Walking across Russia

D. A. Confidential has a post about a book

This week's selection is a book that will make you glad to be you, and glad to be wherever the hell you are right now. It's called The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom
, by Slavomir Rawicz. It's a true story, and here it is in a nutshell:

A Polish Army officer, the author Rawicz, is captured and then tortured in the Soviet prison system and sent to the Gulags. Faced with misery in Siberia and probable death, he and a band of others escape and undertake a two thousand-mile long journey from the snows of Siberia through Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, and across the Himalayas toward British India and freedom.

It reminds me of a story my mother told me about her Uncle.

He was in the German army, at the Siege Of Leningrad.

Things weren't going well and it became clear that he was very likely to end up either dead or in a Soviet POW camp. He became separated from his unit (which is a euphemism for going over the hill).

He went down through Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Switzerland (where he had a foot amputated because of frostbite), until he reached Italy and was able to surrender to US troops. He spent the rest of the war in a US POW camp in Arizona.

Since he spent the rest of his life after the war on a German military disability pension he never really talked alot about the details (the "separated for his unit" part was kind of a sticky point). But I always thought it made an interesting story.

Guns at achool

When I was about 15 I took Vocational Agriculture in high school. We lived in town so I had to rent a stall at the school farm to raise my project for the year (pigs). It wasn't really a farm, just a large lot, fenced, with a barn and a couple dozen hog pens. We had a grain grinder in the barn so that we could buy whole grains (cheaper than buying the feed grains grounds).

But there's a problem with grinding grain. The grain dust that gets all over everything attracts mice. And mice attracts snakes. This was in Sinton, Texas and snakes meant rattlesnakes.

It shouldn't have come to any surprise to any of us that one day one of the kids finially got bit by a rattlesnake. Our ag teacher told us that we should start bring guns to the school farm when we made our daily trips to muck the stalls and feed the pigs -- just for rattlesnake protection.

I think he meant something like a .410 shotgun, but I didn't have a gun. I told my daddy I needed a gun for school.

He was in the Army Reserve so he went out to the armory and got a .45 military pistol out of the small arms locker. He took me down to a creek and had me shoot at beer cans in the creek until I could sink one at about 20 feet. He figured that was good enough to shoot a rattlesnake so that's when he gave me the pistol to keep in the trunk of my car.

Things sure have changed since then (about 1964, maybe 1965).

Piracy on the high seas

Well, the African pirates finally did it, they boarded an American flagged ship. They woke the sleeping giant. Or did they?

President Barack Obama was following the situation closely, foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough said.

Following the situation?

What about the cavalry? How about sending the Navy with a few big guns, missiles, airplanes, and marines? Then follow that situation.

I'll grant that sending the Navy isn't going to be immediately effective.

U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen said the closest U.S. ship at the time of the hijacking was 345 miles (555 kilometers)away.

That's a pretty large distance for quick response. But if a ship flying an American flag means anything it needs to mean "Don't mess with me". It needs to mean that the US will respond with serious force If it doesn't mean that then it doesn't mean anything.

In 1968 I was on a Navy gunship type destroyer when the Pueblo was boarded and captured by North Korea. We were sailing enroute to the Naval Gunline of the DMZ of Vietnam. When the Pueblo sent out their distress messages every ship in the 7th fleet heard it. We were hundreds of miles south of them, in the middle of the Pacific, and there's no way we could respond quickly enough to be of any direct assistance to the crew of the Pueblo.

That didn't matter. We changed course, sailing North, fully expecting to go to war with North Korea. We didn't get orders to sail North, our Captain just did it, assuming that we'd be getting orders to do so soon.

In 1968 the crew of a US Navy warship had a large proportion of what was basically draft-dodgers -- sailors who had joined the Navy as a way to avoid the draft since the draft typically meant 2 years in the infantry. In 1968 2 years in the infantry did not seem like a rational career plan to many of us.


Going to war with Vietnam was just something we had to do, even though (to paraphrase Cassius Clay), "No Vietnamese never done nothing to me". But North Korea was different. When they seized the Pueblo they did something to me personally. I wasn't on that ship. But I could have been. And if I had been I'd have wanted to know that Col. Custer and Major Reno were fixing to come riding right over the top of that hill over there. That's the whole point of flying under a US flag.

Of course the Navy didn't look at it that way, we soon got orders to resume course to Vietnam. The crew of the Pueblo could be assured that LBJ would "monitor the situation".

Update Althouse comments on Rush's thoughts on the hijacking.

Update: It's time to authorize a campaign medal for the crew of the Bainbridge for a job well done.

Good Food

My grandfather grew up on a West Texas ranch, SouthWest of Lubbock, in the early 20th century. He learned enough about ranching to know that cowboying was not his idea of a rational way to make a living.

So he became a cook.

Om the kitchen he was kind of a cowboy hothead, so he changed jobs a lot. He ran a lot of restaurants -- Mexican food in tourist hotels, a french restaurant, a chicken and chicken fried steak place, a steak house, a bbq place, a doughnut shop.

My first job that required me to have a social security card and pay taxes was when I was 12, passing out hot breads at a white table cloth chicken fried steak place in Austin. During my teenage years I worked for him at a couple of places, sometimes in the kitchen as a dishwasher, a prep cook, a salad cook, sometimes in the dining room as a bread boy, a bus boy and as a waiter. I learned enough about the restaurant business to know it's not a rational way to make a living.

The main thing I learned bout cooking from him was that the ingredients is the main thing. When he ran a place known for it's fried chicken he'd buy his chicken at a grocery store, paying retail, and if he couldn't find top quality chicken he didn't have chicken on the menu that day. At that restaurant he'd just buy steaks in bulk from Armour. But when he was running a steak house he'd go to a butcher shop and hand pick his steaks.

He didn't hand pick all his foods, there was too much of it for that. But whatever the specialty item for that place was would be hand picked and if he couldn't find top quality he just wouldn't have the house specialty on the menu that night.

According to him, and he think he was right, that's the secret to running a top flight eating establishment.

Merry Christmas

I took an undergraduate math course from an old Polish guy who'd been
teaching in Moscow for 25 years or so and had just moved to the US. He
started at LSU in the summer term and he taught the course without tests.
Just homework assignments and then he'd call us to the board -- he would
grade us on our blackboard performance. If we screwed up at the board
he'd call on us again next day to see if we'd figured it out yet. It was
a small class, only about 15 students and Altman (the teacher) couldn't
speak English very well.

The last day of class he comes in and tells us the dean has told him that
he must give a final exam in an undergraduate class so there would be a
final on the scheduled day. A lot of moans from the students.

I took the final and turned it in and when I gave it to him I asked if
he'd be posting grades.

"You got a B", he said.

I said, "How do you know, you haven't graded the final yet".

He said, "The dean told me I'm required to give a final. He did not tell
me I'm required to grade them.".

Baseball tryouts

I don't remember how old I was when I tried out for Little League Baseball. Either 7 or 9.

They were real try outs. This was beforethe day that everyone gets a medal, even before the day's of everyone gets to play. It was not only possible to not make it through the Little League selection process, it wasn't all that uncommon to fail in the first tryout.

They were really mean to us kids back in the '50's.

The tryout consisted of fielding 3 ground balls, catching 3 pop up fly balls, and taking 3 swings at bat. Based on that performance the coaches in attendance would hold some sort of draft and select their teams for the season. If you didn't get picked, then well you didn't get picked.

I practiced and prepared for that tryout. It was one of the few times I can remember that my Dad actually sat aside some time and put in the effort to help me. My dad's little brother (who was either 17 or 19 that year) gave me his baseball glove to use and Dad told me he'd buy me one of my own if I made a team.

I went to the tryout alone, riding my bike with my Uncles baseball glove hanging from the handle bars.

I fielded the three grounders and the three pop flys. I don't remember if I caught any of them or not, probably not.

Then it my turn at bat. I left the glove on a bench in the dugout and went to strike out. I do remember three swings and never connecting.

Then I went back to the dugout to wait for them to tell me to try again next year.. My Uncles glove was gone. Somebody had stolen it when I was at bat.

I don't think I was all that disappointed in not making a team. But losing that glove just embarresed me to no end. When next year came along I didn't try out again. Not becuase of the shame of not making the team, I could deal with that just fine. But because I couldn't go through a repeat of having my Uncle's glove stolen from me.

Phil (my Uncle) probably didn't really care about the glove at all. But I didn't know that. And to me having him entrust his glove to me and then me getting it stolen was just the ultimate failure on my part.

Why I joined the Navy

In 1966 I began my senior year of high school. I hadn't expected to be doing that. In spring of '66 I finished the 10th grade in Killeen, Texas, after two years as a 9th grader. I had quit school in the 9th grade in Austin, Texas and after about 4-5 months of working full-time decided that going back to school sounded like more fun than working for a living. My family moved to Sinton, Texas and I went back to school as a 9th grader again.

In the summer of 1966 we moved to Baton Rouge, LA. When I showed up to register for school I discovered that my transcripts didn't show me as a previous dropout, it just showed all F's for that first time through the 9th grade. In Louisiana a year in school is a year in school, Bingo, I was a senior. I never was a high school junior.

Also the only senior course I took was PE. All the courses I took where junior courses. And I'm pretty sure I was the only senior who didn't have a study hall, I had to take a full load of courses in order to have enough credits to graduate (they had some standards). Because my course load was mostly junior courses most of my friends my senior year were juniors. That had an effect on my decisions about the draft, and for those of us who graduated from high school in 1967, thinking about the draft was an important part of our day. My friends being juniors impacted my thinking in that I didn't really have any close friends facing the same immediate threat and didn't explore my options as widely as I might have otherwise.

In particular I didn't explore the idea of getting a draft deferment by going to college. My parents hadn't gone to college and throughout school my teachers and counselors had very actively tried to discourage me from an education (I was kind of a trouble maker) so I just didn't think of college as a realistic option. That turned out to have been a huge mistake, but that's the way it was.

My first thought was a simple solution. I could join the Army Reserves. My daddy was a 1st Sgt in the local Army Reserve unit and was a full time civilian employee of the unit. There was a long waiting list to join the Reserve but my Daddy was the guy who maintained that list. How tough could that be. Hey, if George Bush's daddy could get him in the Texas Guard certainly my daddy could get me in the Reserves.

Well, since my daddy was a complete asshole that didn't work out as planned. He refused to help me get into the Reserves. I'll never forgive him for that, not ever. But, it was just the way it was and I was going to have to deal with it.

One of my close friends had a next door neighbor who was a couple years older than me and a hippie type. She was very up to date on the anti-war movement stuff. It was from her that I learned about the prospects of just going to Canada. That's what I decided to do. I did two things. I started working as much as I could, saving as much money as I could. And I bought a new car, a 1967 VW bug.

The car, of course, was to get me to Canada reliably, and the money was to live on until I could figure out how to get work in Canada. I expected to have about $1,000 in cash by the time I graduated from high school, which was substantial in 1967.

I didn't know anybody in Canada, didn't have any connections to anybody in Canada, but I just really didn't want to get drafted.

My mother came up with an alternative. She found a newspaper article that described a Navy Reserve program that involved 1 year of Active Reserve, 2 years of Active Duty, and 3 years of Inactive Reserve. They had film clips of Vietnam action on Huntley/Brinkley every night and I didn't recall any film clips of dead sailors, so I checked it out and signed up in November 1966. I was 17, a senior in high school.

They had a 12 day boot camp program for Navy Reservists that I went through during Christmas Vacation from high school. We had weekly drills, 3 hours every Wednesday evening.

The Navy requires correspondence course completion and a test for promotions. The major activity in the weekly drills was completion of the correspondence course requirements for promotion to E3. By the time my one year of drills was completed (which included the 2 week book camp and a 2 week summer cruise in San Francisco Bay) I was an E3 and had completed the correspondence course requirements for promotion to E4 (personnelman 3rd class)

This posted started out as a Why I didn't Stay in the Navy post, prompted by this. But it's getting longer than I intended, so I've changed the title and I'll finish it up later.

Faking it in the Navy

Back in the '60's the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy had some kind of incident in the Gulf of Tonkin that LBJ used to get congress to pass legislation that authorized the use of military force against North Vietnam. That was in 1964 and we all know what happened next.

The resolution was passed after McNamara gave testimony to Congress that essentially misrepresented what had happened in the Gulf of Tonkin.

At the time it would have been very simple to discover that McNamara was misrepresenting events. All you had to do was ask a sailor who was serving on the Maddox or the Turner Joy what had happened. They would have told you.

I know the answer they would have given because I actually asked sailors who'd been there at the time what happened. In 1966, in my senior year of high school, I worked at a fried chicken place in Baton Rouge LA managed by a guy who had been on the Turner Joy at the time. Later, in 1968, I served on a destroyer that had a gunner's mate who'd been on the Maddox at the time. They both gave the same answer about what had happened. They didn't know.

It was nighttime, things were confusing, it wasn't clear one way or another what had happened. As near as I can tell any sailor who'd been on either of those ships at the time would have told you that. Possibly the senior command would have told the same bullshit story of certainty that McNamara told, but that just means you can't trust senior military officers. You can trust sailors though. Very few sailors will make something up just to protect the bullshit of some officer or politician. Very few.

One of the things about scuttlebutt on a ship is that news travels. Fast. Throughout the ship. Security classifications don't matter. When I was on the USS Hull we were at sea between the Philippines and Vietnam when the USS Pueblo was attacked by North Korea. The message our ship received about that was top secret. It probably took 5 minutes for every sailor on the ship who was awake to know about it. Sailors just don't keep secrets from their shipmates.

Things haven't changed that much. If you wonder whether or not that Iran/US Navy conflict was staged/faked by the US Navy all you have to do is ask a sailor. Don't ask some talking head on ABC News. Ask a sailor who was there. They'll tell you.

Cavalry

In early 1968 I was on an American destroyer, USS Hull, en route to Vietnam from the Philippine Islands when we got reports that an American spy ship, USS Pueblo, was under attack by the North Korean Navy and at risk of being boarded.

Our Captain didn't wait for orders. We were a long ways from North Korea, but he changed course, headed North, prepared to go to war with North Korea. Pretty much to a man that was a decision supported by the crew.

In 1968 the US Navy had a lot of people in it who were basically draft evaders, not big fans of the Vietnam War. But the general thinking was that it was just the luck of the draw that put us on USS Hull instead of USS Pueblo. If I'd have been on Pueblo getting ready to repel boarders I'd have been looking at the horizon watching for the cavalry to come charging to my rescue.

But I wasn't on the Pueblo. I was on the Hull. A gunship destroyer. I was the cavalry. It just seemed like my job to go to their rescue if I could.

But it didn't take long for us to get an order to return to our previous course and steam to the DMZ Naval gunline in Vietnam. Forget about those sailors on the Pueblo.

The cavalry never came charging over the hill for those sailors. It's an episode in our history that I think all Americans should feel shame about.

I think that Eric Volz, sitting in a Nicaraguan prison waiting for the US government to send the cavalry to rescue him must feel something like I think those sailors felt.

Troop morale

The CJR has a story about a NYT op-ed discussion of troop morale in Iraq.

In 1968 I was on a US destroyer on the gunline off the coast of the DMZ between Cap Lay and Tiger Island. We didn't have embedded journalist back then but we did have a few reporters make trips to the ship. Interview subjects were always arranged in advance by the ships command.

I was not what you'd call a happy sailor. I'd have rather been in Canada. No reporter ever talked to me. They always reported high morale and a gung-ho attitude of the sailors. And the military has only gotten better at managing reporter access.

Can't be trusted around women

I got a kick out of this from FemaleScienceProfessor

As it turns out, one dinner that I organized for a visitor I had never met before would have involved the visitor’s dining with an all-female group (not including me; I had another commitment that night). I didn’t think anything of the gender ratio of the planned dinner party until someone who knew the visitor from a previous institution told me that she respected his research greatly but that he should not be alone with women in a social setting. She and other women had some bad experiences with him at social events at their previous institution.

The funny part is the idea that a bunch of professional women need someone to protect them from one old man. It reminds me of something that happened when my wife (now ex-wife) was working at CNA Insurance in Chicago.

She managed a data entry department (this was a long time ago, way before everybody had a computer terminal on their desk) with two shifts. The CNA building was on the southeast corner of the loop, and in the late 70's it was not a good neighborhood after dark. To give you an idea of what kind of neighborhood it was, if she worked late and left the building after dark they'd assign a security guard to walk across the street to the el platform who waited on the platform with her until she got on a train. That kind of neighborhood.

Most of the night shift drove to work and parked in the Grant Park underground garage. At night that garage was even less safe than the streets and they never walked back to their cars alone. One night one of the night shift had some reason to leave work early and two co-workers walked her to her car. (The night shift was all women, and pretty much all black women. It was 1976 or 77).

On the elevator ride down a building security guard got on and patted one of the women on the butt. They responded violently, literally leaving him laying on the elevator floor bleeding.

They went to the garage, the two escorts returned to work, finished their shift and didn't bother to tell anyone about the encounter with the security guard.

When Jeannie (the ex) got to work the next morning she was greeted by her boss with instructions to fire the women on her night shift who beat up a security guard.

She suggested that they wait until they showed up for work that night and see what they said about it. Once they told their story they weren't fired. Neither was the security guard.

Substitute

I ran across this blog post on teaching a college class as a substitute for another faculty member. It reminded me of the first college class I taught.

I wasn't on the teaching faculty, I had faculty rank but had a full time research job in the Division of Economic Research. I was a part-time doctoral student in Quantitative Business Analysis. I wasn't very far along in the program but knew a lot of the grad students who were further along than me because I'd had a student research assistant job as an undergraduate that given me an office in the basement with all the graduate students.

So, I'd known Phil for a a pretty good while when he called me at my desk at 8:15 one morning. He taught an 8:30 class, the intro sophomore course in QBA, and his car had broken down. This was the last class before an exam and he didn't want to cancel it. He had no lecture planned, it was just a Q/A session on the test material. He wanted me to cover the class for him. That time of morning there really wasn't anyone else he was going to be able to get hold of.

I balked. 1) I'd never taught a class. 2) I'd never read the textbook he used. 3) I wasn't sure I was going to be off-the-top-of-my-head familiar with the material.

"You'll do fine, there's no actual lecture to give". "Shirley (the QBA department secretary) will get you a copy of the book, Chapter 6 and 7". And, "It's just Central Limit Theorem and t-test stuff, you know all that stuff just fine".

Against my better judgement I caved and agreed to meet the class.

Everything went fine for about 10 minutes.

Then a young woman with a very small, quiet voice asked a question from the back of the room that I couldn't hear well. So I stepped a little further into the room, asked her to repeat the question and focused all my attention on her.

That's when I discovered the importance of keeping eye contact with the whole room, engaging the class, making it at least seem like you're addressing everybody. Clearly I was addressing just that one student so the rest of the class took a break and began talking among themselves. A faint background roar began and quickly grew to the point where I still couldn't hear the young woman's question.

I stepped back and said to the class "Just shut up. If you don't want to be here then just leave. If you're going to stay then shut up." They left.

Everybody walked out except the one young woman in the back of the room.

Without the distraction of other students it was easy to then address her question. She came to the blackboard with me and I went through the answer in detail until she seemed to grasp it.

Later, when Phil showed up, he stopped by my office to ask how it had gone. I told him what happened. He asked what her question had been. I told him. He put it on the test.

USS Harwood

I was on the bridge of the USS Hull just a few hundred yards away from the USS Harwood when they got hit.

We were the two destroyers operating on the Gun Line of the DMZ that afternoon. The Harwood was an older destroyer fitted with 5"38 guns, we had 5"54 guns. The difference was the barrel length, they had barrels 38x the bore, we had barrels 54x the bore. The bigger guns also had a higher rate of fire, but this afternoon it was really the range of the longer barrel that mattered.

The Harwood received a fire assignment a ways inland that was going to require them to get very close to shore. The bad guys had mobile shore artillery hidden in the tree lines behind the beach so getting too close to the beach had a real danger attached to it. I was on the bridge when our Captain offered to take the target because we could reach it without getting so close to the beach. The Harwood declined the offer. I got the impression that their Captain was a little insulted.

We didn't have a target at the time. I was the bridge messenger and went out on the starboard wing to watch the shooting.

They were very close in to the beach and it didn't take long before they started drawing fire. Four splashes near the fantail, I saw a column of water from a 5th splash on the other side of the Harwood, and a direct hit on the after gun mount. We immediately began firing and rushed the beach, laying down down shells along the length of the tree line behind the beach as rapidly as we could, the Harwood took to sea at full speed, once they got out of range of the shore guns we also disengaged, heading away from the beach area.

The Navy kind of had a policy to try to not lose a ship to a country with no Navy, so the shore-to-ship battles never lasted long.

The Harwood action resulted in one Bronze Star on the Harwood. I suspect it had a V attached. I don't know what the action was that earned the Star, but I suspect that running across an open deck to tend to wounded sailors while the ship was both under fire and taking high speed evasive action would qualify as heroic, even in the Army. (It really is hard to stay on your feet when a small ship is making a sharp turn while under heavy accelration and the deck is wet.)

I was watching the whole thing. I counted 6 incoming rounds, counting the direct hit. A Stars and Stripes story I read later said between 20-30 incoming. That story also said 4 dead. The Harwood website says 2 purple hearts. Don't believe everything you read in a newspaper.

The thing about the story that never got written about was that it didn't have to happen. It happened because of career competition between to ship captians. It's just another reason I'm not real impressed by senior military officers.

More on Bronze Stars

My response to a comment on my post about Petraeus and his Bronze Star got long and I thought I'd just make it a new post.

Here's the comment.

D. L. Bailey said...
Gary,

I thank you for your service to the nation in the Navy.

What you may not know is that the Navy, because it fights at "long standoff" and nobody dares to shoot at our ships any more, has a different standard for awarding the Bronze Star for Valor. But it is always awarded for participation in combat.

The Army expects that participation to be very direct indeed, always, always under risk of life and serious injury from enemy fire.

As you know, Admiral Boorda killed himself when his wearing of a valor medal was brought into question. It is a serious thing.

It is particularly serious when a person who makes a claim of valor uses that claim for propaganda. And when the claim is untrue, this is an outrage.

The medal in question is not the Bronze Star for Meritorious Service, but the "Valor Device" which indicates combat heroism.

Let's take it step at a time. First

I thank you for your service to the nation in the Navy.

Usually when somebody says this I think they're just trying to be polite, and I let it pass.

But, after reading the rest of the comment I don't think he was being polite. I think he was being patronizing. So, I won't let it pass.

I was not serving my country. My country betrayed me, Vietnam was not a threat to my country in any way. I was just taking care of myself by keeping myself alive in the best way I knew how without having to surrender my citizenship rights.

What you may not know is that the Navy, because it fights at "long standoff" and nobody dares to shoot at our ships any more, has a different standard for awarding the Bronze Star for Valor. But it is always awarded for participation in combat.

This is just condescending bullshit. The Bronze Star (with a V) is not a Navy or Army award, it's a military award, and the standards re the same for all services.

I have no idea what is meant by "long standoff". I assume he's making reference to the lack of naval guns these days, the gunships of old have been replaced by missile carrying frigates. Vietnam was mostly guns.

Crewmembers of the USS Hull were awarded the Combat Action Ribbon for combat action in Feb, Mar, and May of 1968. Incoming shells came close enough to cover me with water from on explosion just off our bow.

My ship was a DD, which means guns, and it operated between Cap Lay and Tiger Island, about a mile offshore on the northern edge of the DMZ. IT was called the Gun Line and was about a mile long. There was typically two destroyers and a cruiser on station, with a couple of swift boats south of Cap Lay. No Navy vessel in the Gun Line escaped enemy fire. We didn't lose any ships, although some ships did take direct hits and lost some sailors and we did lose some boats (and crews).

I really don't need to be patronized about this.

At one point the exchange of gunfire got so intense that the barrels on our 5 inch guns literally melted and we had to transfer to plane guard duty for carriers on Yankee Station for a week until we could get a repair slot in the Subic Bay repair yards.

Our MUC (meterious unit citation) cited 7 shore-to-ship exchanges. The 8th wasn't an exchange, we just got some small arms fire from shore when we got to close to Tigar Island and we didn't return fire, we just moved away from the island.

As far as ships being in a shooting war these days, I guess you never heard of USS Cole (DDG, the G stands for guided missiles).

Our Captain was authorized a V on his Bronze Star because of direct combat, which is the same criteria as all services. A specific act is required, but it's only required that it be heroic if the act is part of a support activity rather than direct combat.

“Combat V” – is a United States military award authorized by the military services as an attachment to certain awards and decorations denoting receipt of an award by an individual for the awards specific criteria, but, additionally, is awarded in recognition of a valorous act (the “V”) performed during direct combat with an enemy force. It may also denote an accomplishment of a heroic nature in direct support of operations against an enemy force.

I don't know your background, but it may be that you were a junior officer authorized to recommend Bronze Stars for enlisted personnel and you are under the impression that the criteria you were given for such awards is an Army Wide criteria. It's not. It's a criteria for enlisted heroism. Heroism of 2 star Generals is defined in a very different way, with a very different criteria.

I'll be charitable and assume you just never really paid a lot of attention and didn't really understand that.

The Army expects that participation to be very direct indeed, always, always under risk of life and serious injury from enemy fire.

Well, duh. I'm not sure I'm clear on the concept that it's possible to not be at risk of life and serious injury when they're shooting at you. When you're taking enemy fire you're taking enemy fire and there's a serious risk.

A friend of mine, for example, was a Navy BM3 and assigned as a bouncer in an EM club at a Marine Fire Base in Vietnam. He was in the bar and hid under a table when he heard incoming mortar rounds. He still took a hit, still got a Purple Heart. No bronze star though, E4's who hide under tables don't get bronze stars. A two star general who took mortar shrapnel in his ass while he was in an Officer's Club would likely have gotten both a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. His command to "shut the door" would have been considered an act of Valor. That's just the way things work.

Finally,

The medal in question is not the Bronze Star for Meritorious Service, but the "Valor Device" which indicates combat heroism.

Definitions of heroic depend on pay grades.

The commendation for Petraeus's award has not been released. So the definition applied to him isn't clear cut. But heroic 2 star generals get higher ranking medals than Bronze Stars.

Petraeus and Chest Gedunk

Gedunk is a Navy term for junk food. Candy, chips, and pretty ribbons bought at the ship's store is called gedunk.

That's what Petraeus wears on his chest -- Gedunk.

He does have a Bronze Star. He got it when he was a 2-star general. Trust me on this one, if a senior officer engages in an act of individual heroism he gets a silver star at a minimum. Bronze stars are for enlisted men who charge machine guns, for junior officers who engage in man-to-man combat without running, and senior officers who serve in a combat zone and don't have a hero medal yet.

That's just the way it works.

I don't know if it's true or not, but I was told that the ship I served in VN was the most decorated destroyer in VN at the time. I doubt that's true however.

What is true is that decorations where given out in almost perfect rank order. The ships captian got a bronze star. E3's and E4's got letters of commendation (I was not what you'd call a good sailor, I didn't get one). In between the jr. officers and sr. enlisted singled out for awards got Navy Acheivement medals. That's the way it goes.

Our captian did nothing personally heroic, nobody did, but the ship did a good job and he was in command and it was his turn so he got a Bronze Star. It had a V attached because the command did see active combat, he was in a shooting war.

The point is, when a two-star general gets a bronze star it doesn't mean much at all. In fact it means less than not much, it means he didn't really do anything heroic at all. When a Navy Lt. gets a bronze star it means he actually stuck his neck out and put himself personally in harms way. If you run across someone who got a Bronze Star as an E4 then he's probably an Audie Murphy reincarnation.

Petraeus has a chest covered with gedunk, not actual combat awards for heroism. That's the truth.

All hands

I ran across this post on playing Taps at a funeral and it reminded me of "All Hands", a bosun pipe tune played on Navy ships before General quarters.

When a combat ship goes to general quarters (combat is eminent) the watch bosun mate is supposed to play "All hands" on bosun's pipe, a very small flute like instrument.

Here's an example of what "All Hands" sounds like.

Then at the end of the tune he says "General Quarters. General Quarters. All hands man your battle stations". Repeat that a few times.

The first time my destroyer went to General Quarters back in 1968 we were taking incoming shore artillery and the bosun blew a single quick note, not a drawn out note, no tune, then said, "This is not a drill, this is not a drill".

He never did get around to saying General Quarters. The crew pretty much figured it out though.

Quartermaster

I'm watching a Law and Order re-run where one of the character's is a woman who's in the Navy, she's a quartermaster on a supply ship.

They show her on the main deck, with a clipboard checking off various supplies that are stacked on deck.

In the army a supply clerk is called a quartermaster. In the Navy a supply clerk is called a supply clerk. A quartermaster is a rating who specializes in driving the ship and navigation aids. Their duty station is the bridge or a map room adjacent to the bridge, a few levels above the main deck. The only time I ever recall seeing a quartermaster on the main deck is when they were taking some time off and fishing off the fantail.

I'm not even sure the Navy still has Quartermasters since they probably don't keep all those paper charts anymore, now having computer storage for the charts. I doubt they need to have sailors charting courses by hand all that much any more.

Officers and senior officers

Ed Brayton has a post about some soldier in Iraq who was holding some sort of atheist prayer meeting that was disrupted by a nutcase Major doing the work of god.

One of the commenters asked what would have happened if an officer senior to the major had been at the atheist meeting. Personally I think that's just very unlikely, senior officers in the military don't become senior officers by being public atheists, but it reminded me of something that happened long ago when I was in the Navy.

The event that I'm reminded of has nothing to do with atheists or God but does have to do with a mid-level officer and a few more senior officers who thought he was a jerk.

It was 1968, I was an E3, a tincan deck sailor just returned from a WESPAC cruise on the gunline waiting for a military hop from Miramar Marine Air Base (just N. of San Diego) to Memphis Naval Air Station. I was going to Baton Rouge on a leave and was going to take the free military flight to Memphis, then hitchhike to Harrison, Arkansas, where I'd left my car with my parents, then drive to Baton Rouge for a wedding. I was getting married. I was going to drive back to San Diego and my soon to be wife was going to fly out to San Diego a couple of weeks after.

You had to be in uniform to take a military hop, so my status as a tincan sailor recently returned from Vietnam was evident, from a combination of my age (an obvious 19) and the ship insignia and campaign ribbons on my jumper. Military hops to those on leave were made on a space available, with somewhat of a first-come first-serve. There was also an allowance made for a senior rank to bump a junior rank. People with non-leave travel orders also had priority over leave papers.

I'd been waiting for about 6 hours. Another seaman had been waiting about 5 hours. He too was a tincan sailor recently returned from a WESPAC (a different tincan). There was a two-star admiral (08) two 4-stripe captains (06) who'd been waiting a couple of hours. They weren't on leave, they were on business. The plane we were waiting on had 5 seats, we were full.

About 10 minutes before boarding a Lt. Commander (04) arrived with leave papers. He didn't appear to be a sea-going sailor, he had no Vietnam related ribbons on his chest, which was fairly unusual in 1968.

Anyway, he bumped the other seaman. The other 3 more senior officers actually frowned when they saw it.

Once on board there were 4 seats sitting 2x2 facing each other and a 5th seat behind them. I took the odd seat and the 4 officers took the seats together.

The LCDR asked the other 3 if they wanted to play bridge. He had a deck of cards.

The ADM turned to me and said, "Do you play bridge, sailor?"

"No, sir, I don't".

Then he said, "Do you play pinochle?"

"Yes, sir, I do".

He turned to the two Captains and said, "let's play pinochle", the he said to the LCDR, "Why don't you leave the cards here and trade seats with the sailor so we can play some pinochle".

So I spent the flight as the ADM's partner in a pinochle game, nobody ever mentioned the sailor who'd been bumped and left back on the ground in California.

A Nice Afternoon

I wrote this a while back and it's been on my website, buried in one of the offtopic pages. I thought I'd move it to the blog

It was really nice spring afternoon. The sun was bright; there were just a few white, puffy clouds in the sky but not enough to block the warmth of the bright sun. The winter months had been dreary, rainy, and overcast, with a cold, bitter wind. This spring day was a welcome change of pace. The sky was a pale blue, much lighter than the blue of the ocean. The sandy beach was about a mile away, the white sand sparkling from the rays of the sun. I don’t know what the temperature was, but those rays of the sun weren’t too warm, because I was comfortable wearing a flak jacket while standing on the wing of a destroyer patrolling the waters of the Vietnam DMZ. It was 1968.

I was standing on that bridge wing with Daniel James, a LT(jg), supply. He was the ship’s junior supply officer but since the ship was chronically short handed he stood line watches while the ship was on the gun line. The gun line was what the Navy called a one mile strip of beach along the northern end of the DMZ. That mile was constantly patrolled by two destroyers and a cruiser, all of them outfitted with big guns rather than missiles. The Navy had plenty of guided missile frigates back in 1968 but they didn’t use them on the gun line. The gun line was for guns.

We had a dual mission. We were the artillery support for units of the 3rd Marine Division that were operating close to the beach in the north end of the DMZ and we provided harassment and interdiction fire along suspected supply routes of the bad guys. The harassment and interdiction fire was mostly making a lot of noise. The Marine fire support was almost always emergency calls for fire support. So we had guns manned constantly, whether we were shooting or not. Back and forth, up and down, go south a mile, turn around and go north a mile. Over and over. That was our patrol path.

We patrolled anywhere from about a half mile to a couple of miles from the beach, each of the three ships in the task force somewhat staggered, following parallel tracks. This particular afternoon we were closest to the beach, probably a little less than a mile. The beach was clearly visible, providing a scenic panorama to the two of us standing on the wing taking it in.

Lt(jg) James was not my favorite person, and not someone I would have chosen to enjoy that afternoon with. But, I was the starboard lookout and couldn't leave my station and he was standing the junior officer of the deck watch and could pretty much walk around the bridge and bridge wings as he pleased. The consensus of most of the enlisted men was that James was a worthless jerk. He bummed cigarettes from enlisted men, he was an all around cheapskate with only two pairs of khaki uniform pants. We could tell when he changed to a clean pair of pants because one of them had a small burn from a cigarette. Probably not a cigarette he'd purchased himself.

In the Navy, officers have to pay a wardroom fee for meals they eat in the wardroom. Being a supply officer Lt(jg) James was responsible for periodically “inspecting” the enlisted chow. That meant he was required to eat enlisted chow every once in a while. Once a quarter would have been sufficient. But, he didn’t pay for meals in the mess deck, and wasn’t billed for missed meals in the wardroom. Lieutenant junior grade James ate in the mess deck 3-4 times a week. He wasn’t just a jerk, he was a cheap bastard.

Another habit James had was that he got picky about his coffee. On the gun line we stood 6 hour bridge watches. We had two watch sections, standing 6 hours on then 6 hours off. So, we’d go the entire length of a 45 day patrol without ever once actually getting a full nights sleep at one time. We drank a lot of coffee.

It was the custom of the watch messenger to begin each watch by filling a 5 gallon thermos with coffee from the very large urns of coffee on the mess decks. It was not good coffee. Those urns were scrubbed daily with kitchen cleanser and a residual taste of the cleanser permeated the coffee. But, it’s what we had.

Everyone on the bridge drank that coffee. The watch crew, the Officer of the Deck, the Executive Officer, the ship’s Captain, and when we were temporarily serving as a Commodore’s flag ship, the Commodore drank that rank mess deck coffee. But not LT(jg) James.

The wardroom had a small percolator. Whenever James wanted a cup of coffee he’d send the bridge messenger down to the wardroom to have the stewards brew a fresh pot and pour him a cup of coffee.

I guess you had to have been there to understand the level of resentment that sort of behavior built. We used to piss in his coffee.

If I’d been on the wing that day with anybody other than James I’d have probably been having a conversation and might not have even noticed the fisherman. As it was I was watching the beach intently, pretending to look for enemy troop movement or enemy gun emplacements hidden back in the brush and scrub trees in the sand dunes. Anything to keep from actually having to talk to that jerk James. I noticed the small solitary figure rise from the brush in the dunes. After adjusting the binoculars I could clearly make him out to be an old man carrying a bag of some sort. Coming out of the dunes he crossed the beach and went straight to the water line.

His bag contained a large throw net and he matter-of-factly pulled it out and started net fishing the surf. After he’d made 3-4 casts I put the binoculars down and noticed two Navy jet fighters, coming out of the north north-west, apparently returning from a bombing run in North Vietnam. Yankee Station, the area in the South China Sea our aircraft carriers habituated, was to the south of us and returning aircraft found it safer to return home over water rather than over land.

But these two planes didn’t behave exactly like I’d seen previous planes behave. As soon as they got over water they looped back, going back to the beach, no longer in formation – one headed down the beach from the north, the other up the beach from the south. The plane coming form the north took a dive just as he approached the fisherman, who was still casting his nets.

Suddenly the fisherman was surrounded by small splashes of water in front of him and sand kicking up on the beach behind him. The aircraft was firing at him with his wing guns.

When the plane finished his dive he pulled up and the second plane made a dive, kicking up more sand and water with his wing guns. Both pilots missed the fisherman who dropped his net and took off running across the beach.

I’d heard stories about Navy pilots who made $20 bets among themselves about who could take out a farmer’s water buffalo, but I’d never heard such a story about them taking out a man who was obviously a non-combatant, a fisherman, for sport.

Now I was seeing it.

They continued to take turns diving at him, kicking up sand all up and down the beach from the bullets in their wing guns. Each of them made 3-4 passes. The fisherman took a zig on his run down the beach every time one of them started a pass. For reasons I still don’t understand he ran straight down the beach instead of into the brushy dunes. I guess the fear he must have been experiencing just fogged his thinking processes.

I glanced over to LT(jg) James and he was watching the scene unfold just as intently as I was.

Finally one of the pilots got tired of chasing the old man and made a pass without firing his wing guns. Just as he got over the old man he dropped something then quickly made a very sharp turn up. I’d never seen Napalm before, but I knew that the resulting orange and black ball of flame was Napalm. A huge ball, the brightest orange I’ve ever seen, with a thick cloud of black smoke.

The pilots didn’t even wait to inspect the damage, they just headed out to sea, enroute to Yankee Station.

There wasn’t much to see after the explosion. I stared at it until the flame and smoke dissipated. The old man didn’t even leave a grease spot, just his bag and net lying near the water line up the beach from the explosion.

I glanced at LT(jg) James. He didn’t look at me. He just turned around and walked into the pilot house.

The officer in charge had witnessed the same thing I had. Who was I supposed to report it to? I didn't know, so I didn't.

But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have reported it to anyone anyway. That's probably bothered me over the years more than what the pilots did. Not that I didn't report it to anyone, but that I really didn't care. I certianly remembered the event, it did make an impression on me, but my immediate reaction was a nothing, I felt nothing, it just seemed mundane and unimportant.

That's what happens to people in a war zone, and that's what's always bothered me. Having pissed in Lt(jg) Jame's coffee never bothered me, but not having any feelings about that dead fisherman did bother me and still does.

Warriors

I knew a bunch of guys who looked forward to a second tour in Vietnam. Everyone of them was nuts.

I meet Rudy when I was teaching some junior college courses on a Navy warship in the early 80's. He was a mustang Lieutenant who had been a bosun's mate for a few years before he got a commission as an LDO (Limited Duty Officer). He told me a story about one such guy, a Gunners Mate who did 8 tours between 63 and 75 (some of them 6 month tours shipboard, most of them in-country). He was an early advisor, spent some time on PBR's, was part of Operation Phoenix, spent a tour on a tincan on the Gunline, etc, etc. A regular John Wayne in blue.

In 1975 he and Rudy (a BM1 at the time) who were on the fo'c's'le (the forward portion of the main deck) of a ship that had just sent some swimmers in to plant explosives on a bunch of river boats that we'd abandoned. Not to let them fall into the hands of the evil commies, Rudy and the Gunners Mate watched them from a distance as they started exploding.

The Gunners Mate turned to Rudy with actual tears in his eyes and said, "It's over Rudy. The war's over. What the hell we gonna do now?"

Yes, there are men who can't think of anything better to do than blow stuff up and kill people. We need those men when it's time for war. But we really don't need to pay attention to what they think.