:00

Hicks and partner (never without a Ranger Buddy, remember?) make their long rappel in the Tacoma Dome.

As I recall, they had to wear two pairs of gloves. The pair are barely visible near the platform hanging on cables in mid-air, filming their feat for television and posterity.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

World's Longest Rappel

2004-11-26T14:22:00.000+07:00

A Ranger, I seem to recall that his name was Dunn, and that his wife was hot, prepares to rappel from the top of the Tacoma Dome, circa early 1980's.

At the time that this was done, as part of a "Rangers in Action" public affairs event during a basket ball game, or something along those lines, the rappel was the longest ever attempted, and was certified so by Guinness.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

I Know That We Are "Unstoppable" And Stuff, But...

2004-11-26T13:57:00.000+07:00

...This is ridiculous.

Rangers during a winter warfare deployment, Camp Ripley, Minnesota, early 1980's, temperature, sub-zero.

For those of you who are students of military paraphernalia, note the Korean-era equipment: the white rubber "Mickey Mouse" boots, the heavy wool shirts, the sateen field pants with suspenders, the snowshoes, the ahkio. This was back when the Army was truly hard, before the advent of miracle fabrics like Gore-tex.

This was the hostile environment into which Frank Wallace made his naked pursuit of the intrepid cameraman, Bruce Johnson.

It was deployments like this one that led me to make a solemn vow to never again be cold, and particularly, to never again be cold and wet, for as long as I shall breath. So far, I am doing pretty well.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

He Was a Short, Stumpy Man, Yes...

2004-11-26T13:49:00.000+07:00

...But you would never say that to his face.

George Conrad, in his element, training Rippies, circa 1983-4.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

It Takes All Kinds

2004-11-26T13:41:00.000+07:00

Gary Boog, in a characteristic posture in the field.

Boog was one of the first four Ranger medics to attend and complete the SF medic course. Assigned to B Co of the 2d Ranger Battalion, Boog was infamous for his sexual misadventures and his devastating caricature of Frank Wallace. He had the chin for it.

In particular, I seem to recall one time (not in band camp), we were deployed to Coronado, and Gary....vanished for about 24 hours. We had no idea where he was. We were on liberty, and most of us had gone to a concert...I remember seeing the Ramones playing in their signature black leather jackets despite the heat, and they were dying....Tom Petty played, and Stevie Nicks showed up to do a duet with him. It was a good concert. But Gary was missing.

He showed up a while later that night.

It turned out that he had met an older woman, she was not attractive, Maddog in particular remembered Gary talking to her in a bar in San Diego before he disappeared....she was apparently a witch, this was Gary's term, and she had restrained him with hand cuffs, tortured him with feathers and whips and mouse traps, applied nipple clamps and other, uh, devices to his sensitive areas...and he showed us candle wax burns on various parts of his anatomy with an authentic mix of fascination and revulsion that made quite an impression on us.

I could regale you with tales of Gary Boog that would make you shudder. But out of courtesy to his wife (assuming that he is married), who could someday stumble across this site, I will refrain.

Gary Boog was unique, though, in his day.

He was the only guy in the entire 2d Ranger Battalion who not only had the stones to take a magazine and a Walkman to the field, he was the only guy with the stones to break them out in a patrol base, while he was attached to B Co, and kick back with them. And then be photographed en flagrante.

I believe that Gary is now a respected member of the chiropractic profession in a Southern state. Do not be deceived. He is a wild man. We know.

Photograph courtesy of Joe Muccia.

Editor's Notes

2004-11-25T15:04:00.000+07:00

I thank you for reading.

These past few chapters, beginning with Insomiac Reminiscences: Seeking the Rosetta Stone of Memories have been, as I stated at the outset, "bridge" chapters, intended to bridge the chapters from my book on Operation Urgent Fury to my next book, on Operation Snowcap, which takes place in South America.

These books are all factual, they are non-fiction. All events described actually occurred. I have not embellished, or given poetic license undue free rein.

Some of the names of been changed to protect the guilty, but those who were party to the events in question will certainly recognize themselves or others involved in the events described. Other names have not been changed. The decision to change names or not has been personal, made by me alone, to this point.

The next book, taking place primarily in Peru, deals with events which are now more historical. In their day, they were more....controversial. Reputations could have been damaged...careers could have been impacted. By now...nearly fourteen years later, I suspect that most of the protagonists have retired, or died, or moved on to positions of sufficient authority that they no longer fear my words.

After all, I merely write my opinions.

These words are merely my recollections.

- epilogue: the ending of many things -

2004-11-25T14:11:00.000+07:00

My cousin Gary and I were drinking beer at my brother's wedding a few years ago. It must have been 1991. It was summer. We were reminiscing about high school. Gary and I had graduated together, class of 1978.

When I asked about his buddy, a guy named Boomer, Gary looked at me in shock. "He got divorced," he said, surprised that I did not know. I shrugged, as I had not even heard that Boomer was married.

Boomer was one of the wildest guys that we knew, famous for telling bad jokes and throwing an unexpected right-hook for a punch-line. No woman that I knew would put up with him.

"Yeah," Gary continued, "He caught his wife screwing another woman."

I laughed so hard that beer came out of my nose.

Gary laughed too, but more at me than at the topic. "He walked right in on them one day," he said.

I asked the obvious question. "Did he climb on or kill them?"

Gary was suddenly sad. "Boomer just couldn't deal with it. Turned out she had been screwing this girl for years, since before they were even married."

I had heard nothing about this, as I had been gone a long time.

Gary was sorry for his friend, especially as Boomer had never suspected that his wife was bisexual.

"You know me," Gary said, "I would have jumped right in between them." He raised his hands and concluded, "but Boomer was just blown away by the whole thing."

Boomer's wife had always been faithful, Gary said, despite ubiquitous temptation, as she was an aerobics instructor in a health club. Boomer had reformed himself, gotten a job, and tried to be responsible. He attended alcoholics anonymous meetings. Boomer had trusted his wife.

I suddenly had a strange feeling, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I asked, "who was his wife?"

Gary replied evenly, "you wouldn't know her. She wasn't from around here."

I asked him what her name was.

"Shannon," he replied.

It could not be the same one, I thought, but pressed, "what did she look like?"

He shook his head. "It was a total waste. She was tall and blonde with killer legs."

I just looked at him, with mute memories of days gone by making my heart full.

"She was from South Denver," he added.

I was astounded, and somehow knew that synchronicity, or fate, or the cynical humor of the Big Ranger in the Sky was at work, but I asked him this next question, just to be sure.

"Who was the other woman?"

He opened another beer. "I don't know," he shrugged. "Boomer said she had short brown hair and a tight little body." He took a long pull from the bottle, "Boomer said she kind of looked like a horny librarian."

I was careful to display no expression, but I knew. Imperceptibly, perhaps, I nodded.

Shannon and Boomer had two children.

"His mother has the kids," he said. "Shannon moved in with her girlfriend."

And that circle, you could say, was now complete. I had not thought about Shannon and Barb, the ice cream route girlfriends of my early adolescence, in many years. And yet, here they were, re-emerging, like a minor chorus, or a subtle pattern in a weave, in the woof and warp of the fabric of my life.

Just sitting with Gary brought back the flavor of those teenage wasteland days and years. We were not so different from the two young wild men that we had been, who had run from the law one immortal night, then stopped for hamburgers on our way to a party.

We are older, yes. But our hearts....our hearts are still wild. Like domestic canines who hearken to the call of the wild wolf heard from afar on moonlit nights, Gary and I remain what we are: children of the 1970's, refugees from the American wasteland. Years, wheelchairs, jobs, families, none of them layer more than a veneer over our essential selves.

Now that I am estranged from my family, I sometimes think back on the expectations that they had of me. I remember my companions of childhood, the Barkin brothers. The character of our upbringings resulted, I suspect, in our following divergent paths: they stayed home, and I left.

But destiny...destiny also plays a role. As does the heart.

Some of us are born wolves, predators. Some of us are born to be prey. Some of us grow to learn either role, through life, socialization, the values that society and teachers, peer pressure and parents and television impart.

As I have said, Mark died young in a car crash, drunk and stoned, and Johnny, bless him, tried to leave by joining the Air Force, where he twisted his knees. He was betrayed by his fate, and returned home, where he lives in a dark apartment filled with dead and dying plants that he stubbornly buys every week at the grocery store, but does not water.

I saw Johnny many years ago at our ten year high school reunion, this would have been in 1988, he had long red hair down to his waist, and he walked on crutches, with the dilated pupils of the habitual pot smoker. I greeted him warmly, but my soul was on ice.

I remembered my parents berating me with the litany, "why can't you be more like the Barkin boys?" In a memory of a memory, it still rings in my ears, even now that I am 44, and worn, and a father in my own right. Johnny and I had little to say to one other. He told me that his sister had several kids. I said that I hoped that she was happy. He made no comment.

Fast-forward to the year 1990 in Boulder, a slushy, sloppy winter, John Henshaw and I sat in a saloon off the Pearl Street Mall having a beer like old friends catching up.

His wife stood at the bar, captivating an audience of the usual characters who patronize saloons, while John and I sat against the wall in a booth. We had not seen each other in years, and we had a lot of ground to cover.

I still had the smell of the Peruvian jungle on my skin, and was preparing to return soon. We were discussing our women.

"So," I asked him, "how you guys getting along?"

This was more than a decade after high school, and well after the wars that never happened in Central America. I was recently divorced, and still surprised that military traits were of no help in my domestic conflicts with the opposite sex. Honesty, loyalty, and relentless persistence were not enough. Nor was love. I was no expert.

John Henshaw replied with the obligatory inanities.

"Fine," I replied, "but that is not what I asked."

He looked at me with eyes that resembled the red eyes of a pig, he was a little drunk, and resentful that I had pinned him down, but we knew each other well.

"Well, ok," he admitted. "Sometimes she bosses me."

He turned to his wife and caught her eye. They smiled at one another from across the room.

I told him, "I know what you mean," and nodded my understanding. "Women always end up calling the shots."

We laughed, because we knew that it was true. I had been separated from my first wife for almost two years, and had just capitulated on every demand that she made in our divorce agreement to bring the matter to a close. I was tired, and saw no point in arguing anymore.

A few days later, I left for Perú.

In more memories of memories, I remember sitting mesmerized by the red lights of the radio in our safe house in Miraflores, listening to clocks ticking in the dark, hoping that all was well with John Henshaw.

Back in the States several months later at my desk in DEA headquarters, I was planning to call him, just to see how he was. For some reason, he was still in my thoughts, like a splinter. It was while talking to another old friend, Mike Shelley, then professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago, that I heard the news: John Henshaw, who was my brother, killed himself shortly after I returned.

Only one other guy from my neighborhood made it out alive.

Russ Rounds walked up to me one day on Buckley Field, and I recognized him instantly despite the lines that the years had carved into our faces. We had chased trouble many times together as young hoodlums, and as he stood before me, grinning like the wolf he has always been, I was proud of him in my heart.

Russ was lean and still wild to the core, a staff sergeant in Special Forces, as I had been a few years before. I was a Lieutenant at that time, and I ignored his salute to embrace him in that ritual way that men have, stiffly.

I was navigating the private hell of that bad marriage going worse, and so I made no time to have a beer with him, but we embraced in recognition that we had beat the odds and escaped the drear neighborhood of our past, and liberated ourselves to become what we are.

- z is for zoological -

2004-11-25T13:50:00.000+07:00

The final phase of the Special Forces medic course, held at the home of the Green Berets, Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, is unobtrusively known as “Med Lab.”

There, I did not sleep.

Our first day, sitting in an unassuming classroom of metal desks, a member of the cadre told us to look around.

"Look to your left."

We did.

"Look to your right."

We were soldiers. We obeyed.

"Now, look at the man behind you."

We did so.

"None of those men will be there at the end of this course."

By this time, we were accustomed to hyperbole, and had survived more than a few rites of passage. We had dared the hardest schools in the US Army's inventory, and somehow, we were always among the last men left standing. This course would be no different.

On this day, as I write these words, a cloudy Friday in Bangkok, decades later, I cannot explain how wrong that I was.

I had a goat as a patient, and I nursed her back to health, diagnosing and treating her various ailments. All of our goats were ill, generally with a malady which we came to term "herd fever,' though most also suffered from a variety of parasites, some suffered congenital conditions, and some unfortunate patients were pregnant, as was mine.

We did complete work ups, and were graded not merely on the thoroughness of our medical tests, which we did ourselves, by hand, smearing each slide one by one, staining each slide manually, painstakingly inspecting each for evidence of pathology.

More importantly, we were evaluated on our record keeping, our medical notation, our diagnoses, and our recommended treatments. Our medical records soon became voluminous.

We were endlessly interrogated on our choices of treatment regimens, and required to recite the indications and counterindications and possible side-effects of every medication which we prescribed.

Evincing anything but utter confidence, or giving the slightest hint that the prospective SF medic had failed to assess all feasible alternative treatments incited the cadre to pounce, and God help the apprentice medic whose craft was weak. He would receive no medications, or would be sent away to do further research, while the life of his patient hung in the balance.

Those of us who were academically suspect were quickly culled.

Soon, surgical rotations began.

One day, my turn came, and I sedated my patient, gently placing her on a blood besotted bench. I sighted down the barrel of a bench-mounted rifle and I shot her in the gracilius muscle of her right rear leg.

Moving her to an operating room, acting as lead surgeon, I supervised other students acting in roles as assistant surgeon, anesthetist, scrub nurse, and operating room technician.

I debrided her gunshot wound, cutting down to healthy tissue, and carefully shepherded her from a surgical plane of forgetfulness and oblivion, to a dazed world of sunlight and pain. Over the next weeks, I nursed her back to health.

I remember that my goat licked my face when I went down to the pen in the morning to milk her, and I was careful to avoid bumping her right rear leg, wrapped and splinted in white. She hobbled to me when I called her, knowing that I would have a treat hidden in my pocket. I gently changed her dressings daily, closely sniffing the gauze for the sweetness of gangrene.

As her condition deteriorated, and it inevitably did, despite my endless ministrations, I slept on straw with her in the goat pen, surrounded by the herd chewing in their sleep. We SF medic students smelled badly, and students in the other courses at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School avoided us when we returned to the barracks to shower every few days.

I loved that goat, and she loved me. I am scarred, deeply wounded....to this day, by what I had to do to her, and by the lessons that I had to learn at her expense, so that I could learn to save human lives by killing her. It does not salve my soul to know that I caused her as little pain as possible. I know that I will burn in hell for what I did to that innocent creature, and it will be a blessing, and a relief. I await that judgement.

As the course progressed, patients died from infection. When a patient died, a death board was held where the cadre reviewed the treatments rendered, and judged the fate of the caregiver, the prospective Special Forces medic.

We began our course with twenty-nine men, but as patients died, our comrades also died in a sense, walking out the gate with heads bowed after their death boards, and our numbers dwindled. No one survived a death board. In our lunacy, sleepless under the stress of trying to nurse wounded animals, holding them at night to ensure that they did not die in their sleep until we were ill ourselves, we mourned the passing of our comrades with rituals.

These became progressively more insane.

Again, my turn came. I took my patient down to the pen for the last time. There, the cadre awaited her with a bat labeled "treat me nice." I sedated her and bid her farewell, telling her that the inexplicable penance of this life would soon be ended.

I laid her down in the cold mud of a grey January morning.

I was directed to return to the outer pen, and to wait until I was called to come back. This did not take long, as the instructors were professionals, and it was nearing lunch-time. When I came running, my patient was in flames.

I smothered the fire with a blanket handily laying beside her, then began my primary survey. Her snout had been half-severed, and I extracted a clump of gauze that was obstructing her trachea. I inserted an improvised tracheal tube, pinning her torn tongue to her lower lip. She could now breathe.

I continued down her torso, placing my hand firmly over a puncture wound in her thorax. This was a simulated sucking chest wound, simulated I knew as I had heard no gun shot, but we were trained to treat all perforations of the chest as sucking chest wounds.

Continuing down, I found a fractured front foreleg, then realized that she had been eviscerated, her warm intestines steaming in the winter air.

I continued my primary survey, finding nothing more, then paused to place a petroleum-impregnated bandage on her chest wound. I then got onto my belly to gently lift her and visualize her down side, when I was hit in the face by a spray of hot goat blood from her mesenteric artery, hidden in the mass of intestines coiled in the mud.

I swallowed, then reached in, found the severed bowel, and clamped the artery with a hemostat. I rolled her using the approved technique, an instructor holding her head and neck steady under my guidance, and I placed an occlusive dressing on the simulated exit wound, on the other side of her thorax. We were trained always to expect an exit wound, as in this age of high-velocity projectiles, what goes in, must come out, unless the bullet is deflected and fragmented against one of the unfortunate victim's bones.

I performed a successful venous cut-down, and soon had two large-bore IV's running wide-open, into her bloodstream.

Judged a "Go," passing my trauma test, I was mercifully permitted to ease my goat's passing from this plane of existence. I have never forgotten her. She visits me in my dreams. Laugh if you will, but I see her golden eyes, and her jaw grinding, as she placidly eats green grass. I think that she is waiting for me.

It is possible that I was too, sensitive, let us say, to be a Special Forces medic. Perhaps. I cannot imagine the impact that the course had on earlier graduates, men like Ron Braughton, who survived it when it used canines, dogs, rather than caprines, meaning goats. I have always loved animals, in fact, I love animals more than I love humans. Far more. Animals are not inherently evil. They know nothing of deceit. They live in the "now."

But as a soldier, I accept that the Special Forces medic course taught me lessons that could not be taught in any other way. There is no doubt that the skills that I learned in that course saved lives. My experience is not unique.

But I paid a price...and still do, every day. It is a price that is exacted in dreams, in nightmares, in shadows, in fears, in regrets, in choices made, in paths taken, paths forsaken. It is a price that I paid willingly, and still do, but I write these words so that you who read might understand......those of us who stand for you do things that you do not understand, things that you cannot understand, things that you rightfully should recoil from....and we do these things because you cannot, or will not. Someone must.

I remind you that I volunteered to be a soldier, to be a Ranger, I volunteered for Special Forces, and I volunteered for combat. If I did not go, then who?

On the last day of the course, the cadre reminded us of their words on that first day. And indeed, we looked around, and we were all islands. I do not remember how many of us remained in that classroom, I have been told that we were nine, but none of us sat beside anyone. There was no one to my left, nor to my right, nor anyone before me, nor behind me. We were all alone, isolated.

Learning to heal was a more difficult proposition than learning to kill. The Special Forces train the best medics in the world, men who can perform surgery with crude tools in the middle of the most desolate wastelands.

Special Forces medics are unique, men who can kill as well as heal, teach as well as act, men who can work solo, or in teams.

I was one of the first Special Forces medics assigned to a Ranger Battalion, and my newly learned skills served my unit well.

- yea, though I walk in the company of heroes -

2004-11-17T15:03:00.000+07:00

My new medical section bosses were Chief Warrant Officer Second Class Frank Wallace, and Sergeant First Class Ron Braughton.

They were both veterans of Special Forces, and had recently left one of the premier SF assignments, a classified detachment in Berlin called "Det A." In Berlin, Braughton was the senior medic. In the interim, Wallace had attended the Physician's Assistant course, and their roles were now reversed, so he was now senior to Braughton. It made no difference. They had been friends for years, and besides, Special Forces was less rank conscious than the conventional Army in those days.

These two Special Forces men were a good team, and they brought expertise and experience to the 2d Ranger Battalion that was unmatched anywhere else in the Army. We medics of the line were fortunate to learn from them, and the lessons that they taught us would save lives, months later. The things that I learned from these men changed me forever.

Frank Wallace was an eccentric, brilliant man, fluent in German, with a Bavarian wife. Frank had "gone native" at Det A, as many SF men do, but he had done so to an extreme, and was now besotted with weird European behaviorisms that included walking around naked as often as possible.

I cannot begin to tell you how many times one of us told him, "chief, put on some fucking clothes, will you?" Frank would invariably reply, "I'm comfortable with my body. Does my being naked make you uncomfortable?" He would jut out his massive chin, and smile.

Frank Wallace lacked all modesty, and would stroll nude around the Battalion Aid Station after PT, morning physical training, or would inexplicably sit, drinking his coffee in the sunlight by the window, naked, reading the newspaper. Frank Wallace implied that any criticism of his perplexing behavior suggested that the commentator was sexually disturbed by his nude masculinity.

Ranger Battalions are rabidly homophobic organizations, Rangers are warrior monks enslaved to an abtruse culture that values martial expertise and discipline, so any behavior that can be interpreted as "gay" is indictable. Wallace's nudism was scandalous.

The situation peaked one legendary evening in the white chill of Minnesota, where the Battalion had deployed for Winter warfare training.

As the wind outside howled, Wallace was in the latrine, shaving in front of a fogged mirror, naked as always, towel around his neck, while every other Ranger outside the showers had his towel wrapped around his waist. I remember sighing in resignation, as Wallace's penis rested on the polished porcelan of the sink. He was oblivious.

I said nothing, as by then, I knew that Wallace would simply comment that he and his wife and son lived their lives nude in their home, and I wanted to spare myself the imagery of a naked family around the dinner table, gaily bantering in German, eating schnitzel and sauerkraut.

One of the supply sergeants came into the latrine, and asked Frank if he could adjust his back for him. Wallace said, "sure, as long as you don't mind if I'm naked."

I cannot remember the sergeant's name after all these years, but I remember his face. He was in pain, and he more or less shrugged. At that point, a plot was hatched.

Somewhere, a medic named Bruce Johnson still has a photograph of Frank Wallace, naked, executing a chiropractic "manipulation" of that other Ranger's back. That Ranger is laying prone on a concrete floor. Frank Wallace is depicted in this photograph kneeling, nude, straddling the man, with both hands under the man's chin. Both men are looking into the camera with startled expressions.

I was present in the room at the time this photograph was taken. Bruce Johnson could win the Nobel Peace Prize, and it will never compare to the lifetime triumph represented by this photograph.

The very instant that Bruce triggered the shutter, the instant that the flash faded, Frank Wallace was up and moving towards Bruce Johnson like a freight train, penis flapping, but Bruce was already sprinting for the door.

Bruce made it.

Out the door he ran, into three feet of snow he leapt, and into a swirling snowstorm, heedless of sub-zero temperatures and bare feet, Frank Wallace pursued, naked as always.

I laughed as I have rarely laughed in this life.

Frank Wallace never succeeded in enticing or coercing that photograph out of Bruce Johnson. Bruce, wherever you are, I beg you: send me that photograph. I want to post it here.

Strange predilictions aside, Frank Wallace picked up where Greg Gardner left off upon his untimely death, and began writing memoranda advocating the training of Ranger medics in the Special Forces Aidman's Course, known colloquially as the SF Medic course. This course trains the best military medics in the world, men who can perform invasive surgical procedures and manage gunshot wounds. Typical military medics apply bandages. Special Forces medics are trained to be physician subsitutes in the wild places that the Special Forces call home.

Frank Wallace succeeded. After much debate and discussion, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School agreed to accept a limited number of Ranger medics as students at the SF Medic course. Our training at the Battalion Aid Station, preparing to attend this course, intensified. Wallace and Braughton were intent that we would establish a benchmark of excellence.

Ron Braughton was (and remains) a living legend in the special operations community. He had gone to Vietnam with the Special Forces at the age of nineteen, and somehow found himself in a classified activity called Project 404, based out of Northern Thailand. I still know little about those years, but I know that he fought in combat in Laos, and earned a Silver Star for gallantry in action.

Ron has a phobia for snakes, and I have been told a story about him emptying a magazine of ammunition into a swaying cobra that blocked his path on the wrong side of some Indochinese border, compromising a classified mission. As the story goes, the team had to run for extraction, but "at least the snake was dead."

After he was assigned to Det A, Ron is said to have killed some Turks who tried to rob him in the subways of Berlin with his bare hands. I do not know many details of this incident, but I do know that Ron Braughton is a deadly expert at unarmed combat. I also know that he knew the wrong side of Berlin well, this from long before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and he speaks German like a native.

Braughton was one of twelve men from Det A who were assigned to infiltrate Iran and hit the Foreign Ministry in an annex to Operation Rice Bowl. The Iranian Revolutionary Government was holding American diplomats there, while the other American hostages were held in our Embassy by student fanatics.

Ron became the big brother that I never had.

Shortly, Gerry Holt, Maddog Wilson, a guy named Gary Boog and I, drove down to Fort Sam Houston for the Special Forces medic course.

San Antonio had not changed, it was the crime capital of America, someone was murdered on the streets every day, but we had little reason to leave post. We were the first Ranger medics to attend that course, and we took full advantage of the favorable female-to-male ratio. I got laid more in the next thirteen weeks than in the previous thirteen years of my life. It was a wonder that we did so well academically. But then, as was our habit by now, when we trained hard, we played hard.

We began this most difficult of all Special Forces courses with thirty-one others. Our fellow classmates had passed the first phase of the Special Forces Qualification Course, also known as the SFQC, but typically had little other military experience. They were wild men, however, and we found that we were all cut from the same cloth.

The course was grueling.

We spent long days learning anatomy, pharmacology, and always, trauma management. We got to know each other well.

In the next thirteen weeks we passed urethral catheters on one another, collecting the rancid urine of our buddies to spin down in centrifuges and examine the crystalline remnants under microscopes, inserted nasogastric tubes down each other's noses (we made it a point to dine on pizza for lunch that day, and roundly regretted it as we vomited into emesis basins), and on one infamous, hot afternoon, we palpated each other's prostate glands.

On the weekends, we held parties at our barrracks, and invited all the girls on post. It helped that the cadre of the student companies told their nurse trainees not to attend.

More of them came.

Those parties were historic.

- x'ing the lines -

2004-11-16T17:11:00.000+07:00

Returning home on leave, I was watching the evening news at my parent's new home.

My parents had moved from our old neighborhood, selling the house of my childhood to Jenny Barkin and her new husband. "He looks just like you, Steve," my mother told me.

My mother did not know what Jenny Barkin had told me years before in our youth, and I breathed a secret sigh of relief. I had just learned that Jenny's brother Mark was dead, killed in a car crash. He had died drunk and stoned at an age when, it is said, kids leave that stuff behind.

I was glad that my parents could escape that neighborhood. One of the Gantry boys had died in a shoot-out with the police up the street while I was gone. The neighborhood was becoming dangerous.

I was walking out of the room when a newscast caught my attention. I recognized a name. It was my old girlfriend Karin's youngest brother, Jason. He had been charged with murder, and would be tried as an adult. Shortly after I joined the Army, Jason found his step-father's rifle in a closet, took it to a playground, and killed a playmate. Jason was fourteen years old.

I had not called Karin in two or three years. Karen must have been twenty years old by then, this would have been in 1983, and I sometimes wondered what had happened to her. I never went back to visit her.

While I thought of Karin often, and still do, to this day, decades later, I never called her. Perhaps I am afraid that she will be changed.

Maybe there is some other reason why I do not try to find her, the first love of my youth. Perhaps it is the dream that I can look at a tropical sky, and think that somewhere, my blondhaired girl, who exists for me now in kaleidescope memories, also sees those same clean clouds, and remembers me, unchanged. I do not know.

I travelled incessantly the following year as a member of my Ranger platoon. I grew accustomed to wake up calls in the dead of night, boarding aircraft to jump into remote sites before the dawn, hitting targets with extreme violence of action as the sun rose. These were training missions, but we knew someday that they would be real.

Eventually I returned to RIP as an instructor, working for SFC Conrad. We could no longer physically abuse aspiring Rangers, but I had learned that mental stress was more instructive than mere pain. SFC Conrad now taught me treachery, and to fight to win, no matter the cost.

"Kill first, with total surprise, and ask questions later. You can have the luxury of feeling bad about it afterwards, unlike the other poor bastard. It's better to be alive and wrong, than right and dead."

As before, SFC Conrad would train me well. To me, survival became more important than principles, morals, and ethics.

SFC Conrad taught me how to lull an enemy into a false sense of complacency, and to strike with devastating violence, at close range. He taught me to fight like the Viet Cong had fought him, "holding the enemy's belt buckle," negating any disadvantage in firepower. Big guns are useless when you can smell your enemy's breath, he told me, and a knife is best when you are eyeball to eyeball.

I learned to do whatever was necessary to survive.

The genius of Ranger training methods, of SFC Conrad's training methods, was that this way of warfare, over-rehearsed and distilled to instinct, could be harnessed to the accomplishment of a mission.

I was fortunate to do my post-graduate work in Ranger studies under the stern tutelage of SFC Conrad, one of the most legendary of Ranger sergeants. He taught me how to cheat and to fight dirty, and his cold-blooded methods served me well in bar fights in the enlisted clubs of Fort Lewis and the punk clubs of the Seattle underworld.

Later, this merciless philosophy would save my life, and I would have to learn how to deal with the aftermath on my own.

Having survived the tests of three years' hard training, returning full circle to the place where I had begun learning the homicidal arts of the Airborne Ranger, I took pride in the fact that I had crossed invisible lines and changed. All my friends in Denver said that I was different. I still saw little evidence of this change in my eyes, but I was a Ranger. And that meant that I was unstoppable.

The final stanza of the Ranger Creed reads:

"Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor."

I believed this dictum, reciting it in concert with the other men of my Ranger Battalion, standing in ranks in the cold drizzle of early Fort Lewis mornings.

We recited the Ranger Creed every day. We lived it.

I reflected, surrounded by the best men that a man could hope to know, that I was the only soldier in my Basic Training company--120 men from all corners of America--who had surmounted all obstacles to become a full-fledged member of a Ranger Battalion.

Despite my Drill Sergeant's predictions, I became a team-player, although one with an abrasively individual bent.

In the 2d Ranger Battalion, I was happy.

The next test before me would be the ultimate one of combat. I feared it, but I wanted to measure myself. We all did. Along with SFC Conrad, we prayed for war, but it did not come.

As I rose in rank, I increasingly heard the call of another elite unit in the US Army. In the Special Forces, men who were individuals were assets. And unlike Ranger Battalions, which are an integral part of the US strategic reserve, and so saved for crisis events, Green Berets were in the shit somewhere, every day.

I wanted to cross that line, too.

- wondering when my turn will come -

2004-11-04T16:30:00.000+07:00

A few weeks later, back at Auxiliary Field Eight on Eglin Air Force Base, we were practicing fire-support procedures with Spectre gunships.

With no officers around to discipline us, we stripped off our shirts, leaned back with binoculars in lawn chairs, and called in thousands of rounds of steel ordinance on the hulls of wrecked vehicles on the firing ranges. I was impressed by the firepower of the modified Hercules transports. I had no premonition that they would save our lives two years later.

In the evenings, we drank beer in the Gator Lounge, the small bar for Ranger cadre at Camp Rudder. We visited the camp mascot, an eight-foot long alligator named, predictably enough, "Ranger," and laughed at the plight of a chicken huddled in the corner of the pen. The next day, I was amused to see the chicken standing on Ranger's head, pecking at the insects crawling there. The next day, there was no chicken, only feathers lining the edge of the gator's smile.

One afternoon, it rained, and we were at loose ends. In training, Spectre does not fly in the rain. A Spectre pilot, a full Colonel, asked us, "you guys want to see the imagery of the Indian Springs crash?" We went into his office, and he started up his videocassette recorder. I grabbed a cup of coffee.

In those days, the 2d Ranger Battalion, the 1st Ranger Battalion, elements of Delta and other special operations units, periodically rehearsed a "mission template" derived from the plan to rescue American hostages held in Tehran. This operation was known as Rice Bowl in the special operations community, but referred to by the media as "Desert One."

A Spectre gunship had been orbiting over Indian Springs that cool night in September, 1981, sweeping the desert flatness with its low-light television cameras. The pilots in the C-130 Combat Talons and Hercules participating in the exercise, full of Rangers and Delta operators, were practicing flying and landing with night-vision goggles, an iffy proposition in 1981.

Today, the US military is peerless at operating in darkness, but back then, it was an immature technology, and the pilots were unaccustomed to the tunnel-vision and altered depth perception caused by the goggles. At Indian Springs, as at Desert One, the pilots completely missed the designated landing area.

Watching the gunship film, we could see the plane bumping along the desert floor, short of the infrared landing beacons, and we saw then a brighter, lighter green under the engines, the beginning of flames seen through the infrared cameras.

We watched as the plane continued, swerving, and the flames spread. The plane broke in half as it shuddered to a stop, the picture grainy through the television system, and the wing tanks blew on the right side.

We could see small points of light, Rangers, running, like metal filings repelled by a magnetic field, into the safety of the desert darkness. An explosion rocked the plane. A couple of points of light lingered on the periphery on the left side, then darted back in, only to be consumed in the camera-blanking secondary explosions of the munitions onboard.

Jim Bynum and Greg Gardner, the two guys in charge of our medical section, were decorated posthumously with the Soldiers Medal for braving the flames to evacuate the injured from the crashed aircraft. They had been my first bosses in the Ranger Battalion medical section. They showed me how to die.

My fellow medic Mitch "Maddog" Wilson was also decorated with the Soldiers Medal for saving the life of 1st Lieutenant Floyd Miles, digging him out of the burning debris of the wreckage and carrying him out on his back. But because Maddog survived, he showed me how to live.

Maddog was characteristically nonplussed by the medal, the highest peacetime award any soldier may receive.

Maddog told me, "Shit. That medal and fifty cents might get me a cup of coffee."

The Soldier's Medal is awarded only in cases where the soldier saves a life at the risk of his own

Maddog is from Boulder, Colorado, and remains one of my best friends to this day. We called him Maddog because he did a Jekyll and Hyde transformation under the influence of alcohol, and was totally demented. He later quit drinking altogether, and I am prouder of that triumph than of his medal.

Saving the life of a man is a worthy thing, but saving your own life, so that you can seize ownership of it, in humility and terror, and engage in quotidian good works for the remainder of your days, is perhaps equivalent. I know that in Maddog's case, saving the lieutenant's life was the easier task.

As I sat in that quiet office with Scott, Sean Bray and Steve Slater, watching the crashed Hercules burn, I had no premonition that three of the four of us would survive a similar conflagration two years later.

I doubt that Steve Slater knew that he would be dismembered by Blackhawk rotorblades on Grenada.

I had no idea that a young medic that I had not yet met, Kevin Lannon, would die the same day, the same way, along with a quiet guy named Phil Grenier, who was a mortar man in the weapons platoon.

Mark Rademacher, the 1st Battalion Ranger who passed on the whispered memory of pizza during that exhausted patrol in the Mountain phase of Ranger School, would die with his gun in his hands, finger on the trigger, ambushed in his gun jeep, along with his team members.

Mark Yamane, another friend I had not yet met, would be the first Ranger killed in combat since the Vietnam war. Yamane would go out hard, the barrel of his M60 machine gun barrel hot.

After we returned to Fort Lewis a few days later, I learned that another member of my platoon, Sergeant Andrew Stay, had drowned crossing a river in Virgina. He was at Delta Force try-outs, taking what we called "the long walk," running their long-range navigation selection course. He was a strong swimmer.

Andy was found downstream, tangled in his rucksack straps, caught in sodden deadfall.

Another sergeant from my platoon, Terry Gilden, would be killed later that year when Shiite truck-bombers destroyed the American Embassy in Beirut. Gilden had been one of the first Rangers selected for Delta. This mission to Beirut was his first, an easy one, just to "bust his cherry," his commander, Dick Malvesti, told me at the wake.

That officer swore to me, "Sergeant T, I promise you that I will one day find the man who ordered that bombing, and I will kill him, to avenge Terry Gilden."

Major Dick Malvesti was a good man, and I believed him. He spent long years in "the unit," as we called Delta, before he burned in himself on a final HALO parachute jump a few years later, and I often wondered whether kept his word. For years before Dick's death, I read the newspaper carefully.

Another sergeant named Ewing, from Company B, also burned in on a foggy HALO blast two years later, and buried himself six inches deep in the mud of the South Ranier Training Area.

Mark Yamane, Steve Slater, Sean Bray, Scott and I, all attended the same HALO course as Ewing. He was found after a long search in a perfect aerodynamic frog position, face-down.

When his fellow Rangers pulled him out of the indentation he had made in the earth, he was loose, like a bag of jello. He had broken all the bones in his body. Death for him was, we hoped, instantaneous.

More days than I can remember, we stood in formation while the roll call of the dead was called. Then we drank beer to their memories. I could only wonder when my turn would come.

It was a hazardous profession.

- perseverance with a vengeance -

2004-11-03T16:32:00.000+07:00

I had lost 25 pounds.

I knew animal hunger like a wolf, and licked c-ration cans clean. By this time, it was November, and turning cold. The leaves had fallen from the trees, and patrolling with stealth was harder, except when it rained.

One night in the swamps of Eglin Air Force base I told a Special Forces guy named Pat Mahoney a secret. We were standing in cold water up to our armpits, shaking, urinating in our uniforms to enjoy a few moments of warmth.

"Pat, guess what?" I whispered.

"What, T?" He asked.

I paused for effect, then told him, "it's my birthday."

We laughed with the hysteria of men possessed.

I learned greater humility at the edge of my human limits, and I remembered the guys from Georgia, who had quit months before in jump school. Ranger Batman's words gave me strength, and I did not quit.

I remember paddling a rubber boat down the Yellow River, hearing the slap of alligator tails hitting the water as we drifted past. Paddling the boat was mesmerizing, and I was jolted from my dream-state by one of my buddies who, slumping into sleep as he paddled, fell off the boat into the river.

He scrambled back into the boat in a panic as the luminous eyes of the alligators suddenly drifted closer. It was hilarious.

I harassed our Ranger Instructor by whispering in the dark, "sergeant, sergeant."

He responded with a bored, "what, Ranger?"

I smiled in the dark, thinking, I got you, you son-of-a-bitch, then whispered, "I lost my weapon."

A lost assault rifle, especially one dropped in the river, was a serious matter. All training would cease, helicopters would hover, and divers would search, until it was recovered.

"What?" he screamed in the darkness.

Needless to say, a lost automatic weapon would be the kiss of death for a Ranger student.

We stopped paddling, all camouflaged faces turned towards me. I remember the way that the eyes of my buddies looked in the moonlight. I laughed.

"Just kidding," I said.

Then we all laughed, half-manic.

I felt the Ranger Instructor's eyes in the dark. I had scared him more with the administrative hell that a lost weapon symbolized than anything else could.

"Ranger T," he said, "you been here too long."

He was right, I realized, as we left the river and paddled out onto the open ocean of the Gulf of Mexico. We were soaking wet, and our bodies had no spare calories to burn to warm us while we floated on the waves. We were shaking violently with the cold. We watched in indescribable jealousy as, ashore on the beach, a group of civilians huddled around a driftwood fire, roasting hot dogs, drinking beer.

I heard the laughter of women, and saw a blonde cuddle up against a man beside the fire.

Someone said, "I can smell those fucking hot dogs."

It was true. We were so starved that we could smell food from long distances. The civilians had no idea that we watched them in animal misery from a small boat bobbing in the ocean night. I swore to myself again that I would never leave another woman.

We finally saw the blinking of a red-lensed flashlight rolling on the wavetops, and paddled towards a landing craft that would carry us to Santa Rosa Island, where I ran my last patrol, and passed. I would finally graduate from Ranger School in a matter of days.

The day that I graduated, my buddy Scott and I stood in formation with Steve Slater, Sean Bray, and fifty-seven other exhausted men. Scott's parents took us out to dinner, but I have no recollection of it.

I remember thinking about my original Drill Sergeant, the one who told me that I would never make it, but I was too tired to enjoy my triumph. I checked into a motel next to the airport, and left express instructions with the maid to physically enter my room and shake me awake. She promised to do so.

The next morning, the maid shook me and screamed as I jumped in alarm.

"I'm not sleeping," I said.

I thought that I was still on patrol, and feared another Major-Minus Spot Report.

"Okay, okay," she said, backing away. "Whatever you say."

I woke Scott in the room next door, and we shared a taxi to the airport. We got on a plane, and instantly fell back asleep. Five minutes later, the stewardess was shaking me.

"Sir," she said gently. "Sir, we're in Seattle."

I nodded, looked around, and was astonished to see that the plane was empty. Scott and I were the last ones aboard. We both had wet spots on our shirts where we had drooled as we slept.

Back at the Battalion, we had a week to recover before again deploying to Panamá for jungle training. I had already been to the jungle warfare course, and remembered the Canal Zone fondly for its Colombian prostitutes and lenient police, but I was not ready to return. I wanted to sleep. But things were different at the Battalion.

Scott and I were promoted to Specialist Fourth Class, and treated better now that we were Ranger-qualified. Graduation from the Ranger course is the most significant non-combat rite of passage in Ranger Battalions, and marks the full-fledged member. You will not be promoted, or entrusted with leadership positions, or be exempted from the cruelest punishments, until you graduate. You get no respect until you return from Fort Benning with the discreet black and gold tab worn on the left shoulder of the uniform.

I had mine, now, and wrote my fellow medic Gerry Holt a letter. He was in Florida, suffering in the swamps, and I told him that he could not come home without it, as life in the Battalion was much better with a Ranger Tab. He especially could not quit since I had mine. I knew that he would persevere or die since I had graduated.

Scott and I returned to the second squad of the 1st platoon, the Bad 'Muthers, and Sergeant Birch's training techniques were revealed to me for what they were: the loving, professional methods of a world-class Ranger sergeant.

A few days later, we crept through the jungles of Fort Sherman like wraiths, camouflaged with foliage selectively stripped from the trees. Sergeant Birch was walking ahead of me in the file, I was the last man, walking tail-gun, as would become my habit.

Birch paused and turned towards me, and I looked at him, expecting a hand signal. He just smiled. He loved the jungle, and I was surprised to realize as I smiled back, that I did, too.

As we continued walking, carefully avoiding the Black Palm spines and anything that was fuzzy, as SFC Palacios taught us all, I was amazed to admit that I loved soldiering more than anything that I had ever done in my life.

But the truth was that I loved being a Ranger, and I loved all the terrible truths that that fact implied.

RIP Colonel William Powell

2004-11-03T16:11:00.000+07:00

The commander of the 2d Ranger Battalion in 1981, LTC WIlliam Powell, leads the command group in review of his Rangers.

Powell was killed, along with several other Rangers, in the crash of a C-130 at Indian Springs, Nevada.
Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

- unconscious lessons -

2004-11-03T14:54:00.000+07:00

I did not quit.

I was now in the same class as my buddies Scott and Sean Bray, two classes behind my original one. I glimpsed Ranger Batman from a distance, as he stood in formation with my first squad, preparing to march to graduation. It hurt, but my pain also gave me strength.

I took the lead patrol at Camp Darby, and ran it so smoothly that I recieved a Major-Plus Spot Report. I had had enough practice, and I knew what I was doing. The fifth stanza of the Ranger Creed runs:

"Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of batttle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy, and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country."

I returned to the Mountains. Every day was a punishment for the sins of my life, and I kept going by remembering my old girlfriends, swearing that I would never leave the next one.

It was October, and some members of my new squad suffered frost-bite. The Ranger Instructors relented, contrary to training policy, and permitted us to build fires.

I ran another competent patrol, received a "Go," and began to hope that I would survive Ranger School. I had committed to do so, or die. Hunger, exhaustion, and cold were our constant companions. At least the bugs were dead, I thought.

The afternoon of our last patrol, we waited for a Blackhawk helicopter to return us to Camp Rogers. On arrival, we sat on our rucksacks outside the cadre shack waiting for our evaluations. We instantly fell asleep as we sat, heads nodding, saliva drooling onto our uniforms. We all walked around wearing spit stains on our shirts until they dried.

That night, sleeping the sleep of the dead, Steve Slater woke me with the news that several members of our Battalion had been killed in a plane crash at Indian Springs, Nevada. My bosses in the medical section, Battalion senior medic, Jim Bynum, was dead, as was the Battalion surgeon, Greg Gardner. My buddies Lonnie Furr and Jon Critselous were dead. So was a private named Kevin Langley whom I did not know. And so was the Battalion Commander, Lieutenant Colonel William Powell.

And so on. I said a prayer for them all, rolled over, and fell back asleep. In the morning, we jumped into a small clearing in the mountains for the last patrol of the phase.

There was no time for a requiem.

- to free the oppressed -

2004-11-03T14:39:00.000+07:00

By this time, halfway through the course, we were malnutritioned and weak, and walked the ridgelines like zombies.

A Ranger from the 1st Battalion named Lukasevich paused one evening, the sun was sinking into the forests, and I thought that he wanted to pass on a whispered order sent back by the patrol leader.

"Pizza," he whispered.

I looked at him in outrage, then we both laughed.

I passed the message to the Ranger behind me, another guy from the 1st Battalion, named Rademacher. He laughed, too. "Assholes," he said.

Then he passed it on, and I laughed to myself as I walked, hearing the cursing continue until the memory of food reached the end of the file.

Rademacher tapped me on the shoulder a few minutes later, and whispered "Brooke Shields," referring to one of the most beautiful young women in the world. I shook my head. We were a long way from civilization and women.

I passed "Brooke Shields" ahead to Luke, and I grinned as he winced. We kept walking. I dreamed about pizza, the comfort of women, and the way that their hair smells, for the rest of the night.

As the patrol continued, we began falling asleep on our feet, and periodically there would be a loud clatter as a weapon bounced off the rocks. Our weapons were physically tied to our harnesses so that we could not lose them, so every time that I heard the sound of a weapon falling, I knew that a Ranger student had fallen asleep and staggered against a tree, or fallen to the ground.

Our Ranger Instructor stomped back along our elongated file in the dark. "Who's sleeping, goddamn it?" he wanted to know. We were silent. We all were sleeping, with our eyes wide open.

"Get your shit together, Rangers, or you will suffer!" he hissed.

"No shit," Rademacher muttered. The patrol continued.

At the next pause, we lay in a perimeter while the student patrol leader took a small element out to pin-point our next target. Those of us lucky enough to remain behind settled down to pull security. I remember looking out into the night over the sights of my weapon, and then I felt a small stick tickling my ear. It was the Ranger Instructor.

"Were you sleeping, Ranger?" he asked.

"I don't think so, Sergeant," I replied. I did not remember falling asleep.

"Yes, you were," he stated. "I've been watching you for ten minutes."

I was grateful that he let me sleep that long, if he had, but I knew better than to say so. He gave me a "Major-Minus Spot Report," a small slip of paper that punished infractions of patrolling etiquette. Sleeping on security was a cardinal sin. Three such Spot Reports guaranteed the Ranger student a recycle.

No problem, I told myself, I still have two left.

The same Ranger Instructor accused me of sleeping again, an hour later. I had not been, truthfully I thought, and I argued the point like a fool, earning another Major-Minus. He had gotten my attention.

Back at base, Jeff was still waiting for a ride back to Fort Benning. "Just be cool," he told me. "You're almost out of the Mountains." We had one patrol to go.

On the last patrol of the phase, I "liberated" an "oppressed" bag of hamburgers during a night raid on a simulated missile site, earning my third Major-Minus Spot Report. The Special Forces motto De Opresso Liber, "To Free the Oppressed," was the explanation that we gave whenever we captured food. The hamburgers were still warm as we wolfed them down, barely chewing.

We had been warned not to confiscate food as we searched our target sites, but we took this admonition with a wink, and customarily did so anyway. Hunger, like lack of sleep, is a principal stressor in Ranger School.

A Special Forces sergeant in my squad, a guy named Dadetto, told me, "T, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying." It made sense to me, and besides, we were starving.

I shared the burgers with my squad, but the guilty hand had been mine, and when we were threatened with mass punishment, I took the fall.

Dadetto chose that moment to tell me the rest of the dictum: "If you get caught, you ain't Special Forces."

Those words would come to haunt me, later. I cried when I was recycled that time, too. Waiting for the bus with my old Ranger-buddy Jeff, I asked myself if I could do it all over again. The cadre had given me the option to recycle, but I would have to return all the way back to Camp Darby.

Jeff for his part was relieved. He could go home with his pride intact. An injury in Ranger School was no reason for shame. It happened to twenty percent of each class.

Quitting, on the other hand, marked you for life.

- salvation for the small and mean through suffering -

2004-11-03T14:13:00.000+07:00

I went to Ranger School in the heat of July, and learned what real suffering is.

I was recycled twice. Ranger School at that time, 1981, was a 58 day course. I was there 120 days, an admission which still draws expressions of sympathy from fellow Rangers. If you have not been there, it is impossible to understand the pain that this entailed.

My first Ranger-buddy's name was Holbrook, also known as Ranger Batman. You were not permitted to be farther than arm's reach from your Ranger-buddy at any time. We even defecated side by side. My fondest memory of the first phase, "City Phase," it was called, was of Ranger Instructors urinating into the stagnant waters of the "worm pit" that we crawled through on the obstacle course.

The Ranger Instructors awoke us at two in the morning with the bang of artillery simulators and the clatter of our trash cans bouncing down the open area separating our bunks. We had gone to bed at midnight.

We ran for miles in our boots in the humid Georgia mornings, endured some of the most creative and hilarious invenctive that I have ever heard, knocked out endless push-ups, and did hand-to-hand combat drills designed to instill the will to kill in the Ranger student.

All this before the sun rose.

The primary instructor, he was a legendary Ranger Instructor named Swackhammer, would stand in the middle of a huge sawdust pit and thunder over a public address system, "what is the spirit of the bayonet?"

We responded in unison, "to kill! kill! kill!"

Every day was more of the same, for the next ten days. We sat through endless classes on leadership and patrolling. I would chortle silently as pencils and Ranger Handbooks fell through the bleachers, dropped by Ranger students nodding into momentary sleep. Our eyes developed a glassy stare, and we moved through life like drones, giving rise to the expression "droning."

I remember little about Ranger School, mostly because I lived it in the near-constant dream-state of droning. Ranger Batman and I slept less than eight hours that week. Eventually, our bruised bodies toughened, and we got used to it. If you discipline the body, the mind will follow.

I was recycled on the last day of the first phase because I failed the land navigation test.

The test was not hard, but I legitimately failed. I cried, fully knowing the pain that I would endure again, and Ranger Batman cried, too.

"It's ok, T." he told me. "You can do it."

I was packing my gear to join a new squad in the class behind us. Ranger Batman told me that he knew that I would never quit, and so he helped me, even after he was gone. He was stationed in Panamá, in the 193d Infantry Brigade, and I never saw him again to thank him. Thanks, Ranger Batman.

My next Ranger-buddy's name was Jeff Seca. He was also a recycle. We made it through the City Phase for the second time, arriving with the others in our class at Camp Darby, somewhere outside Fort Benning. We ran our first patrols out of Camp Darby. A few days later, we began the next phase, the Mountain Phase, at Camp Rogers, near a town called Dahlonega, in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia.

Jeff injured himself early, falling into a pit as we stalked the paths of the Apalachian Trail. He blew the cartilage in his knee, and had to be evacuated. I cannot remember my next Ranger-buddy's name.

All I remember of him is that during one of the first patrols in the mountains, he and I were humping the radio and the squad M60 machine-gun up a steep incline. He had the "pig," the M60 machine-gun, and I had the PRC-77 radio. Simply climbing up unburdened would have been an ass-kicker, but we all carried rucksacks, and the radio and the machine-gun added another twenty or thirty pounds to our loads.

My new Ranger-buddy and I paused at the mid-point, gasping, and caught each other's eye. The vista of an open mountain valley stretched out behind us. Ahead, hundreds of feet of near vertical incline waited. I cannot describe how hard this was.

We were smoked, utterly exhausted, and started laughing. There was nothing else that we could do.

"Now we pay for all the bad things we've done in our lives," I told him.

"No shit," he said.

We laughed again, and grimly lifted our jungle boots over and over again. When we gained the top, I told him, "they should name this motherfucker after us." Again, we laughed hysterically.

We learned how to run the ridgelines after that, and our sore ankles taught us to avoid contouring, or walking along the military crest of an incline. I was astonished when my Ranger-buddy quit after we returned to base.

"Fuck it," he said. "I'm a Lieutenant. I don't need this shit."

I tried to dissuade him, but he had decided.

"I appreciate you trying to give me encouragement," he confided, "but I just don't want it bad enough."

I wondered why I wanted to graduate so badly. I had things to prove to myself and to others, I supposed. Now that I had finally arrived at Ranger School, I knew that I could not quit. I could not return to Fort Lewis without a Ranger Tab and face my platoon, or Sergeant Birch, or SFC Palacios.

I remembered Sergeant Birch telling me, "you would rather walk through hell wearing kerosene drawers than come back here without a tab."

I was small and mean, and it was meanness that gave me the strength to "drive on," as we put it. I knew that some of the other squad leaders were betting that I and my buddy, Scott, would not survive Ranger School. We were the smallest guys in the platoon. Scott was in the class behind mine, suffering through City Phase. I saw Scott from a distance one day.

Back at the Mountain Camp, I saw Jeff Seca hobbling around on crutches. He was waiting for a ride back to Fort Benning, where he would out-process and return to his original unit, the Old Guard.

He wished me luck as we loaded up the next day for another patrol.

Discipline the Body, and the Mind Will Follow

2004-11-03T14:03:00.000+07:00

Rangers on the "Green Heck" obstacle course at the Jungle Operations Training Center (JOTC), Ft. Sherman, Panama, circa 1980.

The instructors at JOTC talked up their obstacle course, calling it the "Green Hell." After we were finished with it, we renamed it the "Green Heck," and went out to do "real" PT, or physical training. We went and worked out, exercised, in plain English.

Still, Panama was fun. Like many US soldiers, attending the course at JOTC was my first encounter with a genuine triple-canopied jungle. It was at Ft. Sherman that I first heard the scream of the howler monkey, a species of monkey around six inches tall in stature, that sounds like King Kong. And the "Jungle Expert" badge was my first badge earned in the Army, after my jump wings.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

- the Ranger lifestyle -

2004-11-03T13:27:00.000+07:00

Fort Lewis, Washington, is one of the rainiest places in the continental United States, but I found in the next four years, learning the arts of light-infantry warfare from the best grunts in the world, that Rangers do not rust.

Within my first month in the 2d Ranger Battalion, I was on Vieques, a small island off Puerto Rico used by the Navy as a gunnery range. The sand was so white that it burned my eyes, but we could not walk there due to the live duds buried in the beaches. We stayed in the jungle, hidden in shadows, in company with the insects and animals.

As I was a medic, I spent a lot of time with SFC Palacios. He fine-tuned the lessons that I had learned in RIP. He was short and hard, a veteran of the old "letter company" Rangers, and of Vietnam. I remember Sergeant P teaching me how to trap small animals in the bush, and how to gut them, cook, and season them until they were edible.

"You can eat almost anything," he said. "If you see animals eating something, you can probably eat it, too."

He taught me how to live on one ration a day, and to forage in the jungle as I walked.

"But don't eat anything fuzzy," he said. "That's a rule."

Sergeant P taught me the rudiments of tracking, and as we followed the bent grass, scuffed moss and dented mulch left behind by our squads slipping through the bush, I learned to move with the flow of the jungle, not against it. Soon, I belonged there.

We took R & R in the Virgin Islands. I could not believe the life that I was living. Sean Bray and I went to the least populated side of St. Croix, and ended up in Christiansted. We encountered a group of Portuguese women sunbathing topless at the Hotel on the Cay, and tanned the sides of our shaven heads.

We were astonished that these good Catholic girls would do things on vacation that they would never do at home. We overcame the language barrier, but our fun was cut short by a hurricane.

A few weeks later, I practiced my new skills in a denser jungle, at the Jungle Operations Training Center, in Panamá. It was my first visit to Latin America. I was impressed by the lawlessness of the city of Colón after dark, and we went wild in the El Moro bar and the other brothels on weekend pass.

I did not understand a word of Spanish, but I had dollars, and that was all that the Colombian prostitutes cared about. We got drunk with Soviet sailors. We brawled with them. We ducked gunfire in the streets. It was a blast.

In the morning, we carried each other like casualties back to Fort Sherman, and lay in the sun, sweating the alcohol out of our bodies. I still saw the world through gringo eyes, although I was touched by the poverty of the place in that way that Americans who have never traveled overseas, can be.

During the training week, we silently humped through the jungles, attacking simulated targets. For the first time, I heard the scream of the howler monkey, and we shot at them with improvised sling-shots when they shit into their hands and threw feces down on us for trespassing on their territory.

One afternoon, we were resting, sitting against our rucksacks. It was humid, insects were feeding on me, and I watched an endless trail of red ants marching through the underbrush. They had cut a three-inch wide highway through the rotting jungle floor, and carried leaves, dead beetles, a decomposing bird, and dead ants of both their own and other races with a determination that you could hear like an animal quietly chewing. I learned the hard way to leave them alone.

SFC Palacios suddenly made a clucking sound with his tongue, and held up a fist in the hand signal that means "freeze." He reached behind his shoulder and drew his machete, I was fully alert now, and I watched as he stepped over to our forward observer, a private named Lickdyke.

The machete whistled as it arced through the air, and Lickdyke yelled as SFC Palacios embedded the edge six inches from his thigh. Something was twisting in the mulch. SFC Palacios stooped and picked up a coral snake, headless, writhing in dead nervous spasms.

"Skin this, Doc," he said, throwing it to me. "We can eat it with our crackers," referring to the hard round disks that came in c-rations. He handed Lickdyke the venomous head.

"Stay alert, stay alive, Ranger," was all that he said.

I laughed at Lickdyke. He was beginning to realize that he might have died from the bite of the snake.

"Fuck!" Lickdyke exclaimed, his eyes wide. It was more adventure than we had ever hoped for.

I will never forget Lickdyke's panic that evening as we hammered down the tropical Chagris River Valley in Vietnam-era Huey helicopters. As was normal, our assault rifles were tied to our load-bearing harnesses with a length of parachute line that we called a dummy cord. But not Lickdyke's.

As the pilot on our bird muscled along the curves of the river, giving us a good ride, I was shocked to see a weapon fly out of our helicopter, and splash into the slow waters that mirrored the orange moon. My heart leapt, and I clutched at my own weapon, to ensure that it had not been mine.

Lickdyke was saying, "oh my God, oh my God," over and over again. I think that he said it more in fear of Sergeant Birch than anything else.

Divers from the Special Forces Battalion at Fort Gulick recovered the rifle from the thick silt of the river bottom the next day. Lickdyke did push-ups at Birch's slightest glance for the next three months.

Back in garrison, I sat on the beach gazing across Gatún Bay, watching the slow passage of ships leaving the canal locks. I had read Tom McGuane's Ninety-Two in the Shade and Panama in the past three weeks. There were sharks out there, for the mouth of the Río Chagris was the second largest breeding ground for hammer-heads in the world, after the Great Australian Barrier Reef. The sharks fed on the raw refuse of Colón that polluted the bay.

I found that I loved the life of an Airborne Ranger, where we were either training someplace new, getting ready to go, or just returning. We rarely remained on Fort Lewis for longer than six unbroken weeks. When we were there, we trained incessantly, parachuting into the dark denseness of the South Ranier Training Area, where I heard the Sasquatch scream, one unforgettable night.

I always carried a magazine of live ammunition after that, and was not surprised to find that everyone else did, too. It was contrary to regulations, but we rationalized that white supremacist terrorist groups were training in the same areas, and were known to confiscate the automatic weapons of any defenseless grunts that they encountered. We never ran into anybody out there, and I never heard the Sasquatch again. We heard many sounds in the remote rain forests of Washington State, but I never felt my hair curl again like on that night.

We would road march mile after mile to forgotten rifle ranges, an exercise that we called "movement-to-contact." When we arrived, we would "IMT," (Individual Movement Techniques), meaning fire and maneuver, against targets with balloons on them.

Doing IMT after these road marches was punishing. Rather than resting after our arrival, we would go right into our battle drills, and assault uphill. We learned to wear pads on our elbows, knees and shins. Afterwards, we would move away across rough terrain, and make a patrol base, where we would tend to our contusions, and finally, rest.

Inevitably, the radio would crackle, and we would be up again, picking our way through the thick deadfall in the dark.

We would hit another target, or move to an extraction point, where helicopters would fly us to our ramp at Gray Army Airfield, across the street from our barracks.

Some weeks, we would remain in garrison and march across the street to the KD (or "known distance") and qualification ranges. All Rangers were required to shoot expertly. We fired thousands of rounds pursuing this goal. The 2d Ranger Battalion would typically expend more ammunition in three months than the entire Ninth Infantry Division would in a year.

I got even better with my weapons.

I remember the look of pride in SFC Palacio's eyes when I asked, months later, to go to Ranger School. There were few medics in Ranger Battalions, and fewer went to Ranger School.

Sergeant P was proud of me, proud like a father.

Old School Rangering

2004-11-03T13:15:00.000+07:00

A Ranger mortarman on patrol in the wilds of South Ranier Training area, the Ranger playground in Washington State.

The Olympic rain forest was our home for days upon days of dismounted patrolling. In the "old days" of the Ranger Battalions, before the formation of the modern-day Ranger Regiment in the aftermath of the Grenada invasion, we would parachute into small drop zones on Monday, run the staple Ranger missions of raid, reconnaissance and ambush all week, sleeping during the day, operating at night, exfiltrating on foot or by helicopter on Friday.

Rangers grow accustomed to moving stealthily in heavy forest at night. One of my ex-wives would often admonish me for taking long walks in the woods after nightfall. She could not understand that I had nothing to fear. It was others who should fear me, in the woods before moonrise.

After we returned to our barracks, we would then clean our weapons and equipment, and head out for a weekend of R&R before returning to work on Monday, and yet another week of more of the same.

This photograph was taken sometime between 1980 and 1982, when Rangers turned in their beloved Vietnam-era camouflage uniforms for olive green OG-107 uniforms.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

- quiet lessons in the living of life -

2004-11-03T11:44:00.000+07:00

After graduating from RIP, I was assigned to the 1st platoon of Company A, 2d Battalion (Ranger), 75th Infantry.

My platoon was called the "Bad Muthers," for a reason lost to antiquity. I was in the second squad, and it was several days before my new platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Luis Palacios, called me to the platoon command post.

"Ranger T," he asked me, in the accents of his native Guam, "are you a medic?"

I replied, "yes, sergeant," locked in a disciplined position of parade-rest, "I am a medic."

He looked at me with green bloodshot eyes.

"Why didn't you say so?" he asked.

"Sergeant P," as we called him, thought that I was an infantryman, or "grunt." I did not know what to say.

"I am a Ranger, Sergeant," was the only explanation that I could make. I did not realize that Ranger medics were treated any differently than Ranger grunts.

I had not recieved preferential treatment in RIP, nor would I here, in the Battalion. I had spent my first morning with my new platoon in the ironically termed "front-leaning rest position," that is, in the push-up position, yelling in response to the abusive welcomes that my new sergeants gave me.

"You thought the hard stuff was over, didn't you?" They yelled. "You thought because you graduated from RIP that you made it, didn't you, maggot?"

I thought so, it was true.

"The hard stuff is never over, here, shithead. You will suffer until you die."

My new squad leader was Greg Birch, "Sergeant Fucking Birch" it said on his coffee cup, a tall hard grunt who took us on a ten mile run at least once a week. I learned a whole new series of running routes through the hills beyond the impact area of the artillery ranges on Fort Lewis. I sometimes ran with my aid bag on my back, a gesture that made Sergeant Birch smile.

Sergeant Birch refined my marksmanship with the "bonehead beater," a taped baton of stiff rolled paper with which he whacked our helmets when his new privates fired less than perfect scores. He threw our beds out of the second floor windows of our barracks when they were not perfectly made. He would pivot off the polished toes of our boots if they did not gleam as brightly as his, it took us months before our boots even came close, and he grilled us intensively on our knowledge of the Ranger Creed.

The fourth stanza runs:

"Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well trained soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, my neatness of dress and care for equipment shall set the example for others to follow."

Every spare moment of my life was spent squaring away my gear and uniforms, and polishing my jungle boots. As I said, it took months before I stumbled onto Sergeant Birch's secret techniques, and succeeded in attaining a bright sheen on my boots that compared to his own. "Attention to detail" was the lesson inherent in interminable hours spent laboriously shining our boots. And the fourth stanza of the Ranger Creed was uncompromizing.

The Ranger Creed was our gospel. We recited it, and we lived it, every day.

One day, Sergeant Birch fooled me by asking, "what is the nineteenth Standing Order?" I did not know.

Without being told, I got down and knocked out push-ups. Sergeant Birch nodded approvingly.

Consulting my Ranger Handbook after Sergeant Birch departed, a copy of which is always on the person of each and every Ranger in uniform, I learned that the Standing Orders date from Major Robert Rogers, who formed nine companies of American colonists to fight for the British during the French and Indian Wars.

Before Major Rogers, units known as Rangers and using our characteristic tactics fought the Indians in the American wilds, and were instrumental in resolving King Phillip's War, in 1675. Rangers rely more on stealth, cunning, and lethal surprise than numbers. A Korean War-era Ranger, Colonel Robert W. Black, had this to say about the origins of the Ranger approach to warfare:

"The American Indian did not conceive of war as a long campaign of maneuver, and he despised pitched battles. Hardened by his environment, accustomed to traveling great distances on foot, he was more inclined to use stealth and reconnaissance to select his objective, then execute a swift and devastating raid that employed terror to maximum advantage."

We learned to fight the Ranger way from the American Indian.

The Ranger way of warfare is a more purely American approach than that used by the conventional Army, which derives from the German Blitzkrieg. Modernly, this way of warfighting has been codified by a slew of theorists, among them Sir Captain B.H. Liddel Hart and Mao Tse-tung. Before them all, of course, was Sun-Tzu.

The US Army refers today to this way of warfare as interdiction, and I would, over the next few years, study and practice the various techniques of interdiction until I was expert at them.

The Standing Orders were written by Robert Rogers in 1759, and they are as pertinent today as they were then. The final, and nineteeth, Standing Order states:

"Let the enemy come 'till he's almost close enough to touch. Then let him have it and jump out and finish him up with your hatchet."

When I sought out Sergeant Birch to recite this pearl of murderous wisdom, he asked me, "what is the first Standing Order?"

I responded quickly, "Don't forget nothing."

He smiled. "Fucking A," he agreed. "Don't forget nothing. Today you forgot to sign on the correct line when you drew your weapon. Do push-ups until I get tired."

He walked away, and I started knocking them out, again. He smiled as he told me to do push ups, and I smiled as I did them.

"Recover on your own," he relented, meaning to get up when I had done twenty push ups, with an extra one for him, one more for the Bad 'Muthers, and a last one for the Big Ranger in the Sky. Sergeant Birch did not call me "bonehead." I was becoming a good Ranger.

I was angry that surviving RIP did not mean the end of abuse, yelling, punishing blows, and push-ups, but in later years, I would be glad that the hard stuff never really ended. It would not end until I was a sergeant myself, and I dispensed the hard stuff to my own privates. And then, it did not end so much as it changed. By that time, I had learned that mental stress was more instructive than physical pain.

Life as an Airborne Ranger was a life dedicated to meeting an impossible standard, that of combat, and we trained like we might go to combat any day.

I was lean and wiry, and I could run forever. I shaved the sides of my skull with a razor every morning.

I was a good weapon.

- a place where sociopaths are made -

2004-10-28T16:42:00.000+07:00

We did thousands of push-ups.

We ran mile after mile in the rain every morning to a place called Shit Lake, stumbling in holes along dirt trails through thick woods. It was not yet Spring, and frost formed from the sweat on our uniforms as we ran. Standing in the cold, steam rising from our heads, we would recite the Ranger Creed.

The second stanza runs:

"Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger, my country expects me to move farther, faster, and fight harder than any other soldier."

We shaved our heads, for hair was for civilians, and we were sub-human. We were "Rippies." Not Rangers. Rangers are graduates of RIP, full-fledged members of a Ranger Battalion. We had a long way to go before we would earn that title.

We did push-ups on ice, fingers freezing, or if SFC Conrad decided that we were unmotivated, we did them with rocks digging into our palms. He would stroll from man to man, placing small jagged rocks beneath our hands.

"What does not kill you, Rangers, makes you stronger," he would say, arms crossed, one boot nonchalantly resting on my back as we rythmically rose and fell in cadence, knocking them out. Sometimes he walked on our hands. I did not know that SFC Conrad was quoting Nietzsche. He may not have known, either--but then, he might have. The man might not have enjoyed a surfeit of book smarts, but he was far from stupid.

Sometimes we ran to Puget Sound, where we did push-ups dunking our faces into the waves that licked the pebbled beaches.

The beauty of the place was lost on me. We called this exercise "Reconning for Jaws," referring to the Great White Shark from the popular movie.

"Did you see Jaws?" SFC Conrad would ask.

"No, sergeant!" we would yell in response.

Inevitably, SFC Conrad would reply, "then you weren't looking hard enough! Do more push-ups!"

We also Reconned for Jaws in the deep puddles that the incessant Washington drizzle fed along the forest trails that we ran. We broke the thin layers of ice with our faces.

One morning, we ran to Shit Lake and back to the RIP contonement area, a circuit of over seven miles. As was customary, we ran past the barracks, a practice that we called the "mind-fuck." We would run around the block, and if we were running strongly, in disciplined ranks, we might stop. If not, if a Rippie fell out, we would run around again, sometimes several times, until we all made it, as a team, in step.

This particular morning, we ran past the barracks, as was normal. I mentally steeled myself for an infinite number of race tracks. To my horror, we did not turn to circle the block. We ran towards Solo Point, and as we passed through the gates of the North Ft. Lewis Army reservation, it became clear that we were running to Solo Point, a circumference of more than twelve miles.

On arriving at the edge of the Sound, six miles later, a brisk wind stirred the salt air, and Fox Island was hidden in a deep fog, 3,000 meters across the waves. I could see the lights of the Tacoma Narrows bridge blinking through the early morning drizzle.

SFC Conrad stood before us. I was impressed with this hard old man. My legs were twitching, and I was nineteen years old.

We stood at attention like statues. After several minutes of silence, he was satisfied with our discipline, and he rewarded us with the order to Recon for Jaws. It felt good to move. After twenty-five repetitions, arms elbow deep in the freezing water, he lectured us.

"The reason the water tastes salty, men, is because thousands of Rangers before you have run up that hill behind you, and rivers of sweat have run down into the water."

The hill leading down to Solo Point was a kilometer long, and steep.

After twenty-five more push-ups, we formed up and ran up that hill repeatedly, returning to the bottom over and over again, until every one of us made it in step, in formation, together, as a team.

SFC Conrad would teach us to move further and faster than any other soldier, or he would break us. Persevering and defying him taught us to fight harder against all other challenges in our lives. If we could run this hill after twelve miles at a seven minute pace, we could do anything.

Running the hill at Solo Point drove home the third stanza of the Ranger Creed:

"Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong and morally straight, and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be. One hundred-percent and then some."

We ran more than twenty miles that morning. We were getting tough.

The next time that we ran to Solo Point, we turned left at the top of the hill, leaving the blacktop, following a faint trail snaking up the ridgeline. This added another 500 meters of height to the hill. We could not fall out, as there was no way home but through the labyrinthine trails. Only the cadre knew the way back. We learned mental toughness, or we got lost.

One man who quit and fell out of ranks was left alone in the depths of the forest, and it took the cadre until the afternoon to find him. We never saw him again.

After this, we ran that hill at least three times a week, cursing SFC Conrad under our breath. As we grew stronger and meaner, he made us carry each other on our backs to the top.

"How do Rangers evacuate their dead?" he asked.

We stood silent, sweat coursing down our faces.

"We carry them," he answered.

He explained that more than simple esprit d'corps required this. The Viet Cong had taught SFC Conrad hard lessons, and he never forgot killing them, only to find no bodies afterwards.

These were my first lessons in the psychological dimensions of warfare, something that Americans understand poorly. SFC Conrad would teach me that my mind was my primary weapon.

We RIP students grew close through shared adversity, and our hatred towards him.

I got better with my weapons, fantasizing his head transposed on my targets. When SFC Conrad complemented me on my marksmanship, I told him that I imagined that I had his head in my sights. He smiled with approval, and his grey eyes glinted.

"That's the way, young Ranger," he said, patting my back, and moved to the next man.

That night, standing in formation, SFC Conrad asked me, "do you want to learn how to kill?"

I screamed my yes ensuring that spittle flew from my unbrushed teeth into his face, then waited for the inevitable punch in the stomach with discipline. I knew that I would be hit whether I answered yes, or no. The punch did not come.

"Stick with me long enough," he declared, "and I'll teach you how to kill."

He was right, he did. And the technical aspects were easy--he showed us how to strike with knives, with razor blades, with garrotes, and with killing blows.

We practiced hand-to-hand combat in a saw-dust pit next to the barracks. We fought each other with pugil sticks, and SFC Conrad was not satisfied until we drew blood from each other. The will to kill took longer, but not much. We were hitting each other, but in our minds, we were killing him. Within one month, starved, sleepless, enraged, I was ready to do my duty. I had been transformed, but I still could not see the change in my eyes. I was not yet twenty years old.

I recognized my metamorphosis during the final road march of the course. I ran in the front rank, rucksack straining my trapezoids, weapon heavy in my sweating hands, until the last hill. Half way up to the top, my thighs locked in muscle spasm due to sodium depletion and dehydration. I ended up crawling over that hill while a RIP instructor yelled encouragement at me.

"Come on, Ranger! You're almost there!"

And I was. Behind me, several of my comrades were limping, or disconsolately climbing onto a truck. They could not continue. Mentally, I had not quit, but physically, my body was at its limits.

I kept crawling, grunting in pain, and after gaining the summit, I stood. I would make it, or die, I told myself. I could see my classmates standing in formation, muscles shaking, staring straight ahead. They did not break ranks to yell verbal encouragement, or turn towards me, but I felt their mental support.

Growling in agony, I stumbled on stiff legs into the formation. I assumed the position of attention with my buddies, and I realized that we stood before our new home. The road march ended in front of the barracks of the Ranger Battalion. Only six of us remained.

I understood then that the outlandish stories told in jump school were only mild exaggerations. All those terrible things that I had been warned about came to pass. But the truth was that they all missed the point: RIP made Rangers.

The next day, I realized that I had quit smoking, but this was only one outward manifestation of a far deeper, inner change that had transpired. I had escaped criminality as a young man, but had been forged by SFC Conrad into a weapon, with many of the disturbing qualities of the sociopath. I was learning to push myself to the edge of dying and beyond. This is how Rangers live.

"It's okay," he would tell us. "Nations need men like us. No one likes Rangers in times of peace, but when war comes, our countrymen are thankful for us."

That is one reason, according to the gospel of SFC Conrad, that Rangers pray for war.

He would then confide, "I also pray to die with my boots on."

He would pause and fix us with the knives of his stare before continuing, "--from a sucking chest wound, my magazines empty, and smoke curling from the barrel of my weapon."

Rangers are killers, and I was well on my path to becoming both.

"Think War"

2004-10-28T16:25:00.000+07:00

SFC George Conrad, on a typical day on the job.

George Conrad ran the Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP) and Pre-Ranger course at the 2d Ranger Battalion for many years, in between tours as a platoon sergeant and First Sergeant of B Co.

He ultimately was selected to run Regimental RIP after the formation of the modern-day Ranger Regiment, a position of high honor and trust, and tribute to his reputation as a peerless trainer of Rangers.

George Conrad retired from the US Army as a Command Sergeant Major. He was last seen somewhere in the Balkans, in the company of another legendary Ranger sergeant named Steve Matoon, where they were working as contractors for MPRI.

It is said that they left havoc in their wake.

Photograph courtesy of Jim Hicks.

- only non-quitters need apply -

2004-10-28T15:47:00.000+07:00

The day that we arrived on Fort Lewis, the home of the 2d Ranger Battalion, we scrambled quickly into formation.

The Ranger sergeants who came to meet us did not yell like drill instructors. They accomplished their desires with a terrifying silence.

A short muscled man named Sergeant First Class Conrad quietly asked us who wanted to quit.

No one spoke up.

SFC Conrad was the deadliest person that I had ever seen, a quality that resided in his eyes. Inside the cadre shack, a large sign over his desk read, "THINK WAR."

We were outside waiting in formation, resolute, but nervous. This was why I enlisted, I reminded myself. I volunteered to come here. In fact, we all had volunteered, several times. In those days, a soldier had to volunteer to join the Army, volunteer for the infantry or a speciality directly supporting it, volunteer for jump school, and then volunteer for Ranger training, to get the chance to test himself. The physical and mental standards were high, limiting aspirants to only the best soldiers. The attrition rate was severe.

SFC Conrad quietly recited the first stanza of the Ranger Creed:

"Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit d'corps of my Ranger Battalion."

The training area was ordered in a martial way and draped with camouflage netting. There were boobytraps, man-traps, and sharpened spikes lashed to bent saplings under tension, and signs warned the curious to stay away.

SFC Conrad stood before us, hands on hips.

"You maggots got a long way to go before you'll know what those words mean."

SFC Conrad's manner implied that he would teach us the hard way. He walked a complete circuit of the formation, sizing us up. Finally, SFC Conrad stood before us once again, silent.

We waited.

Then he repeated, "who wants to quit?"

I was stunned to see half the arms in the formation rise.

"Get back on the bus," he ordered. They did, and we never saw them again.

Only sixteen of us remained. We non-quitters were surrounded by lean Rangers in black berets, immaculate starched uniforms, boots bright as stars.

These were hard men with shaved heads and hatred in their eyes.

SFC Conrad told us to relax, it would be the last time that we would, perhaps for the rest of our lives.

Yeah, right, I thought. No matter what happens here, no matter what they do, it will be survivable. The cadre calmly watching us with eyes like stones were proof of that. If they could do it, I told myself, so could I.

I had a cigarette, then forgot to smoke again for the next four weeks. I was correct: RIP was survivable, but just barely.

My memories of RIP are fragmented. I remember SFC Conrad asking me if I wanted a "sucking chest wound."

I sounded off, as was expected, bellowing "no, sergeant!" but he reared back and punched me in the chest, anyway.

"Yes you do," he said. "You'd rather have one of my sucking chest wounds than a real one."

I stepped back into formation.

"I'll give you a sucking chest wound every day until you get your shit together."

I hoped that it would not take long. The blow hurt. SFC Conrad's forte was training men to be Rangers, extraordinarily disciplined soldiers who are unstoppable, and he was an expert. He was famous for it.

I remember another sergeant hitting me with a flying drop kick later that day in the same spot. The force of the blow threw me several feet. My eyes had wandered.

I remember SFC Conrad staring into my face the next morning, we all stood at attention in formation, and he was waiting for my discipline to crack. His face was scant inches from mine.

The temperature outside was freezing, and the breath from my nostrils steamed in the frigid air, but I stared straight ahead, serene despite the fog of his bad breath. My chest throbbed from a deep bruise over my sternum. SFC Conrad stared into my eyes for long minutes, trying to un-nerve me.

When I did not flinch and he bored of the exercise, he kissed my cheek, and moved to my comrade beside me. Any unauthorized reaction earned the Ranger student a punch in the stomach, or one of the feared sucking chest wounds.

I did not budge when the man next to me grunted and fell curled in pain at my feet. My chest ached.

I had learned a lesson in discipline.

- never feeling more alive -

2004-10-28T15:20:00.000+07:00

But I was still a loner.

I vividly remember my drill sergeant telling me, "you will never make it. You are an individual. Rangers require team-players. Now, so-and-so and his buddy," gesturing towards a couple of good old boys from Georgia, "they are team-players."

He nodded at me knowingly. "They will make it in a Ranger Battalion."

I listened in silence, dread in my heart. The guys from Georgia were my friends, they were everybody's friends, but I was not like them. I always stood a little apart.

Basic Training was challenging, a good confidence builder, but it required minimal intelligence, and I was too smart for my own good. Medic training was boring. The only bright spot was that women were trained with us, and they were just as bored as we were.

I was trained at Fort Sam Houston, outside San Antonio, Texas, known as the Army's country club. It was a popular post of duty as the Academy of Health Sciences trained all Army nurses, and there was a favorable ratio of women to men on the base.

The women that I met in the Army at this time were even more desperate than the men. It took a remarkable girl to escape the economic recession of the late 1970's through military service, and the idea of females in the military was still a novel one. We were, however, still in our late teens, and at the mercy of our hormones.

I remember no names from this time. We used each other with mercenary zeal.

I began focusing on jump school, running long miles alone in the Texas heat. It was good exercise. I was eventually joined by Greer Noonberg, a guy from a good family in New Jersey, and another guy whose name that I cannot remember. He had been in the Army before, and he was older. He wanted to return to Korea, where he had left his yobo.

One legacy of the American presence in Asia was a neocolonial attitude towards Asian women, and it was still possible in the late 1970's (and even later), to virtually buy beautiful young prostitutes to care for all your needs while stationed overseas. He told me once that he was sorry that he had not married her and brought her back to the states with him.

Greer had dropped out of Rutgers. His heart was not in his studies, and he decided to volunteer for Special Forces to see the world before continuing. We sometimes ran for two hours in ninety degree heat.

It was during the delerium of these runs that I resolved to change my innate aloofness. I wanted to be an Airborne Ranger, and if I needed to be more of a team-player, I would learn to be one.

As I rode onto Fort Benning one night in a taxi, the jump towers stood lighted like huge steel warnings, red lights blinking in the clouds, and I was afraid.

Two weeks later I was disappointed to learn that they were more like carnival rides, so I focused on my first jump. Again I was disappointed.

I realized afterward that I had been too busy concentrating on my jump procedures to feel fear. I thought that surviving these trials would be reflected in my face, or in my eyes. I was nineteen. They were not reflected there.

My second jump, I stood in the door with static line in hand, my heart in my mouth, and I felt fear. I quickly learned to respect it.

The guys from Georgia quit a day later, but I did not laugh. Fear was also teaching me humility. Men can face fear better in company with their comrades, and the Army understands this well, but the final truth is that we all face our mortality alone. The guys from Georgia needed others too much, and facing the fear of death, found that only God could help at that extreme.

I did not realize that static-line parachuting would become as routine for me as driving a car. Nor would I have believed that it was statistically safer.

Ominously, I was hearing wild-eyed tales about the Ranger Indoctrination Program, or RIP. "You will eat dirt," I was told.

"Why?" I wondered.

The sergeant who told me this talked to me like I was simple-minded.

"Because that's what Rangers do," he explained.

The rumors that I heard were intimidating. The instructors were permitted to strike trainees. They fed you snake meat. You lived in swamps. You never slept. You fought someone larger than you every morning. Half the class would be injured in the course of training. And on, and on.

I began running with a rucksack on my back, training hard, focused on the next rite of passage before me.

In the US Army, Rangers are mythic, and are said to be capable of superhuman feats. I wanted to be one of them. I was afraid, but dissatisfaction with myself compelled me to try.

I would not quit. My fear made me humble, but it also made me feel.

I had never felt more alive.

- of meritocracies, microcosms, and motorcycles -

2004-10-28T15:02:00.000+07:00

In the Army, I volunteered for a Ranger Battalion. I had wanted to join the French Foreign Legion, but I lacked the money for a plane ticket to France, and besides, this was no romance novel that I was living. The various tests that I survived were hard.

I went to Basic Training, to individual skill training as a combat medic, then to Jump School. I gained weight, got strong, and learned to harness my inner rage to overcome adversity.

I found that I could hack it in the barracks, and I won my first bare-handed fight. I found that I liked the structure of military life, my name embroidered over the left pocket of my uniform, over my heart. The rank structure of the Army told me exactly where I fit in the scheme of things, and military etiquette was clear.

I was a private, nothing, I went where I was told, I did what I was ordered to do, and I found peace in the mindless repetition of simple activities. I was fed, I slept warmly and well, deep exhausted sleep with no dreaming, and I woke in the early morning with a rewarding soreness in my muscles. I learned how to keep my mouth shut. I became athletic.

I spent most days and many nights outdoors. I had never been an outdoorsman, and I found that I liked it. I learned how to shoot, and I became good at it.

The Army is a meritocracy, and it rewards soldiers fairly, regardless of social origins. I lived with men who were born poor, those who were rich, and others of all races. One day someone greeted me in Spanish, and to my embarrassment, I could not reply.

"What's the matter," he said. "Aren't you proud to be Spanish?"

I told him, "I am an American."

I did not understand what he was getting at, but I felt an odd disquiet.

I watched as men from all origins, a microcosm of America, learned to speak a common language, overcame mutual distrust, and in the process of surviving adversity, pulled together into teams. I was surprised to learn that I could lead others, and most of all, that they would follow me.

Best of all, I could not leave the Army on a whim. Discipline was enforced, and I was finally brought to heel.

I paid my debts and I began saving money. I would buy a motorcycle.

I was as happy as I have ever been.

Another Anniversary

2004-10-27T13:57:00.008+07:00

Today, 21 years ago, I and my brothers of the 2d Ranger Battalion assaulted a Cuban training facility at Calivigny, Grenada.

Today is the anniversary of the deaths of Kevin Lannon, Steve Slater, and Phil Grenier.

Bill Sears, Company A FIST chief, was crushed beneath a Blackhawk helicopter, and paralyzed. He lives near Ft. Bragg, NC.

Today, I remember you, my brothers, and hope that you are well in Ranger Valhalla. You are missed by all of us who knew you, and by your loved ones.

Bill: I hope that you like this Blog.

Twenty One Years Ago Today

2004-10-26T13:36:00.000+07:00

On this day, twenty one years ago, I was a twenty one year old Ranger with the 2d Ranger Battalion.

On this day, twenty one years ago, my brothers and I flew to the Grand Anse campus of the St. George's School of Medicine and evacuated students who were in fear for their lives.

Revolutionary Grenada was falling, as Rangers from the 1st and 2d Ranger Battalions had parachuted onto the airfield at Point Salines the day before, killing dozens of Grenadian militia, and their Cuban advisors.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the deaths of Mark Yamane, Randy Cline, Russell Robinson, Mark Rademacher, and Marlin Maynard, and of the deaths of other great Americans, whose names are known to the members of their unit. You served and died in anonymity, but I and others like me remember you.

Rest in peace, my brothers.

I have spent much of the day editing the early chapters from my book on Urgent Fury. I am finding that the writing has a lot of errors, and I feel the need to obsessively polish the narrative.

A fitting way to pass this day, which for me and for other veterans of the Grenada invasion, is so pregnant with meaning.

My prayers go out to modern-day Rangers who are deployed in harm's way in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other battlefields which are not yet front-page fodder for our absurd news media. I know that you are remembering the anniversary days of that operation many years ago, and I thank you for your remembrance of history.

And to my brothers, the other members of the Bad 'Muthers who, improbably, have somehow survived to read this post, happy anniversary. I think of you all often, and particularly on days like today.

- living a million miles an hour -

2004-10-22T17:31:00.000+07:00

I could not eat my freedom.

I grew ill with traveling and malnutrition. Calling Karin yet one more time, she told me quietly, "come home, Steve. Just come home. I want to take care of you." I had exhausted my funds, and borrowed a hundred dollars to get back to Denver.

I met a young girl traveling on the train with her mother from New York to Chicago. She was reading John Toland's biography of Adolph Hitler, a book that I had also read when I was her age. She was twelve.

Reading about the human personification of evil at such an age sensitized me to it. I sometimes wonder what that little girl did with her awful knowledge. She shared pretzels and fruit with me, and we talked for hours about storm-troopers, death-camps, genocide, insanity, and mass migrations of men. Her mother invited me to continue to Madison, Wisconsin with them, she owned a copy shop and was not unattractive, but I politely declined.

The mother was a brunette in her thirties, divorced, but I was tired. I told her that I needed to return to school. I missed Karin. I was tired of running. I did not realize that I was lying.

Within a week, fed, warm and dry, I found that I could not sleep. My parents pressured me to return to school, but that was pointless. They believed with the fervor of their generation that education would solve all inequities, and was the key to success in America. In the days of their youth, they were right. In mine, it was no guarantee. But that was not the reason for my resistance.

I felt suffocated in Denver. I was seeking something that I cannot describe. I did not want to argue with my parents, but it was inevitable if I stayed. I thought about buying a motorcycle, but I had no money, no job, and I could not sustain enough interest to continue working at one. I felt only temporary relief in the arms of women, and I left them like I left my jobs, spontaneously, at the slightest whim.

Karin and I argued, mostly over trivialities. My lack of direction and purpose frightened me. Traveling, I realized, was a way to keep busy, something to do while I searched the roads of my fate for answers, but I knew that it was no substitute for living. I was running, but I did not know where. I was seeking something, but I could not articulate what.

I did not pause before seizing control, and my friends were surprised by my fateful decision to enlist in the Army. It was out of character and no one saw it coming. I was the most unmilitary person any of us knew. Karin was upset, but let me go with a kiss, like the first time. I feel now, in retrospect, that few paths led to the Army. My friends from this period do not understand how it happened. Nor, in all honesty, do I.

In the Army, I learned discipline and precision. I found ideals to believe in, shining ideals like America, democracy, and freedom. It may sound trite to you, but remember that these were the late-Seventies, and the bitter post-Vietnam malaise that gripped the country left us with few national values that spoke to people like me. Patriotism had been discredited, and my teachers were too embarassed to teach it. I was hearing these traditional mores for the first time.

I also grew to cherish my family, but I found that I cherished them more from a distance. Having left the home of my childhood to see America through the windows of Greyhound buses, trains, and the cars of countrymen who picked me up on their way to their everyday destinations, I realized that Denver was no longer my home in the spiritual sense.

I am an American, and I make my home wherever I hang my hat. My estrangement from Hispanic culture, from mainstream American culture, and from my family, led me to resist socialization all my life in school, and to concentrate on the sound of my own internal voice. I am not alone.

This sense of dislocation that I am trying to describe characterizes whole segments of American society. It manifests in outlaw behavior, both of the criminal and the artistic kind. I was searching for a tribe, driven by the dissonance of my life to find something immortal that I could not see through nineteen year old eyes.

In the Army, I found a niche where my angst could be forgotten in the tension of adventure and living for the moment, and my wanderlust served an institutional purpose. I could escape Jenny Barkin, and Karin, and all the other women who clutched. I could barely swim through life on my own, I sensed, and carrying someone else would condemn me to drowning.

For the first time, I felt camaraderie, and a sense of belonging. I was part of something larger than myself. I made new friends who, under extraordinary pressures, became like brothers, and who will never betray me. We made our own rituals. The inner anger that I carried, and will always carry, proved useful.

I could lose myself in living a million miles an hour, my speed the illusion of progress.

It was good, while it lasted.

- Kerouac and freedom -

2004-10-22T17:09:00.000+07:00

I ran into Karin at a party in Denver.

I was with some friends from the university, where I had just begun losing interest in the summer session. I had been in college a year. She had turned seventeen a few days before, was prettier and more poised, and had burned off all the plumpness of puberty playing tennis, she said. She was in the company of a biker whom she ditched.

We sat alone in a parked car in a vacant lot, holding hands. "I really missed you," she confessed, and I believed it, as I had missed her more than I would admit. Her family was still a mess, but she was more rebellious than ever, and this endeared her to me. She was also still a virgin, but not for one moment more.

Karin told me later that she had waited for me. "I wanted it to be with a guy I loved," she explained. This made me uneasy, as I was still very inexperienced, but it worked out fine. It always will when there is enough love involved, I think.

Karin's mother had moved out with her latest paramour, and Karin was taking care of the house. Her father worked like a fiend, and so she had little parental guidance, a convenience that we fully exploited for the next few months, but even this was not enough to keep me home at the time.

I wrote stories and poetry, but badly, a predicament which you may believe continues. I discovered secret texts, and delved there for solutions, finding few. One sudden lucid midnight in the middle of a drinking spree, I found myself at the Denver bus station, coin in hand. Heads to Los Angeles. Tails, New York.

Tails it was, and I went East, pausing in Chicago, flophouse hotel, bloodstained windows, fleas. There were pensioners living like prisoners eating canned cheese, watching game shows in apathy on television. I called Karin, and she told me to be careful, and that she would wait for me.

To New York then I went, traveling with a pregnant girl named Gina. She was running from her parents, running from her boyfriend, running from an abortion, running to save the life that she carried. Mostly she was running because it made her feel less helpless. I bought milk for her, and made her eat. We were in Cincinnatti, and she was grateful. "What are you running from?" she asked me, thin face earnest, eyes already haunted. She was sixteen.

I had not realized that I was running, but she was right, and I had no answer. I realize now that we often do not recognize the value of the things that we hold in our hands, until later, when we have only fading memories that mock us. I lost Gina in Times Square.

I escaped urban desperation, hitch-hiking through New England, towards Canada. In Manchester, a thin girl who drove ninety miles an hour, chain-smoked Luckies and never told me her name, picked me up on a freeway on-ramp and took me home. Her father had died. She had just left the funeral. They were not close.

She had an old-fashioned bathtub where I soaked for hours, smoking, reading. We did not talk much. She sat and painted her nails, listening to music. Those were vacant days in New Hampshire, but she treated me kindly. She was a waitress in a Chinese restaurant, and brought lo mein noodles home every evening. We would eat silently, trains rattling past on the tracks across the street, then make forlorn love on a small bed that smelled of roses.

She often cried afterwards, and would not be consoled, stopping only as she drifted into sleep, cheeks wet with silent tears. She feared loneliness in a way that I understood well.

I stayed two weeks, waking one morning claustrophobic, and gently took her hair from my mouth where it had wandered as we slept. I left her sleeping, closing the door softly like wind whistling through the eaves. I like to think that she did not awake.

Outside, hitch-hiking with the winter wind in my face, I felt alive.

In Burlington, Vermont, I met a girl named Rae at a bank. She wore a plaid skirt and penny loafers the day that I met her, and I remember that she had graceful ankles. She was smart and wore glasses with a serious expression that hid her inner unruliness.

I think that Rae liked me because I had long hair, I was passing through, and I wore a black leather jacket. She took me to see foreign films, she loved film noir, and was not inexperienced in the womanly arts. She was the kind of good girl who liked to behave badly behind closed doors, and that was fine with me. I stayed with her for several weeks, she lived in a small apartment with a cat named Miss Who, who grew attached to me.

I called Karin again, and she was still waiting. "Get it out of your system," she said. "I'll be here." I did not tell her about my romances of the road. I wrote in the day while Rae was in class, and Miss Who twisted herself between my ankles. When Rae came home, we would make love, and then go out for dinner or a movie, or have coffee with her friends. I was a curiosity to them.

One afternoon, Rae was working, and I was sleeping in the library at the university, my face in a copy of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. I drooled on a page discussing treatments for nightmares. When I awoke, I realized that I had slept through dinner, and so I walked to the train station. I had pig knuckles and a beer, and then went to Montreal.

Canada was clean. I met a girl there who spoke French to me, her name was Monique. She was crazy. Her father was wealthy and gave her money. She had dark hair, red lips, great legs. She could not remember my name. For her taste in miniskirts, I forgave her.

Monique suffered from unpredictable, unprovoked rages that passed like tempests, leaving empty silence and an electrically charged atmosphere. She was contrite, afterwards, and I realized at some point that these fits were a form of foreplay for her. This struck a discordant note deep within me.

Calling Karin yet again, she told me, "I hear the girls in Canada are pretty." I mulled over the secret meaning of this statement. "No," I lied, "they're just like girls everywhere." Take your time, she said.

One evening, I was strolling with Monique through the cobblestone streets of Old Town, she went to the lady's room, and I simply kept walking.

Back in New York, I read Hemingway's letters at the public library. It was warm there. I read Kerouac, again, in Bleeker Street cafes, contemplating a trip South, to Florida. I did not make any friends. I walked the streets in winter, a stranger to the city, and got mugged in Central Park as I sat on a bench one night reading Turgenev by the light of a street lamp.

I had nothing to lose. Not knowing where I would sleep, how I would eat, or where I would end up at the end of the early morning, I felt free.

- existential janitor -

2004-10-22T16:51:00.000+07:00

In college, I took only classes that interested me, ignoring the guidance of my academic counselors.

I sold my car.

I was admitted to the university under a program benefitting disadvantaged minority students, but I had grown up in the American mainstream, and rarely suffered discrimination. The other students admitted to the university under this program were different, the children of immigrant farm workers who had settled in the San Luis Valley. They spoke with Mexican-American accents, called themselves Chicanos, and marched with signs at protest rallies. I was not like them. I did not speak Spanish. I had little to protest, and I felt no solidarity with them.

Rather than enroll in the recommended Mexican-American history courses, my schedule was heavy in metaphysics and modern American literature. I did not attend weekly United Mexican-American Students (UMAS) meetings. I was an outsider, estranged from mainstream society, estranged from my native culture, and estranged from my family, with few friends. Of course, I did not see my own condition so harshly. I worked variously as a janitor, a librarian, and as a bartender at night, returning home in the early morning. I read myself to sleep, and often slept through my early classes.

My independence of reading and thinking soon brought me to an extreme. I gave up formal philosophy when it dawned on me, one gritty morning in my first year, that thinking about myself thinking about myself thinking was futile. Standing on the precipice of the unknowable was entertaining, but spitting into the intellectual depths, waiting for the sound of hitting bottom was, as Woody Allen has said, no more than mental masturbation. The girl curled in bed beside me was more interesting. She was my first.

I remember the moment clearly, the smell of her brown hair, the way that she sighed in sleep, lamplight casting shadows against her face. I was savoring the paradoxes of Heraclitus, her name was Helen Lucinda Hankle, and the breakdown of logic revealed to me the manacles of reason, of processes, of boundaries, and of rules.

I suddenly felt alone, as though I had no place in the world, and no comfort but what I could find in the eyes of women. Thank God for that much, I thought. I lit a cigarette and watched her sleep, a disheveled angel, while the morning crept in like an assassin. She woke when the birds sang, and had a smile for me.

In the months that ensued, I asked forbidden questions of myself, voice hollow in the void, and I heard no answers. Lucy was a nymphomaniac, but in my inexperience, I did not realize it, and she went home to Texas. After I rested and regained my strength, I caught myself missing the sound of her calloused feet sliding on the wooden floors of my apartment. I attended classes sporadically, and read into the night.

Sometimes, in the dead times, I awaited the midpoint, the ineluctable moment when the day's momentum reversed like the downswing of a fulcrum, and I heard only terrifying silence. Other nights, I lost all sense of time immersed in a book, and looked up in surprise as the sunrise spread like a stain across the sky.

I read Lao-Tzu, Confucious and Mencius, the modern Zen tracts, and I studied Mandarin with the goal of reading the Tao Te Ching in the original. It took a year of hard study. When I passed my first year exams by translating the lead chapter, I heard no applause, no sound of one hand clapping, no blissful haiku when I spoke.

That summer, I stopped attending classes.

- inevitable ironies -

2004-10-22T16:04:00.000+07:00

After school began, Karin and I split up and I broke her aching hold on my heart through wildness my senior year.

I learned to like the adrenalin rush of risk one night running from the police with my cousin Gary, racing his car along country back roads at a hundred miles an hour. We drove out past empty farm fields on a cold Fall night and drank beer, Peter Frampton on the stereo, talking about girls as the stars burned in the sky. Eventually--we were seventeen, remember--we got hungry and bored, and we decided to pick up some hamburgers on the way to a party.

The kids in our high school typically waited until their parents left town on business or vacation, then invited everyone over. Hundreds of teenagers would heed the rumor of an open house, and come from all parts of Denver. Inevitably, there would be fist fights, holes punched in walls, and broken aquariums with gasping pet fish flopping on the kitchen linoleum. I remember broken furniture, vomit on shag carpet, and curtains that reeked of marijuana for days. Gary and I both had girls waiting for us. We decided to let them wait a while longer. We would get the hamburgers, first.

As Gary and I blasted down the dirt lanes, we were surprised by the red lights of a patrol car waiting in patient ambush. Gary was driving. He had a history of disrespect for the law, and we did not debate what we would do next. We knew that we would be arrested, his car impounded, and that was all the excuse that we needed. He stomped on the accelerator and the twin carburators roared. We guzzled our remaining beer and threw the empties out the window as we raced down the graveled tracks, laughing.

Gary owned the fastest car in town, and we knew the roads. The cops never had a chance.

We escaped after half an hour of hide and seek, then stopped for our hamburgers. In retrospect, I realize that I crossed a behavioral line into criminality that night, but our real offense was youth. We had bad attitudes and no respect for authority. We never did pick up the girls.

A few years later, my cousin, still wild to the bone, was crushed between a wall and the gleaming grillwork of a sports car in an accident in the garage where he worked. He survived, but was confined to a wheelchair for many months. He walks now with difficulty.

He told me a few years ago, "what matters is that I can still make a bed bounce."

He is right, of course. But the irony of his accident frightens me.

- headlights and tangled hair -

2004-10-22T15:10:00.000+07:00

This next memory causes me pain, and I get up to replenish my coffee.

The apartment is still quiet as I check the door one more time, just to feel safe. I still do not feel safe, however, and I probably never will. I listen for a moment, to verify that nothing has changed. The girl breathes in sleep still, her hair spread on the sheet covering her. I will wake her later, I think, and I return to my chair. It is warm and comfortable, and I settle down, again closing my eyes.

This is the story of my first love.

One day on the ice cream route I saw a girl named Karin drinking beer on the roof of her house. She was barefoot in ripped-up jeans, a loose white cotton shirt, and she had long blonde hair that floated in the breeze. She looked rebellious as hell, and I was drawn to her. I pulled over, held up an ice cream cone, and she waved me up. We sat on the roof celebrating her fifteenth birthday, and I blew off the rest of the route that day.

I also stood up my two love-girls, and talked instead with Karin about everything under the July sun. Her house was identical to the others in her neighborhood, part of the Southward sprawl of Denver in the late 1970's, creeping along the verge of the Rocky Mountain foothills. She had delicate sun-burnt fuzz on her upper thighs, visible through holes in her Levi's, and looking at her made me feel dizzy.

She was thin, and yes, she was blonde, and while I have historically preferred brunettes, or better, girls with strawberry blonde hair like my mother's, Karin captivated me. Her eyes...they were brown and deep, they were the eyes of an old soul, even as a youthful, sorrowful spirit gazed through them. She was old before her time, tanned, and smoked Marlboro reds between pulls on a longnecked bottle of beer. In retrospect, I realize that she was a woman-child, a devastating combination.

Karin's family was a mess. Her mother was an unrepentant slut, indiscretely conducting multiple affairs with flawed but handsome men simultaneously, and she smoked marijuana with her children while her husband, Karin's step-father, worked long hours as an internist. His name was Tony. He was a good guy, and he treated me well, even as he refrained from disciplining his step-daughter, who in many ways, but not all, was so like her mother. One brother dealt inconsequential quantities of hashish and marijuana out of boredom, while her younger brother was a good kid, and sweet to his sister.

Karin and I went out for the rest of that summer. We had nothing in common but chemistry, but we went out to movies, amusement parks, and concerts. She loved the heaviest metal music, a passion that I did not share at that time, but I enjoyed watching her dance by herself like a latter-day virgin of the Mysteries in her bedroom. She sang to herself, without inhibition, and I have since loved women who sing to themselves, heedless of who listens.

We passed hours locked in her room, just listening to music, talking and sleeping, content in the other's arms. While we did not make love that summer, for she was too young, I remember that she would cling to me when I woke to leave in the cold, dark mornings, and ask me to stay a while longer. I have searched in vain for another woman who would hold me like that, and there may be no other.

Barb and Shannon did not take it well, especially when I explained that my defection was not sexual, but for love. I took some solace in the fact that they now had each other, and no longer needed me.

One Saturday night, driving past one of our secret places, I caught them in the flash of my headlights as Karin and I looked for a secluded spot to make out. Barb and Shannon were in a car, locked in a hair entangling kiss. I distinctly glimpsed the painted fingernails of a feminine hand cupping a pale breast.

"Did you see that?" Karin asked. "What, my love?" I innocently replied. "Oh, nothing," she said, thoughtful. "It must have been a guy with long hair." This confirmed for me that I had lost Barb and Shannon, perhaps forever, for the world of men.

But maybe not, I consoled myself later, as we were all very young.

In any case, Barb and Shannon probably would have found each other, without my help.

- good girlfriends and bad ones who are better -

2004-10-12T16:18:00.000+07:00

Other memories tickle my ear like the breath of a woman, and like the unnumbered Latin American poets, my story at some point becomes the history of my true loves.

I hope to understand how I came to be sitting in the dark in this room, waiting for a phone call. I polish my memories like stones, hoping that my reflected image will speak to me like an oracle and divulge the key event, the common element, the secret fact that will make everything that I am, rational. My life has been remarkable, but understanding how it happened is difficult, and hoping to imagine what may happen tomorrow, more so.

The significant fact is, none of my early experiences were sufficient to keep me home. I was searching for something, and my search has taken me out into the wild places of the world. I have wandered far from my beginnings. I confess that I do not know what I seek. Am I searching for meaning, I ask myself, or for something to believe in? It is more than that. I am convinced that we gift ourselves with whatever meaning that we find, that we are the artists of our own destinies and create ourselves, and to some extent at least, I believe that we make our own luck. I offer this fragment by Martin Heidegger:

"For not everyone has a destiny: destiny is a pattern achieved only by the rare individual who in dread and silence has come face to face with his own nothingness and has shaped his life in the light, or the darkness, of that encounter."

I believe that the highest art is that of living a good life.

I have admired since childhood those who dedicated themselves to truth, to beauty and to knowledge with dignity, and I look for those qualities in all things, and try to weave them into the tapestry of my own life. It often seems that the threads are tangled, however, and my exercises in recollection are also attempts to unravel the threads, and to make the patterns coherent.

My search has brought me here tonight, sitting sleepless in the dark with a beautiful woman slumbering in the next room. I have no desire to wake her. I was not always this way. I am curious about this evidence of change in my personality, but I dismiss it with the insight that living for the moment in the arms and eyes of women is no longer the relief that it once was.

At age sixteen, I bought my first fast car, learned to drink, and discovered that women are not men. I also learned, to my later chagrin and delight, that I preferred the kind of girl that liked fast cars. I hung out with a tall blonde named Tammy, she wore jeans so tight that they squeaked as she walked, and she walked nice, but my favorite memory of her is of her face in the light of a bonfire burning in a dry lake bed. That night was immortal, with drag races, fist fights, a broken nose, and tranquil kisses like plums as the moon settled into the countryside. It will remain graven in my mind as long as I breathe.

Another memory of her is also warm, like her breath in the fresh air as we talked for hours, one night. I remember that I drove past her house at an unholy hour of the early morning, and I pulled over on a lonely impulse to toss pebbles against her window. I was elated when she waved and came down, bringing a blanket and cold bottles of her father's beer. She was a good girlfriend, while she lasted.

I remember that she was dressed in a white nightshirt, and that she did not protest when I said that I preferred to stay outside, where we could watch the stars. We sat on the grass and wrapped ourselves in the blanket, and she smelled like warm cotton, soft and comfortable. She was a good listener, and we talked for hours, waiting for the sunrise. Remembering her tonight, thousands of miles away in space, years later in time, I am home-sick for those moments when watching falling stars in the company of a woman was enough.

Tammy was older than I, and we drifted apart after she graduated. She went away that summer, and I drove an ice cream truck during the day, my heart refrigerated like the popsicles. The summer sank into a routine. In to work at ten, out on the route by noon, selling ice cream through the subdivisions along the Rocky Mountain foothills until after dark, sometimes past ten at night. There was time to get home by midnight, read for a couple of hours, and then do it all over again.

Then I met the girls on the route.

Barb and Shannon competed for my affections but were soon content to share me, waiting their turn in the blaze of our American youthfulness, ice cream melting on flat stomachs that I licked like dogs lick plates. My sales plummeted. We parked behind shopping centers, illicit assignations, and we rocked the truck. Barb was mysterious, Shannon tall like a cool drink. After work, I sped to their subdivision in my car, and we drove into the foothills with six-packs of beer in the back seat.

I cannot tell you how many nights that we rested under those stars, watching the lights of Denver twinkle like mirrored jewels in the satin darkness, our boredom forgotten in heart hammering exhaustion, for a little while.

I thought that it was a good summer at the time, and so it was, for a sixteen year old who had not known many girls. I was the envy of my friends, who thought that I simply had two girlfriends. They never would have believed how far that our pleasures had progressed, nor that we three remained physiological virgins. And of course, I told my friends nothing. Birth-control devices were not easily obtained in 1977. We adapted.

I thought that I was satisfied.

- fruitful friendships -

2004-10-12T14:31:00.000+07:00

In high school a teacher named John Henshaw became my friend.

He was a frustrated philosopher, a seeker of truth, a drinker, smoker, and traveled collector of primitive masks. His house was hung with specimens smuggled from all corners of the world. He had medicinal masks of straw and mud, tiger masks to celebrate secret rites of passage, and ghoulish red masks hinting at blood rites and the sacrifice of men captured in mock battles. He had a black mask that changed expressions and leered in my peripheral vision when I looked away from it.

These masks left visitors with a sense of unease, aware of something unpleasant within themselves. It was not unlike that feeling during a bad drunk when you look in the mirror and do not recognize yourself.

John Henshaw was a very smart man. He recruited me into a "gifted and talented program" at our high school, and encouraged me to think and to read where my interests led. My grades picked up, and my attendance improved. In retrospect, I realize that John Henshaw used positive reinforcement to modify my behavior, rather than simple punishment. I was numb to the latter. I am grateful that he used his methods.

It was John Henshaw who introduced me to formal philosophy, and I was soon engrossed by epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge. This branch of philosophy deals with unanswerable questions about knowledge, perception, and thinking. In short, it asks how we know what we know, how we apprehend our worlds (digressing into metaphysics, or what it is that we apprehend), and basically, what we think thinking, is.

We held our classes early in the morning, a collection of eccentric minds, drinking coffee and discussing whatever we had agreed to read the week before. We were the strange ones who did not fit in, an insular society of nonconformists. Some of us moved on the fringes of the drug cliques, some of us were artists, others were thespians or poets or simply good students.

These were my friends, and I am still in touch with many of them, almost thirty years later. Everyone thought that we were smart. I think that we just had the latitude to study what interested us, and to say whatever we felt. We had liberated ourselves by choice and social ineptness to an independence of thinking and action that was immune to most peer pressure.

John Henshaw sometimes snorted in glee over the monsters that he had helped unleash. We were often disrespectful, but we spoke the truth with adolescent outsider's eyes, and so got away with it, most of the time. He helped us to realize that we were who we were, not who parents, authority figures, and society told us to be.

After graduation, he sent us out into the world to be fruitful and multiply. He was an orphan, and got his revenge in this way.

- escaping my origins -

2004-10-12T14:17:00.000+07:00

I remember my other neighbors: the Dunbar sons who lived across the street ended up in prison for crimes like fencing stolen goods, minor counts of drug possession, and felonious assault. David Morton hides from me in the biker bars of his pointless life, for he knows that I will someday make him suffer for a bloody nose that he gave me when I was ten. One day our paths will cross. The Gantry brothers who lived up the street are in prison or dead from armed robberies gone bad. The Bonilla brothers who lived across from them are still there, eating their parent's food.

Only one other guy from my neighborhood made it out alive. Here's to you and me, Russ, I think, drinking my coffee in the dark.

The girl in the next room talks in her sleep, asking a question of the night, but I hear no reply. It is half past four in the morning, and cold. Alone with the sounds of a strange city, thousands of miles from my childhood home, I suspect that my refusal to accomodate my teachers, my parents, and all other authority figures, kept me alive.

I know that rebellion exercised the force of my will, and my will enabled me to escape the social incarceration of my origins, to reject the tempation of criminality, and to survive later conflagrations. I have always been able to do what was necessary.

I mentioned before that I have survived several near-death experiences. I believe that my will put me on the fated pathways to those scenes, and God, beyond them.

I inhale the fragrant coffee and close my eyes in the dark, picking up a conch shell in my mind's eye. I bring it to my ear, dreading the contact, and listen: my memories unravel.

- defying the unnatural order of things -

2004-10-12T14:04:00.000+07:00

Jenny's brothers were my buddies. We walked to school together, sat together in class throwing spit wads, and trafficked in contraband under the noses of our teachers. We hung out together during recess and lost our fights in the school yard, walking home together in the bitter afternoons, scraped and beaten. I was not a successful fighter in my youth. It was not until I joined the Army that I learned to fight and win, mostly because I fought to kill, and the madness that I unleashed in those later encounters terrified my opponents.

This willingness to kill, learned like others learn to be doctors or draftsmen or lawyers, separates me from normal society to this day, and always will. For healthy members of society, killing is not on the menu of choices. I have seen life flutter from the eyes of dying men, and I know how delicately its presence imbues our bodies. Mechanically speaking, killing is easy. Emotionally, it is an act of unimaginable gravity. I have killed in the heart-thumping heat of combat, and I will never again be like you, who have not. For those of us who have taken life from others whom we did not know, the perplexing capacity for criminal behavior that we share is a permanent menace. We must always be on our guard.

Johnny Barkin was my comrade in apprentice crime. He was short and stout, red haired like an emergency, and followed my every lead. I will never forget the time that we shot-put a large rock through the windshield of a neighbor's car, for example. We had been watching the Olympics, and it was an accident, but no apologies could restore the shattered glass on the hood reflecting our astonished faces, nor the safety-glass scattered on the upholstery, nor the buckled windshield itself, clouded with spider web fractures. We ran.

After dinner, I was questioned sharply. I denied all knowledge of the misdeed, although the hand that committed it was mine. I do not know why I lied, but by this time I could do it well, with little remorse. I could only wonder whether Johnny would give me up. He did not. He was loyal to me. Nor did his brother, Mark, although I trusted him less. He was weaker, more whipped than his brother, with sad eyes.

Sometime during our early adolescence we three grew apart, walking without hellos in the halls of our transition to high school, where it became clear that they were unequipped to run in packs, go to parties, drink beer, or get laid. My parents fought me every time that I stepped out the door, but I defied curfews, and I defied them. I was barely controllable. Johnny and Mark could not rebel against their parents and the unnatural order of things as I had, in countless small ways all of my life, preparing for the day when I would leave home for good, rarely to return.

- a certain disquiet -

2004-10-12T13:47:00.000+07:00

My behavior was distinct from that of my peers. The nicest kids in our neighborhood lived across the street from me. Johnny, Mark and Jenny were everybody's favorites: subdued and polite, they always obeyed their parents. The boys had crew cuts in the late 1960's when long hair was fashionable, and wore clothing that the other kids mocked. It was as though the Barkins were trapped in a 1950's situation comedy, but the laugh track was missing. Jenny matured into a young woman who was identical to her mother, and hurdled the heat of her youth to land in her thirties, old while she was still young, conservative and upright, better than you and I. She even walked like her mother, prim and a little pigeon-toed. I avoided her like the police on my infrequent visits home, as I remembered her promise ringing in my ears like a gunshot that she was going to marry me.

I remember that day. I sat on the front steps of my house, she was eleven, and crossed the street to sit with me as I watched the neighborhood. The Dunbars, hillbillies transplanted from Arkansas, were brawling. The picture window framed every thrown plate, every blow, every word hurled like spit. Their sons drank beer and worked on the junked carcasses of cars in the front yard. Fighting in that household was as normal as the smell of cooking was in mine.

Next door, David Morton, an anemic small-time drug dealer, came and went with a skinny girl with tattoos. I must have been fourteen, a serious kid, and my mother tells me that I watched Morton with silent hatred. Speaking out of nowhere, Jenny Barkin told me that we would be married one day, and that we would live in my parent's house, across the street from her mother's. I was young, and I thought that this was hilarious. But the certainty in her voice and the factualness of her eyes implanted a disquiet seed within me that germinated and blossomed into paranoia in later years. I did not think that she was talking of love, and so was warned.

When I graduated from high school in 1978, I left Northglenn two weeks later, enrolling in the summer session at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I was seventeen, and rarely returned home. After enlisting in the Army at nineteen, I returned only every couple of years, carefully avoiding her. She married a guy who looked a lot like me, and they bought my parent's house. They live there today. Surely there are other, more profound reasons for my reluctance to return home, but the idea of Jenny Barkin plotting my entrapment in her late childhood still makes me shiver.

Mail Bag 2

2004-10-06T17:19:00.000+07:00

Considerate readers, please accept my regrets for not posting these past few days. As I mentioned in email to a cherished correspondent, I suspect that I may be engaging in avoidance behavior where the next "bridge chapter" is concerned.

It treats with very personal history, and editing the text is painful.

I originally wrote these chapters regarding Operation Urgent Fury and my life over a decade ago, as I was struggling to transition from a military life to a civilian life, and failing.

I would like to gently remind all of you that October 3 was the anniversary of the now-fabled "Day of the Ranger" in Mogadishu, Somalia, 1993. Many good men lost their lives that day, carrying out US government policies without questioning whether they were good ones or bad. As do the majority of our servicemen and servicewomen today.

I ask you to imagine, for a short period of time, what it must be like to be in Iraq now, the daytime temperatures exceeding 100-degrees F, the temperature plunging to 60-degrees F during the still desert nights, with our soldiers operating under the most hazardous conditions our armed forces have encountered in many years.

And here in America, we glibly debate whether their mission is justifiable.

It is difficult to explain how this feels for soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen in harm's way. They have a sworn duty, you see, to follow the orders of their chain-of-command, and their leaders are carrying out US government policy.

Servicemen and servicewomen in harm's way do not have the luxury of debating whether their cause is just. In an environment like that of contemporary Iraq, you must be "switched on" at all times, and focused, and believe me, you live life with an intensity that is impossible to explain to any who have not experienced it themselves.

You cherish the miraculous gift of your next breath.

Think about how easy it is to pass judgement on them, and their mission, on their leaders, and on our government's policies, as you read these words, safe and warm and fed in your home, or your office, or some crowded internet cafe. No car bombs shattered your complacency today, you felt no hollow-stomached fear. Your pulse was not quickened by the sound of automatic weapons fire in the distance, and you will not be standing watch in the chill night, under all the stars of creation, watching the fireworks as Spectre gunships chew up the bad guys tonight in Sadr City.

Your dreams will not be unsettled by the crump of distant munitions.

You will not be mortared or rocketed tonight.

I received the following email from a gentleman named Sean. I think that it speaks for itself:

For what it is worth, your writing has led me to an even deeper appreciation of our men in uniform than I had before. I hope that you, and all of the brave men who served with you on the sharp end of the spear are now enjoying your lives. God knows you have earned that right.

Best Wishes

Sean A W

Sean, thank you.

Some of us have been fortunate to come home from our wars, but we think often of those who at this very moment are holding hard to their fragile mortality in countries far away.

It is not my intention to be morbid. But we Americans have a short attention span. Many of you will read these words, and then you will move on, you will scan the news headlines, watch your favorite television shows, and then you will go to bed, warm and safe, with your illusions intact.

I marked the Day of the Ranger with a quiet prayer for the souls of my brothers who died that day. I will mark the passing of today with a quiet prayer for those who died in Iraq this day, with the grave knowledge that their sacrifice is felt most keenly by their kin.

Rather than expressing facile opinions on the war in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, and other garden spots not mentioned in the evening news, perhaps it would be better if we uttered a silent prayer for those who will not sleep soundly tonight, and if we just take a few heartbeats to think on them, these good Americans, just regular folks, who are doing their duty, and who cannot live as we live.

- beatings, banishment, and rebellion -

2004-09-30T15:14:00.000+07:00

The decisions that brought me here to this forgotten city of the Spanish Viceroys are fossilized, and I examine their underbellies in the light of the moon, seeking patterns in the wrinkles. There are clues to my destiny in my past, but my mind's eye cannot discern them, in the same way that our tongues form the syllables of lost languages in vain.

I long ago condemned myself to try, however, and on this night like so many others, I close my eyes, revisiting my youth.

The facts are simple. I was born in 1960 on Veteran's day, and grew up in the Denver suburbs. My mother was a cheerleader from a prominent family in a Southern Colorado town. She attempted suicide when my grandmother tried to induce my abortion, for my parents were not married, and my coming was an event of scandal. The matrimony was hurried, and my parents left that small town, moving to Denver, where there were jobs and calculating glances could not monitor my growth in my mother's belly.

My father was a mechanic, and he smelled like gasoline and cold air when he came home from the gas station where he worked a second job, late at night. His family is a cipher. His father abandoned him, and I know nothing more. I suspect that my father sees much of his father in me, for my maternal great-grandmother has told me that he was a bandit, that was her word, and my relationship with my father has been strained for many years.

My maternal grandmother Alice (from Alicia) has told me that our family is Spanish, descended from the Conquistadors who subjugated this New World. I can document five generations of relations on my mother's side, but the rest of my ancestry is lost to dust. I feel the greatest affinity for my maternal great-grandfather, for he was another outlaw, until his wife, my great-grandmother, shot him dead on the steps of the church as the birds sang one Sunday morning.

My maternal great-grandfather reportedly owned the first car anyone had seen in those parts, bought with ill-gotten proceeds. I am told that he was a gambler, and that he smuggled whiskey. He had several mistresses, and taking a favorite into his home was what triggered my great-grandmother's vengeance. She was not arrested after the murder, these events transpired in an era when the days of the Wild West were not so historical, and she simply returned home, broken, but with her murderous dignity intact. She lived quietly until the end of her days. She never remarried. I remember visiting her when I was young. She smelled of lilac perfume, and the skin of her wrinkled face and her hands was very soft. Her name was Rosita.

My family has always insisted that we have no Mexican ancestors. I suspect that my grandmother simply wishes to repudiate any Indian blood that has crept into our bloodline, although my grandfather is proud of his Cherokee antecedents. Traditional Spanish society is extremely racist.

My grandfather's father, Richard, was a half-breed miner who had the dark skin and high cheekbones of the Cherokee. He died of stomach cancer in 1987, and I was able to say goodbye to him the day before he passed. I remember the distance in his gaze, I recognized it, almost as though he saw right through me to the other side of the last great transition that we make in this life. He was a constant cigar smoker in his eighties with a touch of the Black Lung, a large, strong man fond of fishing, which pastime he indulged daily until the cancer robbed him of his appetite, and he died more of starvation than of the disease.

His father, my great-great-grandfather, died at the age of 102, just a decade before my great-grandfather. He did not speak English. His name was Lorenzo, a Conquistador's name. His wife, whom no one seems to remember, was Cherokee. I remember visiting Grandpa Lorenzo in an old age home and wondering how he felt looking at me, the son of his son's granddaughter. I have European features, and comparatively light skin, though I tan well. I spoke no Spanish in those days of my childhood, and so we mutely observed each other across the generations. The grip of his handshake was strong even as he was bedridden and preparing to die.

In Denver, I was left in the care of an aunt named Mabel (it seems that everyone has an Aunt Mabel), while my mother finished high school. My mother was sixteen, my father, eighteen. My Aunt Mabel found me uncontrollable, and resorted to banishing me to the utility closet when I misbehaved, which was often. This punishment lasted until I destroyed the contents of the closet. I have a memory of sitting among mop heads and brooms in the dark, smelling cleaning supplies and dust, peeking beneath the door to see my Aunt Mabel's thick ankles and white tennis shoes. My mother was upset when she discovered that I had been disciplined in this way. It was not my nature to play quietly.

I remember our basement apartment, a room, really, where we lived, and I remember being afraid to climb up and down the stairs. I find it ironic that, after 330 parachute jumps, and with knees and back worn from many years under a heavy rucksack, I again dread stairways. When I close my eyes, I can still remember lamplight, and a small bed, seen from the top of the stairwell, and I often experience a fleeting sense of deja vu as I pause before descending dim staircases today.

When I was two years old, we moved to Northglenn, a suburb to the North of Denver. I remember driving with my parents in our pink Buick to see our new house. I used to stand on the back seat, looking out the rear window, and then turn to lean over the front seat, where the radio was a source of fascination for me. Our new house was like all the others on the block, Prototypical American Dream, but it had a fenced back yard with a concrete incinerator, and other kids lived nearby. I spent the next fifteen years there.

My upbringing was Roman Catholic in that way that bad Catholics have, where yelling and corporal punishment could be atoned for in church on Sunday, for all transgressions were forgivable, and the next week could be started with a clean slate. I knew the Latin Mass by heart, one consequence of endless Sundays in church. Other consequences include my belief in a final judgement, and a sense of guilt that never leaves me.

I no longer attend Mass, and have not, in many years. I feel like an interloper, an intruder, uncomfortable. I am a spiritual man, however, even mystical, and I consider the world my church, my life my ministry, and all creatures my spiritual kin. I am particularly fond of dogs, and yes, also of cats, though less so, and I prefer their company to that of humans. Animals do not know how to lie. While I am suspicious of religious rituals, my heart is still moved when I hear the Liturgy performed in Latin. And while I cannot now recite it from memory, I somehow anticipate the next line just before it comes, and am comforted.

My family was stable, I had clothes and food, and my parents loved me. I remember that I did not like school, my teacher's name was Mrs. Larsen, she wore fur-lined snow boots, and I walked home during recess every day my first week in the first grade. Finally my mother spanked me and walked me back. She cried as she did it.

In the second grade, my teacher, Mrs. Schwartz, recognized that I was bored. She taught me to read, and I learned so well that I required little supervision for the rest of the year. I remember reading an entire shelf of Indian tales, stories about talking bears, eagles, wolves, and their conversations with the trees, the rivers, and the moon. My early years after this follow a pattern. While I was clearly smart enough to do well in school, I did not. I preferred to read independently, voraciously, in subjects that interested me. I have learned and forgotten much in forty-three years of smiles and grief, but not necessarily the lessons that society chose for me.

By the time that I was in junior high school, I was fascinated by warfare. I read every book that I could find in the public library on World War II, making a weekly pilgrimage after church. I was gripped by tales of bravery and sacrifice, but liked best those first-person accounts of survival against impossible odds that resulted in terrifying memoirs.

I was not athletic, nor did I enjoy competition or join clubs. I was a rebellious kid, and often in trouble for cutting class. No one could figure out my problem. I was not destructive, nor was I a bully or a vandal or a thief, but I lived on the margins with few friends, and argued frequently with my parents and teachers. Somewhere, at some point, I developed an aversion to authority.

As I grew up, I rejected the standards that society presented for me, and I searched for my own. I did what I wanted, read what I chose, and paid the price in detentions, letters home, beatings, and confinement to my room. While I often joke that holidays were special because on those days I was hit with a good belt, I recognize now that beatings in my youth nurtured an inner rage that later served me well. I became an outsider. I just read books, during long quiet hours, while the other neighborhood kids rode their bikes outside as the the evening faded to night. I grew up banished from society, and angry. Many thought that I lacked discipline.

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq II

2004-09-28T13:45:00.000+07:00

James Brook of the New York Times has written a compelling Op-Ed piece on the importance of elections in defeating insurgencies, drawing on his observations of the long counterinsurgency in El Salvador.

In recent days, many pundits and so-called "experts" have cast doubt on whether legitimate elections can be held in Iraq, a country with swaths of territory under the physical control of guerrillas, Sunni and Shia clerical associations, tribal groups and other actors who fear that they will lose power over their constituencies.

One of Jim's points is that elections can be held in countries with expanses of contested territory. The point that I wish to emphasize, however, is that holding elections in contested polities gives the populace a voice, grants them ownership of their national destiny, and creates the political foundation for an environment which is inhospitable for insurgents, and other actors with a vested interest in a weak central authority.

Many obervers of the Iraqi insurgency have expressed skepticism that elections can be held in Iraq, and not just by the January deadline called for in the current roadmap to democracy.

Republican comentators, to include the President, have stressed that elections not only will take place, but that they must take place.

This is the correct stance to assume. Not for reasons of partisan politics. For moral reasons. The violence in Iraq must cease.

A vote for any candidate, just the act of voting, is tantamount to a vote against violence. At some fundamental level, citizens understand this fact.

Elections in Iraq are nothing less than a weapon directed at the heart of the insurgency. The insurgents know this, and will unleash terror directed at polling places and voters themselves, regular Iraqi civilians, non-combatants, in a desperate attempt to prevent a representative vote.

Some of the Muslim clerical associations fear elections, as elections represent nothing less than the population placing their faith in secular authorities, rather than in their Imams.

Various tribes in Iraq fear elections, as a strong Iraqi state with popular support and legitimacy diminishes the power that they can exert over their members.

The insurgents will fail. Those Imams with political rather than spiritual aspirations will fail. Those tribal chieftans who cling to their ancient bonds of blood and oppose the emergence of a modern Iraqi democracy will fail.

The alternative is civil war, chaos, and yet more death, in a land which has known far more than its share.

The election will proceed.

Those actors who fear the elections, and their apologists, will then seek to cast doubt on their legitimacy.

No matter.

These next few weeks promise to be horrifying for Iraqis. For not only do the insurgents and other actors seek to thwart elections on their own soil, they also seek to influence the Presidential Elections here in the United States.

I send a prayer of safekeeping to all my friends in Iraq. May Allah keep you and your families safe, my brothers.

- algebraically anticipating the future -

2004-09-27T17:07:00.000+07:00

I leave the girl in the room sleeping, and close the door as I pass into the living room.

I close the door on echoing ghosts, voices frail from the cellars of memory, wind whispering down the moonlit pathways of my future death. The LED read-outs of a high-frequency radio glow on an end table. Beer bottles litter the room. I make coffee, strong Peruvian coffee, from espresso extract. It is four in the morning in Lima in September, still winter in the hemisphere where the seasons are reversed, and I pull on a sweater against drafts in the apartment building. The construction is typical for South America with holes in the walls, ill-fitting windows, and no central heating. I hear the echoes of lives in progress--people going to work, rebellious sons, delivery men, unfaithful wives, insomniacs like me--in the rushing of nocturnal traffic rising from streets lit by random pools of light: there are no light bulbs to replace burnt and broken ones in Perú of 1990. The stillness of the apartment mirrors the silence of my soul.

It is at times like this, the pause in the night when birds rustle uncomfortably in their dreams, that I think about the past, paths that I have taken, paths that I passed by, and the paths implicit beneath my feet as I sit alone in a quiet room at night in a strange city. I think about the paths of all our lives beckoning us onward, and how we can turn left or right in making daily decisions, but never return to the past except in memories and dreams.

I shake my head at our collective impatience, and how we hurry through life into the infinity of our futures, all ending in our deaths. We will get there soon enough.

I cannot shake the idea that we are the sum of our parts, the rational results of our fixed past lives, and that we should be able to algebraically predict the future. Perhaps the future can be glimpsed in bowls of smoky water rippled by the breath of fortune-tellers, or in the patterns of bones thrown by old women, or in the ritual blood-spray of beheaded chickens sacrificed by Brujas, but I know that I cannot foresee my own.

I reminisce, searching for the Rosetta Stone of my memories, the central fact of my life that will reveal the gossamer sequence that makes myself and my life understandable, but come up empty handed. I think that this exercise might indicate which of the paths into tomorrow that I am fated to select.

I want to know because I have been dead already, several times in fact, but have always returned. My near-death experiences were liberating, but they were also a curse, as I cannot understand what purpose or plan these preposterous reversals fulfilled. They were liberating in the sense that I understand that my life will someday end. This knowledge has focused my concentration wonderfully, as the saying goes, and I live with an intensity that I cannot imagine relinquishing. I remain terminally curious to know what task awaits me. The possibility that randomness was at fault does not ring true. The idea of God is some comfort, but my God has not seemed the humanistic God of my native Catholicism, but rather an inscrutible one with a perverse sense of humor. My God has a hidden agenda that he does not share with me.

I need to understand how evil and pain and suffering can serve ultimate good, for I must believe that they do. And so I persist in an habitual exercise, remembering dead days in the company of the moon. I reserve this activity for the night, as the day is for living. The possibility that nothing in my past presaged what I would become fascinates me.

Insomniac Reminiscences: Seeking the Rosetta Stone of Memories

2004-09-27T17:00:00.000+07:00

"Vainly I clung to these last beliefs as a shipwrecked sailor clings to the fragments of his vessel, vainly, frightened at the unknown void into which I was about to float. I turned with them towards my childhood, my family, my country, all that was dear and sacred to me; the inflexible current of my thought was too strong--parents, family, memory, beliefs--it forced me to let go of everything. The investigation went on more obstinate and more severe as it drew near its term, and it did not stop until the end was reached. I knew then that in the depth of my mind, nothing was left that stood erect. This moment was a frightful one, and when towards morning, I threw myself exhausted on my bed, I seemed to feel my earlier life, so smiling and so full, go out like a fire, and before me another life opened, sombre and unpeopled, where in future I must live alone, alone with my fatal thought that had exiled me there, and which I was tempted to curse. The days that followed this were the saddest days of my life."

The French philosopher Jouffroy, quoted by Henry James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, (London: Longmans, Green, 1903), pp. 173ff.

Indiscretions of Youth

2004-09-23T14:59:00.000+07:00

I have always been a writer, and have come to the conclusion over the years that I will remain one irregardless of whether my writing is formally published, or not. After all, better writers than I have written throughout their lives in anonymity, only to be "discovered" after their deaths. How many great authors have never been discovered? For a writer, acclaim and fame and riches are not the real payoff. Writing is a compulsion, and writers will record their thoughts, their observations, their experiences, whether they write for an audience or for themselves or for no one. I think that a good writer will worry less about how his words will be received by others, than about the writing itself. Hemingway used to obsess over writing one, simple, declarative sentence.

The way that I see it, a writer writes, period, whether he can eat from his work or not.

Writing just to write means, of course, that I have to pay the bills by working in other professions.

I am fortunate in that I have not had to wait tables to live, though you can make a strong argument that were I a more honorable man, I would have done exactly that. Many waiters that I have met over the years work very hard for their wages, and live good lives. My own life and character would benefit from doing something akin to this. T.E. Lawrence abandoned all rank and honors to serve out his days as an enlisted airman in the British Air Force, dying young in a motorcycle crash. Maybe I will do something similar, someday. I think that I would make a good janitor. I will not bother to avoid motorcycles. The Big Ranger in the Sky will summon me when He deems the time is right. I am not T.E. Lawrence.

When I first began writing, I was very young, and I thought that I really did not have anything to say. I had not lived, I thought, and so what did I really have to share with others?

Well, now that I am in my forties, I realize that readers will read anything, if it is well-written, told by someone "interesting," and if the story is good. Hell, I read Blogs these days written by fourteen year old girls, and some of them are amazingly good. It makes a nice change from slogging through conspiracy theories, Agrippa, and Dostoyevsky.

But when I was young, I was so certain that I needed to live in order to write, that I promptly set out to live as hard as I could. I dropped out of college at nineteen, and joined the Army. The choice was probably more due to reading too much Hemingway at an impressionable age than I care to admit, but there you are.

I have written some "bridge" chapters regarding this time in my life, and will post them sooner or later. I say "bridge" chapters because they bridge the chronological and narrative gap between my book about Urgent Fury and another book I have written about my work in Peru with DEA.

Which brings me to my point. I live in Bangkok, and I have a lot of personal possessions that I have accumulated over the years in storage in the US. When I came to Bangkok, I came light, not expecting to stay for so long. But Bangkok is a great place to be an expatriate, and I suspect that I will remain here for a long time, indeed. Among the stuff in storage, along with thousands of books, manuscripts, photographs, and mementos of a glorious life (lived, in fact, very hard), I also have my very first published articles.

I will not embarrass myself by revealing where they were published, and my secret is pretty safe, as they were written under a pseudonym for a now-defunct publication. But they were important to me at the time, as they represented proof that I could write for publication, that others considered my writing worth reading, and best of all, that I could actually get paid to do what my heart truly desired.

I no longer remember what I did with the money that I made from my first published articles, but considering the time in my life when I sold them, it probably involved beer.

Looking back on those old articles can be mortifying.

The next time that I was published, I actually scored a pretty good coup. It was not about the money that I made. I was surprised that I was paid at all. In fact, I should probably contact the New York Times and see if they are holding any royalties for me. I used to get checks from them periodically, when I still lived in South Philly, just after I resigned from DEA. Checks for like fifteen bucks. But they came, pretty much every quarter. I was going to frame the first one, but I needed the money for peanut butter....and yes, beer....so that plan did not last longer than a couple of days. Considering the time that has passed since I last received any royalties, there may actually be a couple of hundred bucks coming to me.

Anyway, today was a cloudy day in Bangkok, and I am procrastinating on some work that I really need to do, so I went to the New York Times website and did a search under my name. Yup, my articles are listed. You have to search in the archives to find them, and it will cost you $2.95 to download a .pdf version of each article, but they are there.

This writing, too, embarrasses me today. But I cannot pretend that I did not write these articles, as I wrote them under my own byline. Like me, they have not aged well. But in their time, they caused a bit of a ruckus, which is testament to the ephemeral nature of history. They really do not matter now, not even to specialists. They have been cited in bibliographies, but with the perspective gained from the passage of decades, I see now that they do not merit even those courteous mentions in footnotes.

I refer to "Cocaine and Corruption in Peru," and "Peru's Maoist Drug Dealers," published on April 7th and 8th, respectively, 1992, on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times.

I wrote them in a different era, a different place, and it can be said, as Borges has commented, that another man wrote them.

I remember the torturous editing process. The editor's name was Katy. The articles were assembled in a Frankensteinian process over a period of weeks, extracted from a long "Letter to the Editor" that I wrote in response to a fatuous editorial by a British journalist named Simon Strong. I can still remember faxing off that long "Letter to the Editor," and thinking, "well, no way this will ever be published, much less read."

And then, to my astonishment, the phone rang. It was the New York Times.

I was floored.

I was correct: they did not want to publish my letter. It was too long. About fifteen pages, as I recall. The Times wanted to cull it and shape it into two, maybe three articles, and then run them on successive days, which had never been done previously.

Katy and I faxed pages back and forth, for days, and then a week, and then another week. And then, out of the blue, Alberto Fujimori, then President of Peru, decided to stage something history remembers as the autogolpe. He suspended the Peruvian legislature, and seized dictatorial power in collusion with the Peruvian military.

Suddenly, my articles were no longer merely interesting. They were topical.

And we went to press the very next day.

You do not receive the glorious illustration that accompanied the first article on April 7, when you purchase it via the NYT website, and that is a pity, as the drawing was something to behold. I do not remember the name of the artist who inked it. But it was beautiful. I have several copies of that day's Times saved among my effects. The impact of the illustration has not been blunted by the passing years, though the newspaper pages themselves are becoming brittle.

That day, April 7, 1992, I was toasted and feted by strangers in New York city, and I was famous, yet again, for a little while.

But that was not the real pay-off for me. I have never craved fame. I desired validation.

And I got it.

I have not had it since, but one other thing has happened to me over the years since those intoxicating days when it seemed that I could indeed write, and be published, and my words might be valued.

Perspective.

Those articles...well, given the perspective of decades, I think that they pretty much suck.

And I realize now that whether my book on Grenada is ever published, or my book on Peru, by a genuine publisher, in book form, is not really that big of a deal. The important thing is, I wrote them. I got the story, the events, down on paper. And they exist now, in digits, on this Blog, and anyone can read them, should they so desire. The critical act was the writing. All else is illusion.

I am waiting to receive my photographs from my tours in Peru with DEA before I start uploading chapters from my second book. Like the book on Grenada, it was originally written in 1991. Parts have not aged well at all. But some of it....well, I have no idea how I will feel about this writing twenty years from now, should the Big Ranger in the Sky bless me to live that long, but I hope that I like it better than I like my articles in the New York Times.

GUNS-R-US

2004-09-16T07:15:00.000+07:00

Myself and my wingman at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP), in September, 2003. We were charged with locating 40 AKMs for a company project. We ended up at the end of the day with nearly 100, including PKM light machine guns, RPG launchers, and several crates of ammunition. We paid nothing for this arsenal, aside from a couple of bottles of whiskey, and promises of future favors.

This is an example of what the "old boy's" network can accomplish. I was amazed at how many old pals I ran into in Iraq. Some of us are aging more gracefully than others. Some of us are still running with the Big Dogs. Regardless, we all remember old allegiances, old oaths taken, and we hold true to them, even decades later. And the network is alive and well. While I may not have personally known each guy who donated to our collection of guns, we all had many associates in common. A quick phone call or email was all it took to verify bonafides.

Amazing what some good will, and a couple of well-placed bottles of Jack Daniels can accomplish in a war zone.

Yes, I am the fat guy depicted on the right. No, I am not wearing body armor. Like I keep saying: the years have not been kind.

Photograph discourtesy of the Silver Tongued Devil.

Mail Bag

2004-09-16T06:44:00.000+07:00

I receive a lot of email from folks who have stumbled across this blog over the past few months, and it has been good to hear from many old friends, and to make new ones.

I recently received an email from a guy named Chip, and I tried to reply to him. Chip, your email bounced. This is a little personal, and I generally prefer to be more private than this, but your email is important, and it matters to me that your friend Stewart, the brother of my former boss CPT Greg Gardner, read what I have to say.

Dear Chip:

I was not physically present at Indian Springs, and so cannot give you a first-person account. I was, however, well-acquainted with CPT Greg Gardner, he was my boss, and we spent much time together, as soldiers do on deployments. I got to know him fairly well, met his wife a couple of times, and worked with him side-by-side. I was a line medic, so I was not with him all day long on the job. But we interacted quite a bit.

He was a fine man. He did not talk much about his time in Vietnam, but my feeling was that it had influenced him significantly. As you know, he had been a Special Forces medic there, and this experience gave him a great advantage, as he was able to inculcate in us many of the traditions and values that he learned in SF. He was a superb medical professional, a great Ranger Battalion surgeon, and he was a visionary. It was Greg Gardner who initially proposed sending Ranger medics to the Special Forces medic course, and it was this move that later resulted in the saving of several lives during Operation Urgent Fury. We medics respected him highly.

One of my best friends, Mitch "Maddog" Wilson was present at Indian Springs. In fact, he was awarded the Soldier's Medal for his actions there. He survived the crash, while both Jim Bynum, the Battalion senior medic, and Greg, did not. Mitch never shared much about the event, but he was credited with saving the life of a young lieutenant named Chin, who I believe later went on to command a Ranger Battalion as a light colonel. As you know, both Jim Bynum and Greg were also awarded the Soldier's Medal, the highest peacetime, non-combat award available, posthumously.

One day, I was deployed to Hurlburt Field in Florida, the home of the Air Force 1st SOW (Special Operations Wing). This unit hosts the MC-130 Blackbirds that infiltrate SF, Rangers, and other special operations forces by parachute, as well as a wing of special ops helicopters and our beloved AC-130 Spectre gunships. I deployed with the 2d Ranger Battalion FIST (Fire Support Team), and we lazed around the gun ranges on Hurlburt Field on lounge chairs, calling in fire from fast movers and the AC-130's. It was during this trip, which occurred sometime after my graduation from Ranger school (class 14-81), that an Air Force colonel at the 1st SOW asked us over beers in the 'Gator Lounge (the cadre bar at the Florida Ranger Camp) if we wanted to see the Spectre footage of the crash at Indian Springs. Of course we did. The crash had claimed the lives of our Battalion commander, Greg, Jimmy, and a couple of young Rangers who were friends of mine, Jon Critselous and Lonnie Furr.

The footage had been shot using the low-light gun cameras on the gunship. There was no audio voiceover, just silent, grainy, greenish footage showing the C-130 coming in short of the runway, skidding along the desert floor, and breaking up. We could see the hot spots by the engine nacelles where the fires began, and we could see the way that the flames spread to the rest of the airplane. Rangers wear strips of IR (infra red) luminous tape to mark themselves for Spectre and for each other while wearing NODs (night observation devices), and we could clearly see groups of Rangers evacuating the crashed bird, running to safety into the surrounding desert.

From one of the main groups which ran to the left of the screen, a couple of luminous blobs detached themselves from the crowd. We surmised that these two Rangers were Greg and Jim Bynum. They seemed to confer briefly, then they ran back into the aircraft, and appeared to assist wounded Rangers to safety. As I recall, they made two or three separate trips. On the last trip, they were moving towards the bird when the screen blanked out from the explosion of the fuel cells. We could see the heat of the explosion reach out over them, and that was it. I believe that I witnessed the death of Greg Gardner and Jim Bynum on that gunship footage.

As I said, I was physically in Ranger school at the time of the crash. I remember the moment when I was told about it vividly. It was the night of the Super Supper, a feast at the end of the phase, when Rangers coming in off their last graded patrols in Mountains are fed to their heart's content. It is actually a terrible night, as you are literally starving, and you cannot control yourself. You eat until you are stuffed, and then you eat some more. Your body has, by this time, adapted to low caloric intake, and you are not accustomed to rich foods, as you are used to surviving on a single C-ration (this was before the debut of the MRE) a day.

Well, in my case, after gorging myself in the dining facility, I went directly to the latrines, along with virtually other Ranger, to both puke and shit myself crazy. My body could not handle the food. It was horrible. All that good food.....and your body needed it, you see....but your system just literally could not handle the fat, the butter, the oils....and I seem to remember eating what remains one of my favorite dishes to this day, the so-called "shit on a shingle," meaning thick, chunky sausage gravy ladled generously over buttered toast. Of course, I topped this with fried eggs, and I also seem to remember through the haze of decades that we had steak. I also seem to remember that I sopped up the gravy with peanut butter and jelly on bread. We all craved peanut butter. And chocolate.

After shitting and puking in the latrine, I walked, slowly, back to my hooch, holding my gut in pain. In these days, Ranger students lived in small wooden huts with small stoves in them for heat. It was cold in the Mountains at this time, and it was the height of luxury to retire to your hut, and stretch out on a wooden bunk with your poncho liner. We all had to hold our stomachs. My gut, I remember, was distended taut, I was uncomfortably full, even after vomiting. As I relaxed on my bunk, and drifted into sleep, I remember one of the other Ranger students in my class, a guy named Steve Slater, coming into my hooch looking for me. It was Slater who told me about Greg and Jim Bynum, and the crash. I remember feeling deep sadness, then sleep overtook me, and the next day, it was like a dream.

Slater had no way of knowing it was coming, but he himself died short years later, during the helicopter insertion onto Calivigny. Slater and I were both in the 1st platoon, Company A, 2d Ranger Battalion. Our platoon is among the most storied of all Ranger units, and is known to this day as the "Bad 'Muthers." I recently ran into a former Bad 'Muther alumnus here in Bangkok. A member of one of the Special Forces detachments from Okinawa deployed here to Thailand to work with the Thai Special Forces, he came to the Special Forces Association Chapter 3 Safehouse in Bangkok, and upon hearing that I had been in the 2d Ranger Battalion, had the bad grace to "coin check" me, to see if I was carrying my Ranger coin. Of course I was. He was years younger than I....but he was a former Bad 'Muther. He bought that round of beer.

Small world. The traditions of the Rangers run deep, and he knew the names of both Greg Gardner and Jimmy Bynum. He knew my name, as well. I cannot remember his, but I am old now, and my memory is bizarrely selective. Some things I remember with stunning clarity and detail. Other things....well, the years have not been kind.

I do not know if this is what you wanted to hear, but it is what I can offer you tonight, sitting at my laptop in my condo outside Bangkok.

I remember Greg Gardner, and I am making it my business to remember all our other dead brothers who have gone on ahead of us. That is the work of the blog. Few may care about these events, but every once in awhile, I hear from someone like you who stumbles across my recollections and wants to know more.

If I can answer any questions for you, please feel free. And please relay my sincere regrets to Stewart. I am glad that he chose a different path in life. I am sorry that he came to it in the way that he did, but I believe that the Big Ranger in the Sky moves us to find our destinies, and I hope that Stew's has been a good one. His brother was an exceptional man, and I was privileged to know him.

s.
-

On Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq

2004-09-15T14:04:00.000+07:00

As many of you know, I am an active participant on the forums at Professional Soldiers and SOCNET.

Recently, a guy named "Jimbo" posted a link to a study by the RAND Corporation titled Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq on Professional Soldiers, and I posted the following reply. While reading, remember that this post was originally written on a Special Forces forum, for an audience of other Special Forces veterans. When I refer to "our guys," I am referring to special operators.

Also, please pardon the invective. When soldiers talk amongst themselves, they are often not polite. And those of you who know me personally, know that I am a profane bastard. As you read, just pretend that you are lurking on the fringe of a group of Former Action Guys (aka FAGs), eavesdropping on our conversation. If you would like to hear what my brothers say in reply to my post, feel free to register on Professional Soldiers and follow the original thread.

I would like to give a brotherly nod to Joe Muccia, who made me realize that I can write about anything on this blog. Not just stories about Grenada. Joe recently started his own blog, Brain Housing Group, and have linked to it in the blog roll to the left. Check it out. You will like it.

I think the RAND study is beautiful.

First of all, it unabashedly uses the "forbidden" term, "counterinsurgency," which we all know has been "discouraged" for some time now.

Much is missing, however, including the organizational breakdown of the forces we need to succeed in that environment, the tactics that they must use, and the end state that will define "victory."

The study will probably be ignored by Big Army, however. Big Army did not prosecute the counterinsurgency in El Sal, which we must recall, was fought by a mere overt "55 trainers," and a larger covert contingent, which nonetheless never exceeded 300 guys actually on the ground.

While it is specious to draw too many parallels with El Salvador, which I consider a successful "small war," there are some which merit consideration. Granted, El Sal is a much smaller country. And we pursued a regional strategy there which does not readily translate to the current predicament in the Middle East. But reducing the "footprint" of deployed US forces will remove one primary motive many common Iraqis fall back on when self-justifying their anti-US cant that we are "occupiers."

Returning to a model calling for the use of "trainers" would be a good thing. I think that we should call them what they truly are this time around, and that would be "advisors," and I also think that many of the restrictions that handicapped trainers in El Sal should be omitted in the case of Iraq.

For example, advisors embedded in units that they train should be able to deploy with them, and accompany them into combat. We all know guys who had to gnash their teeth and wait inside the wire when their boys went out to Indian Country in El Sal. Sending our advisors out with their units will help provide precisely what we most lack, and that is ground truth. It will also help diminish egregious violations of human rights, and provide clear feedback on the effectiveness of training, the effectiveness and quality of indig commanders, and the effectiveness of the plans that they implement.

Sending our advisors out with their units will also permit them to retain their credibility with their troops and the leadership, Arabs after all are a people obsessed with honor, and the gringos can ensure that US funds and equipment are properly utilized, minimizing cannibalization and fraudulent "battle loss." The main reason to send advisors out with their troops, though, is to provide Iraqi units access to air support and resupply networks, and to provide a parallel command and control apparatus.

We also need to admit that it is very easy, too easy, in fact, to blame many of our problems on a "lack of intelligence." It is a truism. Of course there is a lack of actionable intel. But in many cases where actionable intel exists, US forces are often too sluggish to deftly and surgically react in a preemptive fashion. We are very much on the defensive in Iraq, we are reacting, and the initiative does not rest with our side.

Iraq should be awash in special guys running agent networks now, and the fact that it is not is testament to two facts: one, we still do not, as a nation, know how to mass-produce regional specialists in small wars with language and cultural skills combined with prowess in the ways of special warfare. I have one word for you: force multipliers. You can do more with one amazing guy in the right place than you can with a fucking infantry division. True, you have to back that stud up, but the point remains valid. Two, we lack the institutional sense to recognize and admit that our historical way of war is not cutting it in Iraq, and we permit hidebound institutions to perpetuate themselves and justify themselves, regardless of their manifest inability to manage the task at hand.

In El Sal, though it is not much publicized, a parallel activity to the training of Salvadoran units focused precise force against specific targets, principally high value personalities, and a de facto campaign of decapitation yielded undeniable results. True, you have to be able to find insurgent leaders to kill them, but rather than using special munitions to hit alleged safehouses, maybe we should just be knocking on those doors in the middle of the night, with someone known to the insurgents greeting them with holy words as they get one suppressed bullet in the head and two in the chest. Precision of this nature is much cheaper, it does not cause a lot of collateral casualties, and there is much less mess to clean up when the sun rises. Better, Iraqis can do it. Iraqis cannot field a heavy armored division, nor should we desire that they do so.

The big problem with this way of warfare is that many Big Army commanders consider it "un-American," and think that it is more palatable to the American public and international public opinion to level villages to save them than it is to assassinate insurgent leaders. There will be cries of "remember the Phoenix Program!" And it will go no further. Well, I say, yes: remember the Phoenix Program. Revise and refine that template, and implement it in Iraq, now. We will spend fewer American lives, spend less American treasure, cause less infrastructure damage that we have to repair post-strike, and we will unleash a target ethic that Arabs will understand. There is a long tradition of assassination in Arab culture. Hell, we all know where the word "assassin" comes from, and it sure is not from German or Latin roots.

This approach also hearkens back to another successful counterinsurgency, that against Shining Path in Peru. It is not a good comparison with Iraq, in many respects, as Maoist organizations are in fact Leninist vanguard parties, using mass organizations in conjunction with political organizations and guerrilla forces, following a template for revolutionary action which anyone can study if they have the patience to wade through the Collected Works of Mao, the "Great Helmsman." Maoist parties, like all other communist parties, have a hierarchical structure which relies disproportionately on leaders whose neutralization, once they are killed or arrested, yields measurable results. Specifically, once Abimael Guzman and the other members of the Shining Path "cupola" were negated, the Party, meaning the Communist Party of Peru (aka Shining Path), was never able to recover. Shining Path still exists in Peru, but the days of 1990, when huge hammers and sickles would blaze on the hillsides outside Lima, are past. Guzman, aka"Presidente Gonzalo," now plots no more than the interminable days until his inevitable death in a prison built just for him, on the naval base at Callao.

In the case of Iraq, we have Shia enemies in the form of Moktada Al Sadr. We have Sunni enemies in the form of the mujadeen bad guys infesting Fallujah and Ramadi, and the so-called "Sunni Triangle." We have former Baathists, or so-called "regime dead-enders" anguished at their removal from power. We have the ephemeral foreign jihadists in the form of Al Zarqawi. And then, there are the criminals, released by the thousands by Saddam as the Green Machine sliced through Iraq, and there are the malcontented youth and able-bodied men, who grab their guns and join in whenever they see an opportunity. How in the hell do you decapitate a hydra like this?

I can imagine only one way. Little by little. And a bunch of special guys needs to be on the ground running agents, and they have to have a well-oiled apparatus backing them up, they need a lot of cash, and when shit gets dire, they need Spectre, and yes, the ability to place a single special munition on a painted target. The Air Force will not like this approach to warfare, as it does not justify huge air fleets and huge air bases. You can drop a smart bomb from a remotely piloted drone, when you get down to it. Big Army will hate it, as it negates the need for the heavy divisions. The Marine Corps.....they just might buy off on it. As the author of the RAND study notes, the Corps still assigns Small Wars for study at Quantico. But mostly our guys who will prosecute this more personal form of warfare need a legion of fucking snipers, and an institutional framework which reduces the footprint of US forces, and exponentially increases the precision of our use of force.

But back to the lessons of El Salvador: there was also a lot of civic action going on, and the gradual reduction of the intensity of conflict, the increased precision of targeting, and assiduous work at low levels aimed at improving the quality of life of the average citizen, all yielded better results than bunkering down in firebases, and using firepower with inadequate discrimination. This is real "preparation of the battlefield," in my opinion, as you create the political and economic conditions on the ground that provide the context for a successful "small war."

Believe me, I had days in Iraq where I whole-heartedly subscribed to the "bomb the shit out of all of them and let Allah sort them out" approach. And when our brothers were strung up from that bridge in Fallujah, I was among those who felt that we should flatten the town, and put the biggest fucking Wal-Mart in the world in the center. I still have days when I think that we should just make a horrific, historic example out of Fallujah, and translate all those fuckers to Paradise.

If I were running the show, I just might do that. And then employ a gentler, kinder, more targeted brutality against the guerrilla infrastructure, without mercy, while I paid average Iraqis generous salaries to clean up the goddamned streets, fix the fucking septic and sewage systems, to get the damned potable water flowing again through the pipes, and get the electricity running. And I would make damned sure that there was benzene, and plenty of it, available for the people's generators and cars, as they will be the first to point out to you that they are an oil producing nation, and the real reason why American deposed Saddam was oil.

Would it work? How the fuck should I know? One thing I do know, however: In these sorts of conflict, the proverbial center of gravity is not military. It is political. It is politics that creates the context for true security, and that context creates space for economic development, and that, my friends, is the key to winning hearts and minds, and ultimately, the war. If we can facilitate the consolidation of an Iraqi middle class, and average Iraqis can prosper economically, resuscitating the dream of "something better" for their children, they will take ownership of their country, and they will oppose those who disrupt business. First, we have to remove the root cause of the charge that we are "occupiers." Placing band-aids on that wound will not cure the patient. Cultural sensitivity and deftness should have been present from the inception. Our guys always conduct themselves that way. The problem is that Iraq was not Afghanistan. Our guys were not the lead guys in the invasion of Iraq, and most importantly, our guys have been relegated to a supporting role in the aftermath.

God knows that I would love to see a Bradley fighting vehicle or Abrams tank come to my rescue if I were besieged in Sadr City. But maybe it would be better if I could just pick up the Bat Phone and call my friendly neighborhood Spectre gunship orbiting on station. Tanks and Brads are too conspicuous. As are HMMWV-mounted mobile patrols. As are our helicopters.

Would pulling out the big units truly mean ceding territory? Are we truly fighting for territory? If we cannot provide security now for virtually any city or town in Iraq, what are we really surrendering?

Sorry for the rant.

A Legend

2004-07-27T17:12:00.000+07:00

Two Ranger medics. Bottom, Clarence Mayo. Mayo was assigned to Co B, 2d Ranger Battalion. Top, then-SFC Ron Braughton.

Braughton was the senior Battalion medic at 2d Ranger Battalion in the years before Operation Urgent Fury, working under CWO2 Frank Wallace. It was the team of Wallace and Braughton that finally gained command approval for the training of Ranger medics at the Special Forces medic course. This course produces "physician substitutes," in the form of medics with skills far in excess of the average US Army medic.

Braughton was an exemplar of the Special Forces medic, a veteran of Project 404 during the Vietnam era, running classified missions into Laos. He later was assigned to "Det A," a classified Special Forces unit in Berlin. It was as a member of Det A that Braughton participated in Operation Rice Bowl, the abortive rescue of US hostages in Iran.

Braughton was worshipped by the Ranger medics of my generation, and later became a Physician's Assistant. He was then assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group and JSOC, participating in operations throughout Central America in the 1980's, and the stand-off at Sigonella, Italy, where US forces attempted to arrest the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer in the aftermath of the highjacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship.

Braughton trained entire generations of Special Forces medics, but the stellar performance of Ranger medics from the 2d Ranger Battalion during Operation Urgent Fury stands out as a success that saved lives in combat, and no higher accolade is possible.

Thanks, Ron. May the Big Ranger in the Sky always watch over you. You are in our prayers.
Photograph courtesy of Dan Silliman.