Tag: army

From First Gear Straight to Fifth

September 9th, 2026

My son, Hans, called me. Hans is an Iraqi War vet (2011 deployment). He likes to talk to me about his work (he pumps concrete for a living down in Texas). When we chat on the phone, the conversation always drifts toward military topics. Both Hans and I are veterans, and we have a mutual understanding of how the Army works. We share some common experiences.

Hans was lamenting how he sometimes loses his temper at home. Hans attributed his fits of anger to his time in the Army. He described it to me this way:

“Dad, I watched this video with a psychiatrist talking about how we get trained in the Army. This stuff isn’t just about guys with PTSD. Anybody who has spent a minute in the military is taught to deal with a problem right away. Now, some civilian, he might gradually react to different levels of stress. He might go from first gear to second to third to fourth and then to fifth gear. We go right from first to fifth! You and I are trained to deal with bad shit. We don’t know how to handle small stuff anymore.”

There is some truth to that. If you have been a soldier, then you are taught to have a “sense of urgency”. You deal with problems as if they were matters of life and death, because sometimes they really are. I remember when I was in flight school learning how to operate a helicopter. I got drilled over and over again about how to deal with emergencies in flight. What do you do if the engine quits? How to you handle a tail rotor failure? What if a hydraulic line breaks? When these things happen, there isn’t time to ponder your options. You do something and you do it right fucking now.

Hans noted that in a crisis situation we tend to act quickly, and somehow, we usually do it calmly. I can remember, back in 2009, when I got run over by a forklift at work. The 8000 lbs. lift crushed my right foot and ankle. I screamed “fuck” when I got rolled, but after that I felt no emotions at all. I was aware that my leg was trashed, but I just stayed put and waited for the EMPs to come and throw me into the back of an ambulance. I can think of other traumatic situations where I just did whatever needed to be done, without really thinking or feeling. Afterward, I was a mess, but not during the crisis. It was almost like I was more of an observer than an active participant when things went sideways.

It’s the smaller issues that trigger us. I used to freak out when our kids would spill a glass of milk at dinner time. For years, I was a rage-aholic. I would go off the deep end over petty incidents. I could deal with the stuff that needed me in fifth gear, but I continually overreacted to the little things.

I told Hans that it gets better as you get older. It’s not that I am any more patient than I was years ago. It’s just that I no longer have the stamina to be constantly outraged by life. I still lose my temper, but I don’t have the energy to maintain that emotional state for more than a couple minutes. Often, after I blow up about some piddly thing, I feel sick and exhausted, sometimes for up to an hour.

I have found that mediation helps with the anger. It allows me to slow down while I deal with stress. I still can’t always shift through the gears in the correct order. But I can do better than I used to do.

After Fifty Years

May 22nd, 2026

“Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it’s been.” – Grateful Dead

I was sitting at the kitchen table with my wife, Karin, a few days ago. Our five-year-old grandson, Asher, was watching mindless YouTube videos on Karin’s phone while my wife and I talked and drank coffee. Somehow, the topic of my time at West Point came up in the conversation. Karin asked how I did in that school.

I told her, “I did okay. I think I ranked 203rd out 800-something total graduates.”

She replied, “Oh, you must have been pretty smart. You were in the top quarter.”

I sighed, “If I was really smart, I would have quit and gone somewhere else.”

She looked at me and glanced at Asher, “But, if you had quit, then Asher wouldn’t be here!”

I laughed, “Then it’s good that I’m not that smart.”

Ah, the immutable law of karma strikes again. Karin was obviously right. If I had not graduated from West Point, I would not have gone to Germany and met Karin, and she would not have given birth to our daughter in 1991, and she in turn would not have given birth to Asher during the depths of the Covid pandemic, and we would not be fulltime care givers for Asher now. I can depend on my wife to help me to refocus on what is important.

My sojourn at the United States Military Academy, aka West Point, has been on my mind lately. It was almost fifty years ago that I went there. I think it was on July 7th, 1976, that I reported to the man in the red sash and jumped on to the military roller coaster. It has yet to come to a complete stop. I took the advice of Hunter S. Thompson: “Buy the ticket. Take the ride.” I can’t get my money or my time back. No refunds.

The first day at West Point is an incoherent blur. It is probably better so. I can remember getting a haircut, learning to march (sorta), and taking the Oath on the Plain while wearing a starched white shirt that was quickly becoming damp with sweat. All other memories are mercifully inaccessible.

So, what was West Point like? It was a mind fuck from start to finish. I like to describe the four years there as being like going to an Ivy League university and doing time simultaneously. I’m not saying there was nothing good about the experience. There were many positive aspects. However, the environment was in some ways deeply twisted, and that didn’t do much good for my mental health. Other people have very different memories than I do. They may be nostalgic. That’s fine. I’m not.

What did I learn? Well, let’s look at West Point’s motto: “Duty, Honor, Country”. Those are fine words, and they can mean damn near anything. I will try to express what they mean to me now, half a century after first hearing them.

What is duty? I would define the word as meaning “doing what needs to be done”. As a case in point, I have a duty to raise our grandson, Asher. I could have refused to be his legal guardian and care for him, but I have a moral obligation to do so. I have to be his father figure at this time in his life. I am simply doing what needs to be done, and I am doing it out of love. Duty performed reluctantly and lovelessly is a dead thing.

What is honor? That is strange word. It seems to be archaic and out of place in our society. I would say that honor means doing the right thing, just because it is the right thing. Have I always been honorable? No, of course not. I’ve screwed up plenty of times. However, I have tried to do the right thing, and maybe just the sincere attempt to do what’s right is in itself honorable.

What is country? That’s a slippery question. To my mind, country is about patriotism, and patriotism is about making sacrifices to promote the common good. That can take all sorts of forms. It might mean that a person puts on a uniform to defend the Constitution. It might mean that a person gets arrested for civil disobedience at a demonstration because of their beliefs. I have done both of those things. Love of country is multifaceted, and rightly so. It requires courage. I believe that both Charlie Kirk and Malcolm X were patriots, and they both died because they loved their country.

Asher will be waking up soon, and I have to help Karin get him ready for school.

He’s the reason that I went to West Point in the first place.

Grieving Alone

October 10th, 2025

I visited a guy from Dryhootch yesterday. The man’s name is Levi and he works at Dryhootch, which is a veteran’s organization headquartered in southeastern Wisconsin. The group runs a number of coffee houses catering to vets in the Milwaukee area and in Madison, Wisconsin. They also operate a peer support network for veterans. Running peer support is Levi’s main responsibility, and it is a huge one. I offered to write an article about Dryhootch, and Levi convinced me to wait a bit. He wants me to go through their peer support training before I write about Dryhootch’s mission. That makes sense. The truth is that I don’t yet know enough about what the organization does to write a competent essay. So, this piece that I am scribbling now is not about Dryhootch. It is about a long and thought-provoking conversation I had with Levi in his office.

Levi plans to eventually massage our chaotic discussion into a coherent podcast. I wish him luck with that. We covered a wide range of topics that may or may not have a common theme. During the course of our chat, we talked about the struggle that veterans have transitioning from the military to civilian life. Levi remarked that there was a sense of loss for the veterans. He went on to say,

“A vet grieves, and he grieves alone.”

That hit me hard. I had never really thought of leaving the service as being cause for intense grief, but now I see it that way. There truly is a loss involved when a person departs from the military. The veteran may grieve for a number of things. It may be the loss of their youth and innocence. It might the loss of their health. It may be the loss of good friends. Relationships built up over many years may be sundered. Yes, I can see how a veteran may need to grieve, and now in retrospect, I see that I spent years grieving without even realizing it.

In conjunction with our discussion of grief, Levi and I also talked about the idea of a “tribe”. What is a tribe? It’s hard to say. Indigenous peoples often live as tribes. Street gangs can be considered to be tribes. I had a good Jewish friend who often referred to his religious community as “the tribe”. The best source of information about the subject is a book written by Sebastian Junger that is appropriately called Tribe. It’s a short book and a quick read. However, Junger makes some excellent points in it.

From my reading of Junger’s book, a tribe is a group of people who totally depend on each other for survival. The tribe is more important than any individual. There are no loners in a tribe, because they generally don’t live very long. A member of a tribe is responsible for the wellbeing of every other member. There is absolute trust between individuals in the community. There has to be. In addition, a tribe has rules and values that only apply to tribal members. These mores have no bearing on the lives people outside of the group. In fact, these regulations and customs are often unintelligible to anyone on the outside. This particular way of life within the tribe only makes sense to the person inside of the magic circle.

The military qualifies as a tribe. That seems obvious to me. I never fought in a war, but if a soldier did, like my oldest son, Hans, then he was definitely part of a tribe. His life and the lives of his comrades depended on the success of the tribe. They had to have each other’s backs all the time. That sort of experience builds an unbreakable bond of trust. It is something sacred.

I was an Army aviator during peace time. My work was by definition dangerous, although not as hazardous as being in combat. Even for me, my experience was that of a tribal member. When flying, I depended on the competence of my copilot and the crew chief, not to mention being dependent on the mechanics who maintained the helicopter and the troops in the III/V platoon who fueled the aircraft. Likewise, any troops that we transported in the helicopter put their lives in our hands. In order to perform a mission successfully and safely, we all had to rely on each other. We were a tribe.

Going back to grief, so why does a veteran grieve? He or she grieves because they have lost their tribe, and that means they have lost their community. For whatever reason, they have left the service and have entered the civilian world, which is a world with alien values and customs. In the civilian world there often little trust and it is seldom that anybody has your back. How can that transition be anything but traumatic? Suddenly a person is no longer part of a cohesive team. Instead, they are in a cutthroat culture that worships individualism. A veteran may be glad to be rid of the military madness, but they still have reason to feel a profound loss.

So, why does a veteran grieve alone? It’s because there are so few of us. Who can we talk to about our loss? Who can we find who gets it? Often, there is no one. We wander alone in a strange world, and we shut down. That’s the tragedy of it all. The drugs and violence and suicide all stem from that isolation. I’m convinced of it.

I will talk to Levi more often. At some point, I will write about Dryhootch, but only when I understand it.

The First to Leave

August 3rd, 2025

Mike died on the evening of July 25th. That’s what I was told anyway. I have been thinking about Mike since I heard about his passing. We weren’t close friends, and I last saw him in 1980 or maybe in ’81. During the intervening forty-five years, I have connected with him three or four times, and all of those interactions were relatively recent and brief. They consisted of a couple emails, a snail mail letter, and an aborted attempt at a phone call. We haven’t had an actual conversation in decades. I have no idea what he looked like in the last months of his life.

Mike was in my West Point class. We graduated together in June of 1980. We were in the same company at United States Military Academy. The Corps of Cadets at USMA consists of four brigades, and each brigade has nine companies. Mike and I were in the same company, B-4 (B Company of the 4th Brigade). We joined that unit in the fall of 1976 as plebes (freshmen) and stayed there until we graduated and became 2nd lieutenants. We spent nearly four years in the same barracks, day in and day out. Upon graduation, our paths diverged, and they never really crossed again.

B-4, like the other companies, was in many ways a fraternity (even though there were a few women in each unit). Over time, a cadet gets to know his or her classmates. You make friends. Some people are close, and others not so much. Eventually, a common bond is formed, and in some cases that bond remains intact for years, even decades. I’ve maintained contact with maybe half a dozen of my comrades from B-4. Mike wasn’t one of them. Once we graduated, we separated and stayed that way, that is until I learned that Mike had cancer.

Mike was a stranger to me when he left this world a week ago. I know nothing of his time in the Army or of his career in the civilian world or of his family. That’s why I grieve. I missed out on most of his life. He only died a few days ago, but he has been missing from my life for a long, long time.

I have never gone to a class reunion. Now that I am the legal guardian and a primary caregiver for a four-year-old, I doubt that I will ever go to one. I know that some of my classmates want to attend one of these events, because people are starting to check out of the net. If we don’t reunite now, we might never do so. I don’t know if Mike was the first to go. However, his passing is a wakeup call.