Author: frankisemptiness

October 28th, 2021

“Zogen einst fünf junge Burschen,

stolz und kuehn zum Kampf hinaus.

Sing, sing was geschah?

Keine kehrt mehr nach Hause.” – von Zogen einst fuenf wilde Schwaene

Translated from the German:

“There were once five young fellows,

proud and ready to go out to fight.

Sing, sing, what happened?

Not one returns home.” – from Five Wild Swans Once Flew (a traditional Lithuanian folksong)

My wife, Karin, was born in 1954 in postwar Germany. The last shot of the war had been fired nine years before her birth, but she started her life in a country haunted by the effects of World War II. The land and the people were still scarred by the violence. Her father and her uncles had all fought for the German Reich. Even when I first met them in 1983, they were still dealing with the issues that all veterans have, regardless of when and where they served, and regardless of what cause they served.

Little by little, I learned their stories. They told me about their years in the military. Now I am telling these stories to you.

Karin’s father, Max, was drafted into the Wehrmacht, specifically the Luftwaffe, in 1938. He was eighteen at the time, and had already spent his earlier teenage years in the Hitler Youth. He was from Silesia, which is now part of Poland. In 1939 he was part of the invasion of Poland. He served in Italy after that. Then he was transferred to the Russian Front with almost all the rest of the German forces. Eventually, the Russian Front moved west until it halted in the smoldering ruins of Berlin. Max got shot in the lung just before the war ended. He convalesced in a Lazarett, a German field hospital. He never went home again. He started his civilian life as a refugee, not knowing where any of his family members were.

Karin’s Onkel (Uncle) Kurt had been in the German Army. He was also originally from Silesia. Kurt was stationed in occupied France. On Christmas Day of 1943 he married Aga. He had only a couple days of leave. After the wedding he returned to his unit in France. He did not see Aga again until 1948. He was captured by the Allies after D-Day, and he was held as a French prisoner of war for three years after the end of the war.

The French did not give Kurt and his fellow prisoners enough to eat. Kurt worked in the vineyards. At times he was so hungry that he ate unripe grapes. Those gave him severe diarrhea and dehydration.

Kurt told me that, when he was finally released by the French, he found Aga (who was also a refugee) near Bad Mergentheim. He said that he got off the train and saw her standing on the platform waiting for him. He told me that it was as if no time had passed at all. She looked just the same as she did at their wedding five years before.

After the war, he became a salesman. He was good at it. He was always friendly and quick with a joke. Once he and Aga were back together, he would always make himself a plate of sandwiches before turning in for the night. He placed the sandwiches on his nightstand next to the bed. He did this every night for years because he wanted to be sure that he had enough to eat.

Karin’s Onkel Friedolin (Friedl) was bauernschlau, or “street smart”. He was not well educated. He had grown up on a farm. However, he knew how to take care of himself.

Friedl initially worked in armaments factory. However, he wasn’t getting enough food, so he joined the army. He was trained as an anti-aircraft gunner, and was stationed in Dresden. His unit was moved early in 1945, just before the fire bombing of the city. He barely missed being incinerated.

At that point in the war, chaos reigned in Germany. The Reds were at the Oder River, east of Berlin. The Nazis were feeding every soldier they could find into the Soviet meat grinder. Friedl was at a train station waiting to go east with his unit. Some troops from Bavaria were loading on to another train. They told him,

“Komm mit uns! Wir fahren richtung Süden!”

“Come with us! We’re going south!”

Friedl went with the southern boys. He got off the train a couple kilometers from his home. Then the war ended.

I don’t know what Max, Kurt, and Friedl were like during the war. Maybe they were rabid Nazis. Somehow, I doubt it. They got swept up in events they could not control, and they managed to survive. When I met them, they were the age that I am now. They were old, and they seemed to have made some sort of peace with their past. To the end of their lives, they believed that they had only fought to defend their homeland. They believed that they had done their duty.

They were vets, just like any other vet.

October 26th, 2021

“A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” – J.P Morgan

My youngest son, Stefan, is a welder in the Iron Workers Union. He is currently an apprentice, although he expects to become a journeyman in the next few months. Stefan had a job interview with a construction outfit on Friday. From what he told me, the interview was rather informal. The union hall had sent Stefan to this company, and the interviewers wanted to know what they were getting.

It went like this…

1st Interviewer: “Do you have any DUI’s?”

Stefan: “No.”

1st Interviewer: “Are you divorced?”

Stefan: “No.”

1st Interviewer: “Have you done any prison time?”

Stefan: “No.”

The interviewer looked at Stefan and asked,

“So, how the fuck did you ever get into the Iron Workers?”

No response from Stefan.

1st Interviewer: “Are you mechanically inclined?”

2nd Interviewer, as he was perusing Stefan’s Facebook page: “Of course he’s mechanically inclined! He rides a chopper!”

1st Interviewer: “Okay. Good. Do you have any problem with heights?”

Stefan: “No.”

1st Interviewer: “Do you want to start tomorrow evening?”

Stefan opted to start on Monday.

Stefan has worked at a number of construction sites. He is usually high up on lift, or he’s walking on steel beams 100 feet in the air. Stefan likes that. He enjoys the adrenalin rush. He doesn’t want to be on the ground tying up rebar all day long. He cannot tolerate boredom. Stefan is not risk averse.

Actually, nobody in the Iron Workers is risk averse. An individual who is overly concerned about their health and personal safety would never even consider joining the Iron Workers. The same sort of thing goes for people who join the military. They are the same breed as Stefan and his cohorts.

My oldest son, Hans, joined the Army in 2009. He knew when he joined that he would get deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. After he signed up, Hans told me the good reasons for going into the Army: food and shelter, regular pay, and chance to go to college, etc. Later, much later, Hans told about the real reasons for enlisting. Most of those involved the adrenalin rush.

Hans wanted to prove himself. He wanted an adventure. He wanted to push himself as hard as he could. In Iraq he did all those things, at some cost to himself. When he came back from Iraq, he took up skydiving and bought himself a crotch rocket. Hans is not risk averse.

I don’t think that anybody in the military is risk averse. Like the Iron Workers, the military attracts a population that wants to dangerous work. Doing risky things makes us feel alive. The things we do (or did) in the service (in my case, fly helicopters) straddle the line between totally cool and batshit crazy. It depends on your perspective.

I wanted the adrenalin rush. I still do.

October 23rd, 2021

I was sitting with my son, Hans. He was telling me about going to Air Assault School. He was injured near the end of the class, so he didn’t get his wings. The school was willing to let him graduate if he took the entire course again. Hans declined that generous offer. He wasn’t going through all that shit a second time.

Hans look off in to the distance and said,

“Yeah, Dad, it’s no fun rappelling from a helicopter and running out of rope at the end.”

I replied, “I imagine not.”

Hans took a drag and his cigarette, and said,

“It helps if the pilots maintain their altitude.”

Indeed.

I never rappelled out of an aircraft, although I did learn how to rappel. I was at Fort Greeley, Alaska, in the summer of 1978 for training. I was taught how to rappel down a cliff. The goal was to feed the rope, and bounce all the way down to the bottom. The instructors made it clear that I had to keep my body bent at the waist to avoid doing a face plant on the rocks. I managed to make it down the stone wall safely.

Years later, when I was an Army aviator, I flew at least one rappel mission with the infantry. It was boring. We picked up a load of troops, flew a short way to a flat and open area, came to a high hover, and then let the soldiers slide down their ropes. We flew back to the pick up zone, grabbed some more troops, and let them rappel. We went through this cycle repeatedly.

The only difficult thing about the rappel mission was keeping the helicopter steady while hovering. There is a tendency to drift a bit. I had to pick up a couple reference points on the ground and keep them in the same location relative to the windshield of the aircraft. I also had to keep checking the radar altimeter to make sure I wasn’t going any higher. As Hans pointed out to me, it kind of sucks when the helicopter is flying higher than the length of the rappel rope.

It was important for the troops to rappel off the helicopter from each side simultaneously. If only one soldier jumped off the edge of the aircraft, that radically changed the weight and balance of the aircraft, and created an unpleasant rocking motion. Most people on board found that disturbing. It was best for two guys to go out at once.

I know that I said that I found the rappel mission to be boring. Boring is not always a bad thing. Excitement is overrated. I was on another flight early on in my flying career that wasn’t boring at all. I wish it had been.

I had only been in West Germany for a couple months. I was stationed at Fliegerhorst Army Airfield near Hanau, an industrial suburb of Frankfurt. An instructor pilot took me for my night orientation flight. I think it was in February, and the winter weather in Germany is kind of sketchy. There is often fog or freezing rain. We went for a weather briefing with an Air Force meteorologist, and the forecast was “skoash”. I don’t know if “skoash” is a real word (or if I spelled it right), but for us it meant low clouds and poor visibility. We were legal to do the orientation ride, but it was a little iffy at night.

I never liked flying at night. and we were going to fly VFR (Visual Flight Rules), which meant we had to use outside landmarks (lights) to orient ourselves during the trip. That was always tricky. During night flights we usually tuned in radio beacons (e.g. VOR’s) to keep track of our location. Frankfurt is an extremely high traffic area for planes. Getting lost is a really bad idea.

We flew mostly along the Main River. That was easy. The Main was a twisting piece of ebony below us, bounded on both sides by the bright lights of Frankfurt and its surrounding urban areas. We went our merry way. The instructor pilot pointed out different reference points. I was at the controls.

Then we went inadvertent IMC. That meant we went into the clouds accidentally. That meant we couldn’t see a fucking thing outside of the cockpit.

IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) is not a big issue if the pilot has planned for it. We were all trained to fly using the instruments in the cockpit (e.g. attitude indicator, altimeter, airspeed indicator, compass, etc.). The problem is when the pilot is flying using outside references, and then these markers disappear. Then the pilot has to immediately change over to his or her instruments, and this is a bit disconcerting. The pilot’s asshole tends to pucker up as they try to get their bearings in a completely new way. There is a moment or two when mortality seems very real and very close. After that, the pilot either has the aircraft back under control, or bad things happen quickly.

We got it under control, and we sent an emergency transponder signal to ATC. Air Traffic Control really hates that. An emergency signal gets their attention, and tends to make them lose track of the tin they trying to push, airliners and such. ATC told us quickly and convincingly to turn off that signal, and then they gave us brief and succinct instructions to take us back to Fliegerhorst. Their message was basically, “We’re busy. Go away. Don’t come back.”

We were okay with that.

October 22nd, 2021

“If you have money, consider that perhaps the only reason God allowed it to fall into your hands was in order that you might find joy and perfection by throwing it away.” – Thomas Merton

“It’s possible to trace the movement of Christianity from its earliest days until now. In Israel, Jesus and the early ‘church’ offered people an experience; it moved to Greece, and it became a philosophy. When it moved to Rome and Constantinople, it became organized religion. Then it spread to Europe, and it became a culture. Finally, it moved to North America and became a business.”

Father Richard Rohr, OFM

Karin and I went out for coffee with Dan on Wednesday. We see Dan once a year when he comes back to the local area from Germany. Dan is a missionary in Germany. He’s lived there for several years already, and he plans on retiring there and making the country his permanent home. Dan returns here every autumn. He spends time with his family, meets with people he knows from Elmbrook Church (a local megachurch with which Dan is affiliated), and he schmoozes for a while with old friends, like us.

Dan spent most of his working life in corporate management. He was a businessman, and the skills he acquired during his career apparently serve him well in his current vocation as a Christian missionary. Honestly, even when he talks about his work, I don’t understand what he actually does. He often mentions going to conferences, doing strategic planning, and planting churches. None of that means anything to me. I really don’t comprehend how he is bringing Christ to people in Germany in any specific or concrete way. I am sure that he is doing good things, but I don’t know what they are.

Two years ago, I met to Catholic missionaries in Mexico, Father Peter and Sister Betty. They lived in a tiny house in Anapra, an extremely poor neighborhood in Juarez. I understood completely what they were doing to bring Jesus to the people in their town. These two elderly people lived in poverty, just like their neighbors. They did what they could to stop the violence in the community. They worked to relieve the suffering of the women and children they met each day. They had very little money, but they used all of it to help others who had nothing at all.

Father Peter and Sister Betty were not businesspeople. They were not part of the American corporate culture, at all.

Several years ago, My wife, Karin, and I switched churches. We had been going to St. Stephen Catholic Church for twenty-nine years. We were actively involved in the life of that parish. Then the church got a new priest. He was involved with business in his previous career. When he came in, all available funds went to pay off the church’s mortgage (we built a new church structure in 2009). Everything became a fundraiser. It seemed like there was no event that did not have a financial aspect to it. This was a huge turn off for Karin and myself. We went elsewhere.

I understand that the new priest was dealt a bad hand. He had to deal with a pile of debt left by his predecessor. He had a duty reduce the mortgage. He did what he thought was necessary.

There is nothing wrong with paying off a mortgage. Karin and I worked hard for many years to pay off the mortgage on our home. However, there are other things to life besides raising money and paying bills. This especially true of the spiritual life. Not everything can be measured by the Almighty Dollar. The most important things, like love, do not have a price tag.

There are Christian religious communities in America that, although they require money to survive, do not worship it. The Catholic Workers live in poverty in order to better serve the poor. Members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society work diligently to aid those who are struggling to make ends meet. Annunciation House, a group that helps and advocates for migrants in El Paso, operates on a shoestring. Not everyone has accepted the nearly universal corporate model.

Two days ago, I was stopped at a red light. A young homeless man was there panhandling. I waved him over to my car and opened the window. I slipped him some money, then I asked him,

“What’s your name?”

He replied, “I’m Mike.”

I told him, “My name is Frank. Take care of yourself.”

We shook hands. He thanked me with his hand over his heart, and he walked away. Maybe he forgot me immediately. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

I am sure that I could have donated that cash to some well-meaning organization that would have put it to good use. I could have given it to some group with slick advertisements and smooth telemarketers. Mike will use the $20 for God only knows what, and I’m good with that.

I wanted to help a flesh and blood person. I wanted to see him and hear him and know him for at least a moment.

Christianity in America is not always a business.

October 19th, 2021

I took our ten month old grandson, Asher, to my former workplace a couple weeks ago. It had been at least a year since I my last visit to the trucking company. I only went there because one of my previous co-workers wanted to meet the little boy. I had no other reason to return to that place. I feel no nostalgia for it.

I held Asher in my arms as I walked across the parking lot, like I had done a thousand times before. The physical plant looked the same. The tractors and trailers were as I remembered them. There was the same dirt and grime on the overhead dock doors. I felt the same old Sith energy radiating from the place.

I was a dock supervisor at the company for nearly twenty-eight years before I retired. I worked third shift for most of those years. The dock was, and still is, unheated and mostly open to the elements. I worked in the heat and in extreme cold. Most of the time I worked when it was dark. The job could be dangerous. I was run over by a forklift twelve years ago. My right foot and ankle were crushed by the weight of the jeep. I left that corporation with scars.

I don’t miss working there. The work environment was toxic, and sadly I helped to make it so. People were treated as commodities by the company. It was always about profit all the time. Working for that business was corrosive to my soul. My body was not the only thing damaged by my experiences on the dock.

I took Asher into the office to meet Jen. She was delighted to meet the lad. Asher was happy to see her too. Asher loves to meet new people. I didn’t see many others that I knew or remembered. The company has always had an extremely high turn over rate. I left there six years ago, so it’s no surprise that I couldn’t recognize many of the faces. The place was full of strangers, and it made me feel even less welcome than I had expected.

Things have changed there, for the worse.

When I retired it was a big deal, not just for me, but for the other folks working at the company. Whenever anybody retired, the company bought a big sheet cake and gave the lucky winner an award of sorts. Everybody who was in the building came to witness the event. A retirement was one of the very few times that people came together as a team.

Now that doesn’t happen any more. There is no party for retirees. There is no recognition of their years of service to the corporation. People just disappear. I guess it makes sense. The worker did not matter to the company when they were on the clock. Why should anybody care when they leave?

One of my old dockworkers was in the break room when Asher and I arrived. The man’s nickname is “Kung Fu”. He has eyes that remind people of “Kung Fu Panda”. When he saw Asher, his face broke into a grin. Kung Fu said,

“Wow, look at him! He’s such a happy little guy!”

I replied, “Of course, he’s happy. He doesn’t work here.”

October 13th, 2021

My son, Hans, and I were just sitting around, arguing about who had put up with the most shit while in the Army. Hans had been a tanker in the 1st Cav at Fort Hood, but somehow he got used as infantry when he went to Iraq. When I was in, I flew Hueys for a while and then transitioned to flying Black Hawk helicopters. Hans had strong opinions about aviators.

He took a drag on his Pall Mall and said,

“I didn’t like pilots. Those guys were assholes.”

I looked at him and asked, “Are you aware of what I did for a living?”

Hans shrugged, and said, “Yeah, I know. Why?”

I ignored his question and asked him, “So, why exactly were the helicopter pilots assholes?”

He gave me the stink eye and said, “Don’t go playing all innocent. You know what I mean.”

“Give me an example.”

Hans took a hit off of his Lime-A-Rita, and said, “How about when y’all would make a really steep turn for no good reason, and the troops on one side would staring straight down at the ground?”

“Oh, that…”

Hans burst out, “Yeah, oh THAT!”

I asked him, “You were buckled up, right?”

Hans was fired up now. “I was buckled up, but my smokes weren’t! I dropped my last pack of cigarettes out of the aircraft, and I had nothing to light up during that whole field problem!”

I replied, “I can see how that would be an issue.”

“Damn right! I gave that pilot a talkin’ to when we landed. Well, that warrant officer felt so bad about it that he gave me his can of chew.”

“What kind was it?”

Hans replied, “Grizzly.”

Of course, Hans was right. We really were assholes. A Black Hawk can make a 90 degree bank without losing any altitude. Therefore, we loved making 90 degree bank turns, especially if we had troops on board. It was one of the fringe benefits of being a pilot.

Hans’ story reminded of another time that a troop lost something from a helicopter in flight. When I was with the 7Th ID at Fort Ord, we used to fly the infantrymen to Fort Hunter-Liggett to do their training. Fort Ord was a tiny military post on the Pacific coast, so everything had to be done at Fort Hunter-Liggett, which was a much larger area, maybe about eighty miles inland from Fort Ord. We made numerous flights between the two posts. It was generally a straight shot down the Salinas Valley.

At that time the Black Hawks were equipped with a Doppler radar system to assist in navigation. We still had to use our map books, but the Doppler would help us to know our grid coordinates. We would log in the initial grid coordinates before take off, and then the radar would measure our air speed and direction to keep track of our location. Think of the Doppler as a Fred Flintstone version of a GPS. It wasn’t terribly accurate, and we had to update the information frequently, but back in 1986 that device was hot shit.

One day we were flying the standard milk run to Fort Hunter-Liggett. We had several aircraft hauling the members of an Infantry company. Then suddenly everybody got this urgent radio call. The voice on the radio was tinged with panic:

“Get me our current coordinates ASAP!”

Somebody asked, “What for?”

“Just DO IT!”

Well, somebody did. One of the pilots called the guy back with the grid coordinates, and life went on.

Later, we heard from unofficial and possibly disreputable sources that one of the troops had dropped an extra machine gun barrel from the helicopter. Maybe that isn’t accurate, but somebody dropped a weapon, or part of one, from a helicopter. That explained the panic. Now they had to find this sensitive item.

Visualize for a moment how that must have looked. A weapon falls from a Black Hawk flying at probably a thousand feet. The object tumbles end over end, and finally buries itself deeply in the rich, fertile soil of the Salinas Valley. It probably landed in some strawberry field. Good Lord.

Keep in mind that the aircraft were probably moving at 120 knots when the mystery speaker made his frantic radio call. By the time he finished talking and the pilot checked the Doppler, we were most likely a mile or more from the landing site of the missing weapon. Did they ever find it? I sincerely doubt it.

I’m glad I wasn’t that troop’s platoon leader.

October 12th, 2021

I took our grandson to church on Sunday. There is nothing unusual with Asher going to Mass. Karin and I take him with us whenever we go to St. Rita. What was different this time was that I was the only one of us to be with Asher on Sunday. Karin was down in Texas visiting with our other two grandchildren.

Generally, when Karin and I are attending the Sunday liturgy, we take turns watching over Asher. Asher is only ten months old. He is not hard to handle, but babies need some care. This is especially true when I am scheduled to serve as lector during the Mass (a lector reads aloud from the Scriptures to the entire congregation). On Sundays when I am called to proclaim the Word, it is helpful when Karin can hold and cuddle Asher for a while.

This Sunday I did serve as lector, but I was Karin-less. One of my duties was to carry the Book of the Gospels up to the altar at the beginning of Mass. This is not a big deal, unless, of course, you are carrying a 26 pound baby in your right arm while trying to hold the book in your left. I managed to do that.

I was supposed to do the first reading from the Book of Wisdom. Normally, I would hand Asher over to Karin before I went up to the ambo (“ambo” is Catholic for “lectern”). Clearly this was not going to happen, seeing as Karin was absent. Georgiana, another reader, offered to hold the lad while I did my thing. I told her not to worry.

When my time came, I walked up to the ambo with Asher in my right arm. He didn’t seem bothered at all. If anything, he wanted to know how the microphone worked. With some difficulty I kept the boy from messing with the mike or with the book with the Scriptures. Actually, Asher was pleased with the fact that all eyes were upon him. Everybody in the church was looking directly at Asher.

They like Asher.

They like Asher because he is beyond cute. I suspect that they also like him because he is one of the few people in the church is less than sixty years of age.

The truth is that almost everyone who comes to our church on a regular basis is old. There is often a procession of cars at the entrance of the church just prior to the service. Old people get out of these cars to help even older people with their walkers and wheelchairs. The demographics are not good.

After Mass a lady came up to me and told me that, by taking Asher up with me to the ambo, I had inspired Catholic families in the church who have small children. I would have been more impressed with her comments if there had been more families with small children in attendance. There weren’t. There are very few young people at Mass. There were perhaps a dozen children.

After this woman made her remarks to me, I told her,

“He (Asher) is the future. We are not.”

If we take Asher to Mass every Sunday, will that ensure that he becomes a Catholic?

No.

In our time, I have no idea what would convince a young person to be a Catholic. Karin and I have three grown up children, and none of them go to Mass. They have some very good reasons for not going. I won’t go into details here, but the Church (which includes me) cannot satisfy their spiritual needs. All of our kids are spiritual people. They are all actively seeking God, but they don’t Him with us in our church.

What will Asher be? It’s hard to tell. He has a Hebrew name. Asher means “happy” or “blessed”. The boy’s mother has his name tattooed on her arm in Hebrew. When I visited with my rabbi on Monday, he gave Asher a blessing, the same that he gives to his own children. The Birkat HaKonahim:

“The LORD bless you and protect you!
The LORD deal kindly and graciously with you!
The LORD bestow His favor upon you and grant you peace!”

הוהי ךכרבי ךילא וינפ הוהי ראי ךנחיו םולש םשיו ךילא וינפ הוהי אשי

Transliteration Yeh-va-reh-cheh-cha Yahveh veh-yeesh-meh-reh-cha Ya-air Yahveh pa-naiv ay-leych-cha vee-chu-neh-cha Yee …

That’s a good blessing. At one time, I gave that same blessing to our kids (in English).

October 7th, 2021

Lightning and thunder. It’s a rainy, windy night. Maybe I should say that it’s a rainy, windy “morning”, since it is after 2:00 AM already.

Asher is asleep. He struggled to stay awake when it got dark in the evening, but finally he crashed. At ten months of age, Asher is a willful boy, determined to do things his way. When I put him in bed several hours ago, he rolled around and kicked. He tore at my beard and grabbed at my nose. He pulled on my ears with his sharp fingernails. Slowly, very slowly, he wore himself out. The little guy finally bowed to the inevitable. His body relaxed, his face became calm, and he gave himself to that state of total rest that adults can never have. I envy him.

It is just me and Asher tonight. Karin, my wife, is in Texas with our other grandchildren, the grandchildren that she has not seen for well over a year. She flew down there visit with them yesterday. I remain here to care for Asher. I don’t mind. It just is.

The situation feels different now because of Karin’s absence. Since Karin and I became fulltime caregivers for Asher back in February of this year, we have worked as a team. It is difficult for any one person, especially an elderly person, to care for an infant. Karin and I have always given each other space. We have been very aware of the other person’s need for rest. Asher is a wonderful little boy, but he is always a very active little boy. I am writing now because I can, because my grandson is sleeping. In a couple hours things will be very different. All hell might break loose.

I am happy to be here with Asher. He’s amazing, at least he is to me. He is fascinated by his world, and I am fascinated with him. He loves our dogs, and they tolerate him. He wants to stand and walk. He wants to explore everything. All things that are old to me are new to him. He is easily impressed.

I introduced him the wonders of a phonograph yesterday afternoon. I played for the first time in a long time my copy of “Sgt. Pepper”. Asher was interested in how the record spun on the turntable. He didn’t particularly care for the music. Asher is more of a hard rock/heavy metal kind of guy. Karin puts him to sleep with Mozart. I put him to sleep with Foo Fighters.

Our youngest son, Stefan, came over to visit yesterday at noon. He brought me some Italian food, and he helped me to put up the new futon. I fed Asher blended carrots, and Stefan talked to the boy. We checked out what kind of music Asher likes. Stefan is very fond of Asher. That’s good. Asher is going to need a strong and loving uncle. Asher will not have a dad in his life. Stefan will need to be a role model for Asher.

Asher’s mom also came to visit yesterday. She put Asher down for his nap in the afternoon. She is good at doing that. She loves Asher intensely. She is a good mother.

In a few hours I plan on meeting a Greg, the deacon from our church, for coffee. Obviously, I will take Asher with me. It is always good for Asher to meet new people. Maybe it is of greater value for the others to meet Asher than it is for him to meet them. I don’t know. Somehow it seems to make things better.

God willing, I will take Asher to meet my rabbi on Monday. Asher, despite his name, will probably never become Jewish. That’s okay. He will grow up knowing good people who are Jewish. His world will be larger.

It’s late (or early). I need to rest for a while.

Asher won’t be patient with me when he wakes up wet and hungry.

September 29th, 2021

The UH-60 Black Hawk has a hook on the underside of it. That is the helicopter’s primary means for carrying cargo. When I flew Black Hawks, way back when, we could haul some stuff inside the aircraft, but most of the time we had to hang the freight on the hook. The hook was good up to 9000 lbs. I think the most we ever carried was about 7000. That was plenty.

When I was stationed in West Germany, my unit was part of the 3rd Armored Division. We seldom carried troops. That’s what the tanks and APC’s were for. Our job was to transport fuel and ammunition. We seldom actually transported ammo (security issues), but we carried lots of jet fuel. Aircraft with turbine engines, such as helicopters, burn through enormous amounts of JP-4. We had to make sure that there was enough during each exercise.

We used the hook on the Black Hawk to transport the equipment that the III/V (Fuel and Ammo) Platoon needed to set up a FAARP (Forward Area Arming and Refueling Point). The pumps and hoses were crated up and placed in a net. The net had a ring on the top that could be placed on to the hook on the helicopter.

We also transported the fuel on the hook. The JP-4 was pumped in fuel blivets, each of which carried 500 gallons. Two blivets were attached together to a sling and the sling was hooked on the bottom of the helicopter. The blivets plus the sling weighed approximately 7000 lbs.

It was sometimes tricky getting the blivets off the ground. 7000 lbs put a heavy strain on the turbine engines. We would face the helicopter into the wind to get extra lift. As far as the Black Hawk was concerned, facing into a headwind was the same as the aircraft moving forward. Forward motion and/or a headwind reduced turbulence under the rotor blades, thus increasing lift.

Even with a headwind, we sucked the guts out of the engines when we first picked up the blivets. The engine strip lights would go from green to yellow, and really close to red. Once the fuel bladders were even a few feet off the ground, we would start moving forward. Any extra lift was welcome.

Full blivets hung under the helicopter like a set of black balls. They were usually steady as stones. Empty fuel blivets, on the other hand, would catch in the wind, and swing and twist. That was disconcerting. It was a pendulum effect. We didn’t want the crew chief to tell us that he could see the blivets from his side window.

There were flight procedures to follow if the blivets were swinging to the point that control of the aircraft was in question. A gradual climb or descent could smooth things out. Or the pilots could go into a gradual turn to stabilize the blivets. In a real crisis the pilot could hit the emergency release button to open the hook and dump the blivets. It was impossible to hit that release button accidentally. It had to be done on purpose. If a pilot hit the emergency release and dropped blivets with residual JP-4 from an altitude of a couple thousand feet into the potato field of some German farmer, he better have a good reason for doing so. It was likely that the flight crew would have a meeting with unhappy people of high rank immediately upon landing.

When I went to the 7th Infantry Division , we did a lot more troop movements. The 7th ID was made up of “light fighters”, grunts with little or no ground transportation. We still used the hook on occasion. We lifted 105 Howitzers for the Artillery guys. That was pretty easy. We only had a problem with that once.

A helicopter tends to build up a static electric charge while in flight. The charge is typically released when the aircraft touches the ground. Sometimes the charge is released when the aircraft touches something or somebody on the ground. That can be problematic. The way to avoid grounding the helicopter inadvertently is to key the mike on the radio just prior to landing. That is another way to dissipate the electrical charge.

When an artillery man tries to hook up his Howitzer to the bottom of the Black Hawk, He straddles the chassis of the gun and holds a ring up to place on the hook. This ring, or donut, is attached to a sling on the Howitzer. The soldier usually wears a gasmask or at least goggles when doing the hook up. The rotor wash from the blades is intense.

We flew in to grab the Howitzer. We saw the gun bunny standing precariously on top of the weapon. He was holding the donut as high up as his arms could reach. We got right over him. Then we heard…

“Man down!”

“What do you mean?!”

“The troop with the donut is on the ground.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s moving a little bit. Yeah, he’s getting back up.”

“Roger. Let’s try it again.”

Got to remember to key that mike.

September 28th, 2021

The Fort Irwin National Training Center is deep in the Mojave Desert. It is about 37 miles from Barstow. California, which means it’s 37 miles from nowhere. To get to the nearest real city, you have to drive two hours to San Bernadino. To get to the Pacific Ocean, you need four hours of windshield time. I was at Fort Irwin in February of 1986 for training. I don’t remember much from that time period, probably because I don’t want to remember it. However, I might as well write about the highlights of those weeks in the desert.

I have to back up a bit. To properly tell this story I need to begin at West Point in the spring of 1980. I was getting ready to graduate and become a second lieutenant. At that time all the members of my class had to choose their branch. Branch selection was based on class rank. People at the top of the class could pick whatever branch they liked. The folks on the bottom got to go Infantry.

1980 was the first year that a graduate could go to Flight School immediately after completely the officer basic course for whatever branch they had chosen. At that time, there was no such thing as an Aviation branch in the Army. The graduate who wanted to go directly to Flight School needed to pick an unrelated branch in the Army, usually one of the combat arms. The idea was to sleepwalk through the basic course, and then become a pilot.

Also in 1980, there was a total of four slots available in Military Intelligence for prospective pilots. Those went fast. I got the last slot, and I went into MI prior to going to Fort Rucker to learn how to fly. I spent several months at Fort Huachuca, AZ, studying PHOTINT (photo intelligence) before I was sent to Fort Rucker. If for some reason, Flight School did not work out for me, I would have gone back to the MI branch fulltime.

I had a classmate who was (and is) a good friend. He also planned on becoming a helicopter pilot. He was higher in class rank than I was, so he could have snagged that coveted Military Intelligence slot. But he didn’t do that. Instead, for reasons that were never made clear to me, he chose to go Infantry.

Before any of us could be accepted into Flight School, we had to have a flight physical. I think we had an initial physical while still at West Point, but then we had to undergo another physical prior to beginning classes at Fort Rucker. My physical was a nerve wracking experience. The doctor needed me to “valsalva”, that is, clear my ears. Pilots had to be able to equalize the air pressure between the outside environment and inner ear canal. Well, I couldn’t do it. I had scarring from childhood ear infections, and I couldn’t get my ears to pop. After multiple attempts, I finally got an ear to make a pitiful pop, and the physician reluctantly signed off on my medical exam. I came very close to not ever becoming a pilot.

My friend failed his exam. They determined that his vision was not good enough. It was good enough to pass the first exam, but not the second go around. The Army didn’t know what to do with him at first. He got a position working at the Fort Ricker golf course. He went to work every day in his Izod shirt and chinos. His life as a golf pro went on like that for months.

Then the letter came. My friend and I shared an apartment off post. He came back one day pissed off. He went directly to the refrigerator and made himself a rather strong Black Russian. I asked him what was wrong. He tossed me an envelope. Inside was a copy of his PCS orders. I looked at it.

He was going to Fort Irwin, as an Infantry officer.

I asked him where Fort Irwin was, and he exploded.

Eventually, after we had numerous Black Russians, he explained where Fort Irwin was, and what they did there. He would be part of the OPFOR (Opposing Forces) for training troops that were rotated in from posts all over the U.S. In practical terms, he was becoming a faux Soviet officer for three years at one of the most isolated duty stations on earth.

Over the following years, we would write to each other. My friend’s letters were often bitter and sarcastic. My impression from reading the letters was that there wasn’t a fucking thing to do at Fort Irwin except work. So, everybody stationed there got really good at being the OPFOR. They knew all the terrain. They knew all the ways to win. When other units came to Fort Irwin to join the wargames in the big sandbox, the locals were ready for them, and they were playing for keeps.

Fast forward to late 1985. The 7th Infantry Division at Fort Ord was chosen to train at Fort Irwin. That meant that I finally got to go there.

We spent months preparing for the move to the National Train Center (NTC). The Infantry was getting all pumped up for the trip. They were absolutely convinced that they were going to kick some ass. I was not so sure about that. It didn’t matter, we were all going there anyway.

We flew the fifteen Black Hawks in our company from Fort Ord to the NTC. We planned to make a grand entrance. We were going to go in as a flight of fifteen, Apocalypse Now-style. It went well at first. We looked good. I was in Chalk 5 behind four other aircraft. I watched the first helicopter slowly approach the ground.

Then it disappeared into a cloud of brown dust.

Oh fuck.

Chalk 2 did the same thing, as did Chalk 3. Now the rest of us had no idea where any of these three Black Hawks had landed. We could see nothing, and it is considered bad form to land on top of another aircraft’s rotor system. So, it was every man and woman for themselves. We each peeled off and found a piece of level ground. We planted our helicopters and turned off the engines. Like fools, we had flown with doors open. Everything, I mean everything, was covered with dust and sand.

We set up our operations tent next to the only Joshua tree available. We got ready to do our thing: transporting troops and equipment. Everybody was preparing to show the folks at Fort Irwin what the 7th ID could do.

The first day of the war came. Once again, our operation was carefully planned. We were ready. The show started promptly at 6:00 AM. We cranked the engines. The rotors started to turn.

We all got a radio call:

“It’s done. Shut them all down.”

“WHAT?!”

“It’s done. We lost. Shut the aircraft down.”

My watch said, “6:06.”

Fuck.