FW: Story from NY Post

Well, I think Sergeant Rickenbacker's letter should have gone to that school instead. Little punks.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Wyman
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 16:37:58 -0500
Subject: Story from NYPOST.COM from Wyman Carpenter
To: andre




Wyman thought you would find this story from NYPOST.COM interesting:

A--sent you this bc of your interest in young, stupid US kids sending stupid shit to soldiers bc of old, stupid adults. WTF?--Y

WRITING A WRONG
By DAVID ANDREATTA

The city Department of Education, red-faced over Brooklyn sixth-graders who slammed a GI with demoralizing anti-Iraq-war letters as part of a school assignment, will send the 20-year-old private a letter of apology today.

Deputy Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina, who has a nephew serving in Iraq, plans to personally contact Pfc. Rob Jacobs and his family, said department spokeswoman Michele McManus Higgins.

"She knows how difficult it is to have a loved one in a war zone," Higgins said.

Jacobs is stationed 10 miles from the North Korean border and who has been told he may be headed to Iraq in the near future.

The GI got the ranting missives last month from pint-sized pen pals at JHS 51 in Park Slope.

Filled with political diatribes, the letters — excerpts of which were printed in yesterday's Post — predicted GIs would die by the tens of thousands, accused soldiers of killing Iraqi civilians and bashed President Bush.

Teacher Alex Kunhardt had his students write Jacobs as part of a social-studies assignment.

He declined to comment yesterday on whether he read the rants before passing them along, but said he planned to contact Jacobs soon to explain the situation.

In an accompanying letter to Jacobs, Kunhardt had written that the students "come from a variety of backgrounds and political beliefs, but unanimously support the bravery and sacrifice of American soldiers around the world."

"Support" was not the word that came to Jacobs' mind when he read the letters.

One girl wrote that she believes Jacobs is "being forced to kill innocent people" and challenged him to name an Iraqi terrorist, concluding, "I know I can't."

Another girl wrote, "I strongly feel this war is pointless," while a classmate predicted that because Bush was re-elected, "only 50 or 100 [soldiers] will survive."

A boy accused soldiers of "destroying holy places like mosques."

Even one kid smitten with soldiers couldn't keep politics out of the picture, writing, "I find that many extreme liberals are disrespectful to you."

Uplifting letters from children are dear to soldiers, Jacobs said. He looks at a batch he got from a Girl Scout troop from his hometown of Middletown, N.J., whenever he feels lonely.

At the time the 21 JHS 51 letters were penned, Jacobs, who has been stationed in Korea for nearly a year, was told that he may be headed to Iraq. But no official order for deployment was given.

"If I were in Iraq and read that the youth of our nation doesn't want me to be there and doesn't believe in what I'm doing, it would mess up my head," Jacobs said.

Jacobs said he would welcome a letter from the Department of Education and the teacher.

"I want to think these letters were coached by the teacher or the parents of these children," Jacobs said in an interview from Camp Casey, Korea.

"It boggles my mind that children could think this stuff."

The Product of Way Too Much Time

As this will most likely be my last email here from the Big Suck be forewarned, it's probably gonna be a bit longwinded...

Having been in this forsaken, 12 hour-a-day office job since May 1st, I've had plenty of time to think...and read...and write...and despair...and go crazy...and have hope...and think some more...and read some more...and write some more...and despair some more...and..., well, hopefully, you get the point.

In fact, considering that I have felt like I was having a year erased, since I've not been doing the job I was trained to do, I've tried to get the most out of this "war" as possible. The difficulty has been that I've tried to keep my sanity in the process, an attempt which, while I'm not so sure of the outcome, I'm still happy with. These bizzarro emails that I've sent out and the emails that I've gotten from y'all have been invaluable for that very purpose. Without getting too smarmy, I'll merely be concise and say "thank you." Were I not to have been able to keep up with y'all, even those of y'all I've only heard from a few times, it would have made this already painful deployment insufferable.

But enough of that. Y'all should know that I think it's all about me, so I'll dive right into the meat and bones. Some general thoughts on my time in Iraq...

1. Dear Lord, you cannot imagine how boring it can get in a war zone! Or perhaps, I should amend that to "in a desk job in a war zone!" Imagine prison... without the threat of getting shanked with a homemade shiv or being jumped in the showers to keep you on your toes and your head in the game. Sure the mortars have been a change of pace, but, wow! I know and understand that the one thing I DIDN'T want here was excitement, since that would mean bad things, but even so, I wouldn't wish this much down time on my worst enemy.

I've managed to teach myself introductory French, write a colossal journal (which I stopped in late june, having gotten up to approximately 350 pages), play damn near every permutation possible of "solitaire", become sick of video games, watch all hundred or so of the DVDs that I brought with me and those that I bought here (plus the ones I borrowed from anyone I could, begging them like a heroin junkie), and read more than I ever have in my life.

To put that into perspective, perhaps this will give a more concrete example of the sort of monotony I've been dealing with:

The Ajax Carpenter "If you're gonna be stuck in a chair for ten months, you may as well get something out of it" book list:

Jarhead by Anthony Swofford
Seabiscuit by Laura Hildebrandt
The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
A Farewell to Arms
The Nature of the Cosmos by Brian Green
Walking the Appalachian Trail by Larry Luxenburg
Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis
Call of the Wild
Bellum Judaicum by Josephus
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Crime and Punishment
The Aeneid
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
Discourses 1-4 by Epictetus
Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Gambler by Dostoevsky
Ayurvedic Healing: A Comprehensive Guide by David Frawley
The Histories and Annals by Tacitus
Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky
The Double by Dostoevsky
Memoirs from the House of the Dead by Dostoevsky
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Unabridged; 3600p)
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
The Iliad
Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Dog of the South by Charles Portis
The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer
Gulliver's Travels
The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent by Elaine Pagels
Dead Souls by Gogol
The Jugurthine War by Sallust
The Conspiracy of Cataline by Sallust
17 of the Parallel Lives by Plutarch
Sayings of the Spartans and Spartan Women by Plutarch
On Sparta by Xenophon
The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius

I partially read the following:

Swift and the Dialectical Tradition
Alexander the Great by Quintus Curtius Rufus
Hindu Scriptures
Moby Dick [I finished Decline and Fall and gave up on this; that should tell you something. Namely, "----- Melville!" <- at="" br="" criticism="" its="" literary="" most="" succinct="">

2. As I haven't ever been fortunate enough to have an IED go off on me on the few times that I was off of this camp, nor was I ever shot at, I can't really comment on what those experiences are like. What I can tell you about is mortars and rockets. Frankly, as you well can guess, they suck. What you may not know is that they're not remotely like what you may have seen in the movies. There isn't that nice two to three second whistle that lets you know to drop for cover. Nope. Mortars don't make a sound til the boom and the rockets go "whiiiiiiiiiizzzz BANG." You get the "whiiiiiiiiiizzzz" for about the amount of time that it takes a major league fastball to leave the pitcher's hand and hit the catcher's glove. That's about it. Actually, say "That's about it" out loud. That's how much time you get.

Fortunately, I've only heard of one person being injured by mortars since I've been over here and that was early on when I was at the other camp and was still a platoon leader. Even that was a relatively minor injury from what I can remember. The big thing then is that they're not really that effective, at least as far as causing casualties. How they are effective though is that they can get in your head, so to speak.

Being over here long enough, I got used to the various explosions, were they from IEDs, VBIEDs (vehicle- borne Improvised Explosive Device; the Army tries to sound impressive and so makes a five word label necessary instead of merely saying "car bomb"), rockets, or mortars. Awake, that is. There's no way, that I've found, to get used to being woken up by an explosion. Really, I'd come to the conclusion early on that if I heard the explosion, I was good to go, but I don't get to rationalize when I'm asleep. More than a few times I've woken up on the floor of my hooch lying on my belly, my arms wrapped around my head, my feet still draped on the bed, feeling like my lungs bear-hugged my heart. It happened in May, it happened in January. I just don't get used to that. I can't imagine it would be very healthy to do so either.

3. It actually gets a bit tiresome to be reminded of dead people all the time. I don't mean to sound as though I want sunshine blown up me all the time, but I just don't need the constant reminders. I'm not even talking about the news. I'm talking about the fact that every structure here is named after a fallen soldier. I know it's a tradition. Heck, Kosovo's posts are named after fallen soldiers from WW2, I believe. The difference is that I wasn't there at the same time as those soldiers; it didn't connect the same way it does when I pass the Holmes Helipad, or work out in the Cash Gym, or make a phone call at the Nordquist MWR Center, or go to work in the Phantom 4 TOC, or eat at the Wood Dining Facility. Actually, those don't even drive it home for me as much as the Faulkenburg Movie Theater, which is named after the Sergeant Major that I rode up with from Kuwait who was killed in Fallujah in November.

4. Being here at the Brigade Camp I'm essentially what is referred to in the Army as a REMF (Rear Eschelon MF). That means, of course, that I'm surrounded by REMFs. My biggest complaint of the REMFs? The fact that they can't go anywhere at night without flashlights. I know that sounds piddling, but it just aggravates me to no end to get blinded by some schmuck's flashlight on a night when the moon is so bright that I not only see shadows but can even discern colors. At first it just annoyed the living hell out of me because I thought it was ridiculous to be that brazen in a tactical environment, then it just annoyed/annoys the living hell out of me. (In my reading I learned that the Spartans outlawed the use of torches. Their opinion was that they'd have to be able to fight in the dark so they should be able to do everything else in it also. That makes me think two things: 1) that the Spartans were on to something, and 2) that I read too damn much.)

5. Men and women do terrible things to each other. Especially at a distance. Fortunately I've been here so long that I've gotten over having my heart broken, but I cannot list all the terrible stories I've heard. The winner? The 44yo Sergeant First Class I work with, whose wife not only cheated on him while he was here..., but got pregnant in the process..., by an expatriate IRAQI. And that's just the big- stroke description of it; it's actually much worse than even that sounds. The SFC has taken her back...

6. Since this has been a relative bummer of an email (calm down Mom, I'll be back in Germany very soon), I'll finish with my favorite Iraqi accusation against us evil occupiers:

A former Diyalla Province Council Member came forward with his neighbor to accuse the US helicopters of dropping spiders on their farms. They claimed to have witnessed the helicopters fly by and dump the spiders. I'm not kidding. Really. We have nothing better to do than load up our Kiowa helicopters (which have about 4 square feet of storage space) and torment farmers. The Diyalla Province Council decided that that the farmers' accusations were "obviously ridiculous". I have the sneaking suspicion that if the media had gotten wind of this we'd have had Geraldo doing an expose.

Ca suffit. That's it. Done. Goodbye, Iraq. Thanks again for everything all of you have done for me while I've been here. Thanks for putting up with all of these.

Frustrating

At the risk of sounding snobbish or condescending, I wish to pass on this little anecdote. I have been tabbed to conduct an investigation of a soldier missing a "sensitive item". I had turned in my findings two weeks ago but the report was returned to me tonight, much to my consternation, because the assistant JAG couldn't "understand" it.

I didn't see how what I'd written didn't speak clearly, but I set out to clarify the report. I asked a fellow captain if he had any experience with investigations and, once he said that he had, I asked him to read what I'd written and tell me what I could do to make it more clear. I soon discovered that the issue wasn't a matter of lucidity but, rather, complexity, when he stopped to ask me what "corroborated" meant. Heretofore I'd been under the impression that the perplexing word was widely known, insofar as its application to investigation and law, but I was quickly disabused of that notion as the captain proceeded to say, "You mean, 'collaborated'? That means they're scheming." When I assured him that I indeed meant "corroborated" and not "collaborated" he told me I definitely needed to get rid of that. As he was looking on, I thanked him and replaced the source of obfuscation with "verified".

When he returned to what he was doing, my sensibilities required me to reinsert "corroborated" and I spent a few minutes pondering how to rewrite the entire thing so that it could be understood by a child. As of this moment, I still have not figured out how to do so, or, rather, how to condescend to do so.

A Warrior At Last

This evening, January 23rd, after being in this miserable country for over ten months, I finally have achieved a semblance of the martial glory that I aspired to from Day One. Yes, I have earned the prestigious title of "Door Kicker." This glorious appelation is reserved for those courageous and insane enough to lead the way on a raid. Officers rarely, if ever, are allowed by their troops to achieve this honor.

The evening started as any other, with me groggily rising from my sleeping bag and trudging through the mud over to the showers. The wind that has been whipping here the last few days threw the door to the trailer open, which I slammed to ensure that no one's eyes were astounded by my magnificence.

As I was drying off, I heard a voice, owned by another Captain who'd been in there when I'd arrived, ask, "Are your guys messing with you?"

"No."

"Then someone locked us in."

I took the news in stride as I made sure to assemble my resplendent coiffure. The other captain valiantly thumped on the door in his flip-flops, nearly slipping and falling, before I told him I'd take care of it once I'd put on the shoes that I'd worn over. I did advise him to set down one of the bathmats so that he wouldn't hurt himself as he vainly continued to free us.

Once garbed for battle, I blithely swept my inept colleage aside, and with my first probative strike, performed merely to ascertain the strength of the barrier, our incarceration ended. Aluminium and styrofoam burst forth as I strode valiantly through the remnants into the night, the proud bearer of that noble moniker.

A Former Soldier of Mine (Comments)

Below are thoughts from my comrades. As they sent these directly to me, I will not divulge their names. I pass their comments, not to push any agenda, but merely to help give those of you who haven't been here a more complete picture of how things are viewed by those that have lived, and are living, though it:

The first:

"I think I was at that firefight in Buhriz. It was my last day on the job. My platoon was sweeping a palm grove and doing house- to- house fighting. The 2-2 "Terminator" Platoon was doing firefights in the Palm Grove. They killed several attackers...all of whom were under the age of 16. Two 14- year olds were killed (with an RPG launcher in their hand mind you) and we captured an 11- year old boy. After intense questioning, he spilled his guts, admitting that a man in town will pay $50 and give a free RPG launcher to kids who want to fight Americans. It's a messed up world we live in. If it was a different fight from the one your NCO was in, well, this is a messed up country.

"I have fought back a hatred for this culture since day one...but the truth is we fight ignorance and poverty. These children see American movies and listen to American music...and are frustrated by their lack of means to acquire wealth. This by no means excuses their actions, but it provides some insight into their lives.

"Saddam kept his people poor and ignorant. That is the mess we are in today. It's his fault. Not Islam's. Not the U.S.'s, not anybody's but the former regime leadership's. Yeah, bad preachers are to blame, but talk to any semi-educated Iraqi and they will tell you they don't care about Shia or Sunni. They just want to live a peaceful life.

"It's not about Iraqis and it's not about religion. Those are just easy pidgeonholes for us to try and understand which people attack us and which ones won't (Shia are more pro American historically unless freaking Sadr says to do otherwise). Really, it has more to do with, as I said, ignorance and poverty. Of couse, the idea of Jihad (a private fight against sin) and belief in fate (or God's will) doesn't help any as they are corrupted easily. Still, poverty and ignorance.

"I really try not to hate these people, their lies, their willing blindness. This will all pass eventually. It's an uphill battle, but one that I hope will be viewed well in the future."

The Second:

"For me, it was the day after the Turn Over of Sovereignty, when all the attacks stopped. People decided that we weren't so bad, since we'd kept our word and actually looked like the good guys for a few days. The reason that it pissed me off was that it really conveyed to me how little the average guy trying to kill me cares.

"These are not 'Die Hard' guys committed to their cause; they are wishy-washy dickheads who will set their weapons down and live peacefully when they think we're not so bad. That would all sound good, except for the fact that it means that they also weren't all that sold on the fact that we were definitely evil and needed to be killed in the first place... yet they were still willing to lob mortars and rockets into my living area!

"They get stirred up and follow the urge of the moment, even if the urge of that moment means someone else dies! The fucking selfish children!"

A Former Soldier of Mine

One my way back to my hooch after work this morning, I glanced in one of the offices I was passing and caught sight of SGT Memmelsdorf, a soldier from my former platoon. I abruptly turned back so I could speak with him.

He was pleased to see me and we stepped out into the hallway so that we wouldn't interrupt the others in the office as we caught up. I had not seen SGT Memmelsdorf since we were in Germany, because he'd had to stay back at he outset for surgery to repair his knee. One of the first things he did, besides congratulating me on receiving promotion (note I didn't say "earning" promotion), was to thank me for helping him get the surgery.

For those of you that haven't been in the military, there is a rather infantile bias against people who are legitimately hurt. Admittedly, there are often times that soldiers will feign sickness or injury to get out of work, but the malice held towards them, unfortunately, is directed towards those that are truly in need of medical attention. My former Battery commander, a genius, as many of you are well aware, fought to make SGT Memmelsdorf and one of my Gun Chiefs deploy, though SGT Memmelsdorf had no ACL and the Gun Chief had shredded his rotator cuff, as well as other ligaments and tendons in his shoulder, because he "knew" they were just trying to get out of the deployment. His argument had been that if the soldiers had really been hurt, they would have tried to get the surgeries done long before.

That line of thinking, which is tragically common, is incredibly dense because the military medical system forces one to perpetually delay care since it seems one is required to be on death's door or about to lose an appendage before treatment will be administered. I was once ordered to go on a field exercise even when I'd passed blood, and, once I'd arrived at the German post where we were doing the exercises, I had to be taken to the medical center and ultimately to an internist.

At any rate, I had to explain to the Battery Commander that the two NCOs were not cowards trying to get out of a deployment, but rather tough men who'd continued to perform their jobs even when they'd had things seriously wrong with them. "They didn't fake the Xrays and MRIs," I told him. Nonetheless, he considered them cowardly. Fortunately, I was able to coordinate with the NCOs and the doctors and they were able to be taken care of in spite of the commander's resistance. The BC did try to have me rate the Gun Chief poorly on his efficiency report, which I refused to do. But enough of this digression...

SGT Memmelsdorf told me that he'd arrived in country in April but hadn't been put back in the same battery (as the BC still thought him a coward). He'd spent some time recuperating with the headquarters element, which he'd despised, before he'd been placed into one of the line Batteries. As most of you are well aware, with the exception of my Battery, the rest of the battalion has been performing an Infantry mission. SGT Memmelsdorf told me a little of how that had been for him.

During our conversation I made mention of the fact that I'd seen no combat in my time here. He was quick to point out, as I was quick to agree, that I didn't want to see combat. He spoke of how he not only hated the country but the Iraqis themselves, particularly after what he'd seen during a firefight. His patrol had been ambushed. This in and of itself wasn't what bothered him so much; he'd been in firefights before. No, what made it so that he "loathed" the Iraqis was that they were in a particularly drawn out fire fight, ("eleven hours", "RPGs", "Just like _Blackhawk Down_") which would have been silenced immediately had his vehicle's MK-19 40mm automatic grenade launcher not malfunctioned, and when they finally had killed their attackers and searched the palm groves where they'd been attacked, they discovered "dead twelve- year- olds with RPGs". That, for him, was the point where he decided the Iraqis were animals.

We spoke for a few more minutes before he had to get on a convoy to head back downtown.

An Attempt to Offend

Since it's been some time since I've been exceedingly arrogant, I thought it was high time that I passed along the reason for my unsurpassed mental faculties. There is actually a medically verifiable proof of it, you see. All it takes is one x-ray of my head to see that I have no upper sinuses. What this means (how this separates me from the rest of y'all merely intelligent) is that I have more brain where y'all have air in your heads. I know that means that I'm really slumming it when I have to deal with others, but, until there are more of my ilk (I really am thinking that I'm the acme of evolution here, that I should be reclassified Homo Sapiens Superior or Homo Sapiens Rembertus), what else can I do? Ah well, I just thought that I should pass this along since many of you had been wondering why it seems that I'm always right and you're always wrong. Now you know. It's medically impossible for y'all to win an argument with me. Don't even try.

P.S. Of course, some troglodyte could attempt to argue that I'm boneheaded instead...