Active Duty

      So what do we do in the Army over a 20-year career when we are not deployed half-way around the world, or off training with our Soldiers on some live-fire range or in a computer simulation?

     Most of us are completely immersed in the lives of our children...the other reason we humbly wear the uniform...to leave our little guys a better world than the one we inherited.

     The photo below is me with my three oldest sons, at a recent Boy Scout Court of Honor. My oldest son is in the middle, and earned his Eagle Scout award back in 2007. My next oldest son is on the far right and earned his Eagle Scout award back in 2008. My next oldest son is standing beside me and is a Life Scout ...one step away from earning the highest, coveted rank of scouting, the Eagle Scout award.

     He will earn his Eagle once he leads a massive community service project that donates more than 150 hours of labor to community improvement by his ideas, planning, approval, execution, leadership and then defense of his journey to Eagle before the Eagle Review Board.

      I am on the far left, and wear the Eagle neckerchief as I am also an Eagle.    Once an Eagle….always an Eagle and inviting my boys to come join me.  They too are learning to serve their fellow man, community, nation and world.
 

     If any of you want to come join a cool Eagle Service Project, come join us at Lake Carlson this Saturday where my 3rd son will lead the entire project from start to finish on completing the Lake Carlson foot path around the treacherous back side of the lake. Bring a hoe, shovel, pick-axe, rake, axe, machete and gloves if you have them.
 

     Oh, and a smile, an American flag, some good old fashioned love for America and a willingness to give something to the Nation without expecting anything but gladness in return.

     If you are all about "what can American give to me" or "what can I take from America" or "what does the American government owe me" or "what does my selfish heart need today from the American taxpayers for free"....if you are all about any of these, you won't enjoy the glorious day amidst nature giving some of your love and gratitude to the military community who will enjoy your creation for the next 50 years.

     But, on the other hand, if you love helping out and giving and serving and are all about "what can I do to bless the life of my neighbor and leave a better, stronger America in my wake"....then come on out and enjoy the fellowship with some kindred spirits and join a fun, youth-led project that engrains in the life of every boy who leads one, and every person who helps, with a life-long passion of service to a Blessed Land and People.

We'll see you there at 0830h, Saturday the 20th of March!  Bring the whole family and enjoy the 64 degree heat wave!
 

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 On 13 March 2010, The United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps packed its bags and headed north to Monroe, Michigan to participate in the 15th Annual Freezer Jam.  Held in the Continental Midwest every year, Freezer Jam welcomes fife and drum corps' from around the region to their symposium of learning, concerts and most of all, camaraderie.  In keeping with The Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps' mantra of "Keeping the Tradition Alive," the Corps participated in classes and gave guidance to young aspiring musicians.

Freezer Jam is the first muster tour event celebrating The Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps' 50th Anniversary.  For more information on the Corps, please visit our website at: www.army.mil/fifeanddrum

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Well, for those who were waiting for last week's leadership discussion, I apologize.  A last-minute trip to the doctor for some recurring low-back pain kept me out of school for the day.  Luckily, leadership training continues!  Today we'll be tackling: Leading Legal Administrators, Paralegals, and Civilians.  This should be an interesting discussion - particularly as regards civilians. 

I'll be live-Twittering the discussion, using the #jagcldrship hashtag.  Feel free to listen in or -- even better! -- add to the discussion.  We'll be starting at about 10:15 (in just 30 minutes!) and it will last about an hour (or a little more).  Come check it out.

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Last week, the Soldiers of The U.S. Army Field Band had an amazing experience; recording selections with the Marcus Roberts Trio.  Marcus is one of the leading jazz pianists in the world, as well as being an award-winning composer and a distinguished educator. 

This is a photo of Marcus at the keyboard.  Although he is blind, after a few minutes with him you completely forget that and know that this is absolutely someone who you would never, ever call "disabled." He's an amazing musician and also a wonderful guy to be around.

This is his bass player, Rodney Jordan. He's a New Orleans native and a terrific player.

This is the drumer in the trio, Jason Marsalis.  You may have also heard of his brothers, Wynton Marsalis, the world famous trumpet player and Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center; and saxophonist Branford Marsalis, formerly director of the Tonight Show Band.  Jason also hails from New Orleans.  Here he is behind his drums inside the enclosure we use during recordings to keep the sound from bleeding into the other microphones.

Here's a shot of the entire set, showing how we use baffles to isolate the trio's sound but maintain good sight lines.  The camera in the lower right was focused on Marcus's hands that I could see in a small video monitor next to the conducting stand.

The session was really intense but enjoyable.  Here you see the trumpet section concentrating on their entrance.

Recording CD tracks at this level requires great musicians, superb technicians, and a lot of equipment.  Here's a shot of what much of the room looked like.

The Soldier at the center of the technical side of the session was SFC Howie Smith, one of our great audio engineers.

Here, Marcus and I are just chatting between takes.

The performers (and conductor) in the room rely on the team in the audio booth to listen with the most critical ears to tell us what needs to be fixed, to keep track of "good takes," and make sure that at the end of the session we have a "Grammy Ready" product.  MAJ Bruce Pulver, Deputy Commander of The U.S. Army Field Band, is head producer and pulls everything together.

Between takes there's all kinds of verbal and non-verbal communication that occurs very quickly.  Just like any Army specialty, professional musicians have their own "lingo."  Here, Jason and I are talking about what kind of rhythmic feel we want.

Whether in uniform or not, there's deep respect between musicians.  SFC Tim Young, the fabulous pianist with America's Big Band, the Jazz Ambassadors, talks "piano stuff" with Marcus.

In just a few days, groups of The U.S. Army Field Band will be travelling throughout the upper Midwest of the U.S. presenting free performances.  Check out the schedule at ArmyFieldBand.com and follow us on Facebook www.facebook.com/fieldband or Twitter www.twitter.com/FieldBand for the latest news.

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Thursday was a little more of a slower-paced day, and I found myself not knowing what to do at times.

My last patient of the day was one that surprised me a bit.  I knew the possibilty existed, but didn't think the wisdom teeth would be too difficult to get out.  But due to the age, race, and time of day (last patient - Murphy's Law) - it ended up not being quite as straight-forward as I would have liked.  Every tooth had to be sectioned (cut into pieces) and removed to get it out - even though they were fully erupted.

In the end we had done:  4 exams, taken models for a temporary partial denture (flipper), removed 6 teeth on 3 individuals, delivered 1 crown, and did 2 fillings.  I also had another canceled appointment from the new Soldiers that are learning their jobs.  This is starting to bug me since it is becoming fairly regular.  The staff that is in charge of them recently changed over, and does not seem to be on top of their game like the last set of NCOs.  I spoke at length to one of the NCOs and hope that the situation will be remedied.

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Our arrival in Egypt was anything but easy. Our plan was to put our vehicle on a ferry from Aqaba and land in the Sinai in the town of Neweba. We did not expect to encounter as many problems as we did. On the Aqaba side, the immigration officer giving us our exit stamps "somehow" missed stamping one of our passports, something we didn't know about until a minute before we were supposed to drive the vehicle onto the ship. Fortunately the dock manager was sympathetic and allowed us to go back to immigration to acquire the missing stamp. We got back to the boat literally as the ramp was being raised, and only after arguing with a random guard (in Arabic) who wasn't going to allow us to re-enter the dock without a lengthy vehicle inspection. "But we were just here 30 minutes ago and you looked through everything!" He finally gave up and waved us on, frustrated that we couldn't understand his excuse for wanting to search us again. We pulled the "white guy card" on that one. But... back to the story. We made it onto the ship in the nick of time and were pleased when the ship's crew bumped us up to first class. We are not sure whether or not it was because of our passports or because we were obvious foreigners, but it was a welcome bonus after the recent drama at the dock. The crossing of the Red Sea was very quick (about an hour and a half) but there was a problem when we reached Neweba. Because of rough seas there was only one dock the ship we were on could dock at, and there was another ship stuck at that dock due to some problems with its cargo. We waited offshore for over two hours. During that time, one of the financiers of the ferry company stopped by the table to offer his apologies and inform us that the ship had used so much fuel while waiting that they had lost all of their profits from this trip. We spent a little time after that wondering why we needed to know that information.

Now the real fun began... in customs. We had done everything we thought was necessary to successfully bring our vehicle into Egypt. We checked and double-checked with our shipping office in the embassy in Amman about what was required and did we have everything we needed. The answer we got was "yes, all you need are these papers and you are good to go." We are going to punch our buds in shipping. They didn't tell us that our vehicle had to be equipped with a fire extinguisher, and apparently the papers we were handed did not have the insurance we purchased included in them. Lesson learned on our part... read everything thoroughly. But, we were trusting and it bit us in the end. We were informed by the customs personnel (they are all police) that we would have to purchase a fire extinguisher before we would be allowed in. Of course, they have a stock of fire extinguishers ready to sell you. Next, we had to pay for insurance on the vehicle. We learned this after an exhaustive struggle to understand angry Egyptian dialect. So we paid a hefty sum for insurance on the vehicle. Next, we had to pay a "customs fee", yet another thing we had no clue was coming. Oh but wait, the hefty sum we paid earlier was actually the customs fee, even though it was clearly explained when we paid it that it was the insurance fee (we were all talking insurance at that time). So, another debate and an hour later and we still don't have insurance. By this point we've had no fewer than 10 people talk to us, some in uniform, some not. We handed our passports and ID cards over more than six or seven times. They must have made a thousand copies. About a dozen trips into random offices later and we still had gotten nowhere. Our minds were starting to go numb trying to understand what they wanted from us in order to leave. The answer was already there in our minds... they wanted to squeeze as much money out of the Americans as they could. After we had been there for about three hours waiting on God only knows what to happen, we managed to pay several more random fees (60 pounds for this, 100 pounds for that... 20 pounds for something else), have our stuff searched (are those sticks for stabbing people? no, they are for hiking), give a tip to the employee who changed our vehicle tags to temporary Egyptian tags (at he suggestion of the police), and we were free to leave. Oh wait... no, we had to stop at the gate for yet another search, yet another handing over of our documents, a few more questions, and now we could leave. We were dumbfounded at how completely inefficient the organization was. And we still don't know what the very large customs fee was for considering we were not importing anything but our personal belongings and would be leaving in two weeks. It was something we knew we had to experience at least once while traveling, and we are glad that part is over.

So, we made our way south along the Red Sea to the town of Dahab. A hippy little resort town with lots of Europeans running around. We didn't get here until 1am and we will be leaving shortly to find St. Catherine's Monastery and hike up Mt. Sinai, where we will camp for the night, enshallah.

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This past week has seen a lot more classroom with all the focus now on Criminal law.  We are breezing our way through the UCMJ and the other 8 books we've been assigned and there is A LOT of lecture.  We've been assigned our trial memo which is supposedly going to take 10-15 hours to complete, but having done one before, and this one only being 3 pages long, I would say more like 2-3 hours (although it does count for 50% of our criminal law grade).

We started our "experiment" with run group 4 on Monday and it was WAY better than normal PT training.  We immediately went with our Colonel and did our own PT which consisted of pull-ups, push-ups, and sit-ups (in that order) with sets being 1  2  3 reps (in the order specified earlier this sentence),  2  4  6 reps, 3  6  9 reps,  4 8 12 reps....10, 20, 30 reps.  We used a partner and were supposed to go to muscle failure.  I luckily got paired up with a former army ranger who is in great shape and he and I made it up to the 10th set in 13 minutes and then back down to the 6 set when we were told we could stop as most of the group had reached muscle failure. 

The next day, Chief was gone so air assault met up with airborne who was supposed to run o-hill but instead did a 5.5 mile run at our own pace.  Later that day we learned that Thurs and Fri were going to take a diagnostic PT test.   We informed Colonel of this to try to get an easier Wed workout but he just laughed and said "its just a diagnostic."  Regardless, the majority of our run group didnt have to show up for the Wed workout as they were doing their test on Thurs.  The 4 of us who remained got a mixture of 400 yard sprints with 50 squats between each one and no rest. On Thurs, group 1 took their test and came back with an average of 252 (a recent JAG school record which isnt bad for 50 + lawyers ranging in age from 25-40.  My platoon went on Friday and got the luck of having to test in the rain (as it had rained all night and during the test).  I personally hit 87 push-ups and 77 sit-ups in 2 minutes, and a 15:20 two mile in (which is easily a personal best if you haven't read my earlier posts about hating distance running).  Our average was 248 which was good considering we were soaked and there are 2  90 degree turns on this track.  It was more like running a steeple chase as you were sometimes ankle deep in water.  

Later that night we had our first formal, our Blues reception.  Everyone was in their Army Service Uniforms and had to go through the meet and greet line (which was remarkably fast considering there was over 160 people in that line to meet the 2 honored guests).  The best part about it was there were tasty beverages upstairs and down.  It was a great time, til all of it was gone, and we couldnt leave for about 30 more minutes.  Although, that little break didnt stop the 181st class from basically invading a bar about an hour later with over 50 of us!     

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Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Public affairs Soldiers do it all.
 

One of my instructors at the schoolhouse said that this is the best job in the Army. While I am sure most MOSs say that, I truly believe this to be true. Most days, whether they are deployed or back in garrison, will always be different. For example, my old job as a combat sewing machine operator, I went to work maintained a certain number of parachutes and went home. Sometimes there were variations, but usually not.
 

What have I done here in Haiti? What HAVEN'T I done? Exactly. This MOS provides you with so many opportunities to see things you might not have seen before or experiences if you were a 92Y supply clerk or what have you. While here I have been in a number of helicopters high above the skies of Port-au-Prince, on Navy ships, met with foreign troops, celebrities ... so many things.
 

Recently I did a tour for new Soldiers arriving in Haiti, because during my time here, I have gotten to know Port-au-Prince very well. Plus as a 46-series, I can do any job for a day, while profiling other Soldiers. I have been a chaplain's assistant, a mechanic, cook, finance clerk, helo crew chief, and mortuary affairs specialist. I have been a medical tent where Army medics have delivered babies. What other MOS can do that?
 

Pretty much - none.
 

Some people don't leave base. I can't stand to be on base. So much to cover here.
I am in the process of leaving Haiti and I am very sad, this has been my home for the last two months. I hope the incoming public affairs staff from the 11th Public Affairs Detachment and US Army South have an appreciation for this mission and for Haiti and her people.

AML

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de L'Assomption, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

An American Soldier speak with a local boy outside LSA Dragon, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

A fisherman wades ashore near Jeremie, Haiti, on the southwestern claw of Haiti.

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de L'Assomption, Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

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AEGD-2 appreciates our assistants! Without them we are useless. 8-12 March 2010 is DARW (Dental Assistants Recognition Week) so we took our assistants bowling. We work hard and need to play hard, too. Here you can see we did – lots of laughs, team building and a break from the clinc.

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Well well well... lots to talk about on this one so excuse the length.

First of all lets talk about the Dead To Red Ultra Marathon Relay. What an experience THAT turned out to be. To begin, everyone on the team was so stoked about finally getting to the race that I don't think anyone got a good night's sleep the night prior. We all showed up with smiles on our faces at the starting point. It was great to finally lay eyes on the Dead Sea... looked more like a big lake across which you could see the West Bank. It was kind of cool to think "over there is where all the news has been about all these years". I couldn't really see much in the way of civilization on that side, but I knew it was there. The weather was PERFECT for a distance run, could not have asked for better. There were 26 teams of 10 competing in this year's race, which meant there was at least 52 vans, trucks, and at least one very annoying tour bus scampering throughout the night to get to the next hand-off point without running over a runner. We started out with our planned 2-km legs but quickly decided after one full iteration that we needed to cull that down to only 1-km legs. Therefore, whereas there originally was going to be time to sleep in between legs if you needed to, now there wasn't really enough time. All for the better... the one time I did try to grab a quick nap (sometime around 3am) my body went into repair mode and when I got out for my next leg I logged the slowest time in history. No more napping after that... just stay up and keep the legs warm between legs. I still don't know where we placed, but it was somewhere in the top half I believe, with a final time of 19 hours 31 minutes. It was a great time, and an interesting way to see the western edge of Jordan. Oh... and lets not forget all the bafoonery along the way... BBQ Pork Rib gel packet anyone?

Me in front of the very southern part of the Dead Sea just before the race kicked off. Smiling here... not so much at the finish!

If you are going to spend 20 hours running 242 km with a bunch of lunatics, might I suggest Aqaba as the finish line?

On to training with the Jordanians. It has been quite the eye-opening experience. I can't really get into great detail here, but suffice to say that I've learned a lot in two weeks with them. There is so much to take into consideration when working as a new advisor to another culture. You are getting as much if not more advise than you are receiving, actually. I'm finding it challenging to strike a balance between being myself and adapting to another way of thinking. For example, we Americans have a very type-A take-charge attitude towards a lot of things. That doesn't always win the hearts and minds of Arabs. Sometimes it takes a little strategy to finesse your will into the picture. I'm not very good at this at the moment. My impulse is to try to be a good example of an American officer, to set a good example of how WE behave. But that isn't always what is needed. Sometimes you have to go against your instinct and join the chaos in order to better understand it. I still have a hard time letting go of the old standards. I'll continue to work on this.

The commander I work for is turning into a good friend already. He and I share casual conversation as much as we do business talk. I asked him to describe Jordan's relationship with its neighbors and the rest of the world, and I thought I'd share his comment with you. "If you want to survive, you have to be a friend to the lion and to the mouse... the lion will eat you and the mouse will ruin all your things." An old Arab saying, but it really sums up the political landscape that Jordan is in. He also said I needed to find a "long-haired dictionary" to help me with my Arabic. I almost fell out of my chair. Didn't see that one coming.

Now to Egypt... this will be the first regional travel I've conducted since arriving in Jordan, and I have to say I'm really excited. I will be traveling with one of the other FAO's and his wife and we have quite the trip planned. Two days in Aqaba kicks it off, then we take the ferry to Egypt, cross the Sinai Peninsula, and then on to Cairo, Alexandria, and a Nile river cruise to catch all the tombs and valleys of kings and such. I can't wait to lay eyes on one of the oldest civilizations on the planet. Of course, we will be spending some time at the embassy in Cairo to get a little education on the country and our role there as well. Plus... I get to see my old buddy Tom from DLI who is there doing ICT with his family. Should be a great trip. I'll be gone for about three weeks, so there might be a long delay before my next entry depending on what the internet situation is as we hop around.

As always... be sure to check out the videos on my YouTube page: UncleTravelingWayne. I should have a couple more up there shortly.

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