Inside the Headquarters

I went to a reenactment/living history in Nokesville, Va. This hamlet past Manassas qualifies as nowhere. I was joined by several thousand others. (Maybe they were lost.) It was a surprise to see this remote piece of land as a home to countless military vehicles spanning the past 60 years. Joining the hardware were a few hundred reenactors from many eras.

The field is called Tank Farm (literally) of the Virginia Museum of Military Vehicles. The event’s goal was to promote the museum and its vehicle collection. The period players rounded out the event.

The hit of the weekend was a band of Vietnam reenactors, who made the Vietnam War hip, possibly for the first time.

The reenactors represented many periods, though modern conflicts seem to be popular. There were those reenacting Russians (some real Ruskies) in Afghanistan, and Americans in Desert Storm. There were World War II Germans complete with German Shepherd. I believe Eva was her name.

The Vietnam unit was courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps Living History Unit. They are independent of the Corps. (It’s probably better that way.) These are mostly former and retired Marines that portray the Marine Corps from – get this—the early 19th century to the present. They verified this habit can be time-consuming and expensive.

Compared to classic Vietnam photos, these guys seemed to have it down. Some looked every bit the hungry jungle fighter. Think Jim “Women Can’t Fight” Webb in his youthful, shirtless splendor. Some members are actual veterans of Vietnam, making the mix all the more interesting.

I’m told evenings were spent hanging with the Vietnam boys. Brethren from all eras and nations were popping PBRs (Pabst Blue Ribbons) and dragging on water pipes, all courtesy of our Vietnam heroes. These guys even had beads and peace signs.

As I have written before, I do not understand the allure of reenacting. Some say they do it for camaraderie. Others say living history. My guess is it is a low-tech and satisfying way to connect to people. (It is certainly not the sleeping accommodations.)

Our Marine reenactors appeared passionate, if not obsessed. Get this: Their fire base even had a working sandbag-encircled mortar pit complete with black “pajama-wearin’” Vietnamese workers. A few open Hawaiian shirts and shared hookah pipes went a long way in making this much-vilified period in our history hip, even if just for a weekend.

Photos courtesy of Rudy Schulz

Reports abound that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan tossed military recruiters from Harvard Law School when she served as dean, 2003-2008. The recruiters were at Harvard looking for future barristers to join up. Kagan took issue with Defense Department’s policy regarding the service of homosexuals known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Recent news reports have painted Kagan as a lone ranger, but many law schools were gunning for military recruiters. Once the 1996 Solomon Amendment, in which Congress said it could deny federal funding to schools that did not permit recruiters or ROTC on campus, was declared unconstitutional, Kagan quickly made her move in 2004, as did others. (The Solomon Amendment has been through many rewrites since.)

Looking back before Kagan’s tenure as dean, a 1999 article in MIT’s “The Tech” reported, “The 162 institutions belonging to the American Association of Law Schools, including Stanford, have pledged to bar campus employment recruiters who discriminate by sexual orientation.” Even in the mid-1990s schools like Stanford were tossing recruiters. Just as with secondary schools, Congress pointed out these elite law schools had students who received federal funding.

Enter the Solomon Amendment. Schools had a choice: Lose the financially disadvantaged students (and other federal funds) and stand against DoD policy on homosexual service or open to business as usual. Most schools backed down, but it has been reported New York University law school kept its ban in place and did not lose its federal funding.

In 1999 Harvard allowed the recruiters on campus but would not allow them to use the career development center.

It seems there are two law schools currently that prohibit military recruiters – Vermont and William Mitchell College of Law, St. Paul, Minn.

We’re not advocating for Elena Kagan. But the military recruiter controversy has been widespread. Not that one would know it from reading recent reports.

Dear Daddy,

I have not told you, but I am going to the reunion. Would you believe it’s our 25th? I am addressing this to you, because you’ll understand my concerns from your Navy and celebratory days. This is my last letter before we storm Annapolis.

There must be five stages of re-entering a social system: skepticism, consideration, buy-in, mania, regret.
I may have peaked a bit too soon.

For me, there was tremendous excitement in the planning of taking Fort Apache Annapolis. Then one peaks and starts a downward slide. Mania dissolves into disenchantment. What was I thinking when I signed up for this mission? Can I actually walk in 4-inch heals?

Planning this like the storming of the Bastille has been exhilarating. Maybe it’s more like MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. The prep for the event may turn out to be more gratifying than the final execution. What does a combat commander (female, below the brigade level) do?

What is the objective? The reunion? But if one has not been back in 25 years is there a need to take this island? What compels attendance? This reunion tradition seems odd, but you were a big reunion guy. What am I missing here?

I lost the bid for class president in my Blaze of Glory campaign. This was not unexpected. We are moving swiftly into the next phase of the battle.

This is my last letter before we take Annapolis. Always go with the black sheath. You can’t lose with pearls. Ditch the hose. Lean strategically if you cannot walk in those 4-inch heels. Starve. I am sure I am now approaching this operation with trepidation similar to other classmates (unless they drink). I don’t feel the need to take this hill again.

I am sure people will ask about you and Mom. The academy may have meant more to you two than anyone else I know. Mom worked there more than 20 years. It’s been more than eight years since we’ve seen each other. It doesn’t seem right to go without you two, though the three of us together might be the usual disaster. My love to Nini and Nonno and Mom, if you and she are in touch. Tell them I’m ok.

I’ll let you know how it goes if we survive the landing.

All of my love,

Gina

Gina's Dad

So I pulled up to the gas pump when this guy with a squeegee outfitted like a high school freshman asked if he could wash my windows and pump my gas.

This was not a pick-up line. He and a band of roving Navy petty officers were prowling the Navy Exchange gas station as a part of their Chiefs’ Initiation.

The Navy has many traditions. Some see them as silly and even offensive. We like Navy traditions. We find them fascinating, but a guy who wants to wash your windows and pump your gas for money is pushing it.

This chiefs’ initiation included the soon-to-be E-7s of the greater Washington, D.C., area. More than 40 first class petty officers, we were told.

Welcome to Rush Week, boys and girls! One pledge explained was emphatic that this ritual is a big deal: Opt out and you will never be considered a chief. (Never? Ever?!) The real live chief watching his pledges, prevented lengthy conversation, but it appeared some of these guys were from Naval Air Facility Washington, Andrews Air Force Base, Md. One if not more of these senior NCOs fly with the chief of naval operations and commandant of the Marine Corps. CNO Adm. Gary Roughead knows the deal. Hey Gary – so, you like that your soon-to- be chiefs are skulking around the gas station, yards from your Pentagon office prostituting themselves for a few dollars? Is this the diversity with which you are obsessed? Do these guys hit you up for money in the parking lot? Shake down your driver? Maybe stop by your quarters at the Navy Yard? Which quarters are you in again? We’ll send them your way. Ridiculous? No more so than forcing this “tradition” on an unsuspecting public.

So, what does this little exercise do for a future chief? Teach humility? Maybe. Put him or her in an uncomfortable position? Probably. But in the Navy’s (c’mon, say it with me!) narcissistic tradition, this practice is about the Navy. Damn the public and full speed ahead! Are these guys any better than the squeegee-wielding 10-year olds on DC’s New York Ave. who harass drivers at traffic lights? It isn’t pretty.

The funds collected we’re told support the Chiefs’ Mess to help unit families. (Which unit was that?) We have our doubts.

Vanity! Thy name art Chiefs’ Initiation

We have the basis for yet another unfinished thriller:

The boyishly handsome former Navy SEAL founder and board chairman of a shoot-‘em-up paramilitary conglomerate stands accused of murder, gun running, child prostitution, as well as green-lighting a wife-swapping sex ring.

It has been reported two former employees of the company once known as Blackwater USA have filed affidavits to bolster an Iraqi lawsuit against company founder Erik Prince and his band of gun-toting men. The murders include those of supposed innocent Iraqis and at least one company employee who might have been “terminated” for cooperating with the feds. In fact, one of the informants alleges people who were ready to dish on Blackwater or who had already ratted on Prince have died under suspicious circumstances.

Regarding the gun smuggling, it has been alleged firepower was smuggled into Iraq using bags of dog food. We are unsure if the guns were for Blackwater (Xe) use.

But there’s more. Apparently Prince might have been laundering royal sums of money between his Prince Group companies to avoid income taxes. Prince’s men in Iraq were allegedly involved in adult and child prostitution. The wife-swap sex ring may have involved Blackwater top executives. (The sex ring sounds more like sour grapes.)

If accounts are accurate, these allegations from former employees make Prince appear less boy wonder and more of the elite gun-toter stereotype.

The turncoats say Prince encouraged this culture of lawlessness, and the more money it made the company, the better. One informant is said to be a former Marine who states excessive force by employees was routine and often unjustified. The other informant maintains Prince sees himself as a Christian crusader sent to eliminate Islam. Prince is said to be a member of the right-wing Opus Dei sect to the Knights Templar, an association full of irony and symbolism (and made infamous by “The Da Vinci Code”). It has been alleged Prince sent people with similar beliefs to Iraq to get the job done.

Outrageous? Inflammatory? We say explosive. But is it true? Prince’s renaming the company “Xe” and retaining only the title of chairman might have been in anticipation of a very ugly and expensive battle.

If the allegations are true, should it be a surprise? Are some behaviors inherent to the business? Private security is not for the faint of heart, though in some cases that’s who they protect. Though we often point out Blackwater’s troubles, admittedly we probably could not do what they and their bands of not-so-merry men do. Well — we might if we had Backwater USA training and an opportunity to get into character.

Blackwater, what’s in your holster?

The Washington Post has reported that the U.S. Air Force will train more of its pilots to fly unmanned drones this year than it will train in the cockpits of manned aircraft.

While the success of the drones in recent years does not appear to be in dispute, the shift in Air Force priorities is remarkable. It seems you can teach an old flyboy new tricks. But can you change his stripes?

Any transformation within the Air Force might be the result of changes in its leadership. (We have ruled out glass slippers, fairy dust, and princely pecks.)

Informal discussions in recent months with mid-level Air Force officers have been telling. Each person — pilot and otherwise — has breathed a deep sigh of relief at the departure of disgraced Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley and his fighter pilot mafia and welcomed the ascension of current chief Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, a C-130 man with some special ops experience. Schwartz is the first non-fighter pilot chief in more than 25 years, though our joyous acquaintances believe him to be the first ever. (That might be because they blame Moseley and the fighter mafia for all that ails the Air Force.)

In the year leading up to Moseley’s departure, several incidents pointed to a service gone wild. The flying of nuclear warheads over the continental U.S., the erroneous (and repeated) transfer of nuclear-related items to Taiwan, and our personal favorite, JUMBOTRON! Who can forget the outrageous $50 million slime-dog crony contract going to the mafia for those Thunderbird air show JUMBOTRONs?

But not everyone agrees with our boys’ “good riddance” take on Moseley’s good-of-the-service exit.
One article bemoaned his departure

“To his credit, Moseley spent his tenure making the case that airpower is the decisive force in warfare and that the Air Force is a fighting service, not an appendage to the ground combat branches.” (Overstatement?)

And this: “Moseley wanted a new service dress uniform. Many liked the idea — but more, it seemed, thought it was a waste of money while Americans were in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. … Moseley’s critics didn’t get it.” (We don’t either.)

The past aside, is the junior service on a new glide path? It may be too soon to tell.

In its annual ranking of top colleges, Forbes magazine ranked the U.S. Military Academy at the top. Number one. Two? Princeton. Harvard? Five. The Air Force Academy clocked in at seven. The U.S. Naval Academy just squeaked in at 30.

What is more interesting than the rankings are the telling (and hilarious) comments posted by service academy grads.  Our favorite:

“… Any honest USNA graduate will admit that most of us spent our first year (or more) after graduation pouring grain alcohol on our head, lighting it, and running around drunk with our hair on fire. The school breeds social misfits. Education isn’t all about how far you can beat down the mids. I find it comical to have a Submariner Superintendent pontificating about combat when his idea of ‘combat’ is cold coffee. …”

We love the above respondent. Of course one’s perspective hinges at least in part on one’s era. We’ll carry the drinking binge scene a step farther and place it inside the sprawling dorm, Bancroft Hall, mother to many an alcoholic. The commenter appears to be Class of ’92, so he or she missed the drug scene a la 1980 – dealers as well as doers. Life at the Naval Academy went through periods that could be called wild and out of control. It had more in common with “Animal House” than the armed forces of the United States. The administration turned away from its “Fort Apache the Bronx” and let the inmates run free. The result? Social misfits.

But we digress. Forbes based its rankings as follows: 25 percent on student course and instructor evaluations, 25 percent on graduate success, 20 percent on student debt after graduation, and then graduation rates and numbers of Rhodes Scholars Nobel Prize recipients and the like.

Put all that info in the martini shaker (USNA style), shake, and pour. Since the information is based heavily on student and alumni participation and on success stories, the survey is skewed against Navy. Midshipman and Annapolis grads are not the most cooperative, giving sister academies an advantage.

Last year’s numbers are impressive, too. In 2008, West Point marched in at 6th, Air Force landed at 16th, and Navy sank at 36th.

It is remarkable that a public college came in first and three ranked in the top 30. Navy has the academics, profs, and training programs to rank first. It’s just heavy on unpleasant cynics.

What will 2010 bring?

Not far from the Pentagon, sandwiched between the Navy Annex and Henderson Hall, a former Army paratrooper and I found ourselves in an outdated meeting room filled past capacity. We strained to see and hear the purveyors of history and their elegant but aging subjects.

The event was a panel discussion on Operation Dragoon and focused on the U.S. Army paratrooper jump behind German lines.

Operation Dragoon was the Allied invasion of southern France. It kicked off Aug. 15, 1944, just more than two months after the Allied landings at Normandy. But unlike Normandy, Dragoon was relatively unopposed. There were U.S. divisions supported by French and British units. (Yes, French forces. Armed Frenchmen. Fighting Frenchmen. Who knew?) The U.S. and Gen. George S. Patton in particular felt this assault was crucial to the move into Germany. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill strongly disagreed. He saw that pulling assets from the Mediterranean would pave the way for Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s post-war domination of Eastern Europe — seems he was correct.

They say 134,000 made the assault; only a small fraction remain.

Army Lt. Col. Timothy Stoy and his wife, retired Army Capt. Monika Stoy, are on a mission. Monika is the brains and muscle behind getting recognition for these soldiers, sailors and airmen, putting together events like this recent two-day gathering in Washington, D.C. (Tim asked us not to mention the Marines who went ashore at Marseilles Aug. 29 to accept the surrender of 700 German prisoners. Sorry,Tim.) The Stoys and other members of the Society of the 3rd Infantry Division Association aren’t looking for medals for these guys, but rather some respect.

E-mailing Tom “Greatest Generation” Brokaw is one approach.

Tim told us he and Monika wrote to Brokaw. The newsman and author regretted that he could not make the event, but Tim soon was contacted by the Washington NBC affiliate at Brokaw’s request.
But the Stoys have had some setbacks. Tim admits they started late working to obtain letters and other written recognition for the veterans, but he still seemed surprised at his results: Nothing from the White House, secretary of Defense, or secretary of Veterans Affairs. At least Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry put something together for them in 2008, according to Tim Stoy.

Granted, Operation Dragoon might pale somewhat when compared to the drama and carnage that marked big brother Overlord. Regardless, I am unsure how one determines which guys 65 years past their glory days of youthful splendor are worthy of recognition and which are not.

We hope the president, Defense Secretary (and occasional super hero) Robert M. Gates, and The Silent Secretary, a.k.a Veterans Affairs chief Eric Shinseki will send a letter, a proclamation, something to the Society of the 3rd Infantry Division Association for the men of Operation Dragoon. They’d love to hear from lawmakers, MOAA-ites, and “Inside the Headquarters” readers, as well.

(Maybe mention the Marines, too. Do it for Lt. Col. Tim Stoy.)

Section 60. Home of the brave and the final resting place of the fallen from this country’s most recent conflicts. A man sits at one grave marker, working. Cleansing. He is washing the headstone of the son he lost not long ago. A retired Marine approaches with a friendly, “Hello.” Without being asked, the man explains, “I’m taking care of my boy because they won’t do it.” His tone is filled with resignation about the loss as well as his post in Section 60. When the Marine later looks over, he sees the man caring for other graves just as he had that of his own son, one by one down the row. Meticulously. Orderly. Lovingly.

Arlington Cemetery recently has been in the news. An investigation shows a cemetery in disarray. The report found the cemetery’s paper-based record system to be inaccurate. Arlington has had plans to automate and millions of dollars have gone toward the project, but little progress has been made.

During an appearance before Congress, Arlington officials copped to instances in which existing burial maps failed to match headstones, providing an unwelcome surprise to loved ones wishing to visit a grave site. (There also is the matter of at least one set of remains that are unidentified.)

But the most egregious violation might be the policy of routinely discarding mementos left at the graves.  Tossed. Trashed. Thrown away.

But wait! According to an Arlington spokesman, while it is true the cemetery discards mementoes left at the graves, “Arlington is a cemetery, we’re not a memorial.” He further explained that Arlington has a “floral policy” that prohibits certain pieces such as “any type of commemorative items” from being left by the graves. The policy is posted and given to the grief-stricken, we’re told. (Apparently it has not been effective.)

According to our spokesman, generally, items are tossed after they become unsightly or a hazard to visitors or groundskeepers. (Ah. But if they collected them for preservation they would not become hazardous or unsightly. But, hey, Arlington is not a memorial.)

There are policy exceptions. Arlington will collect and save “religious items, military decorations, coins, and unit patches” (though some of these are forbidden by the floral policy). Arlington Superintendent John Metzler has cut Section 60 sites some slack allowing items to remain longer before they are trashed. (That’s … great, John.)

Arlington maintains, “It just would not be practical from an operational standpoint to try to collect everything, to warehouse it, or to leave it on the graves for an indefinite period of time.”

We say that’s a matter of perspective and wonder if the trash heap is the preferred alternative.

Trash or treasure? How do you see this issue?

Defense officials are pondering a DoD-wide ban on Facebook, Twitter, and possibly other social networking sites.

It is a move that is well past its prime.  E-0s through GOs with super-secret security clearances have been chatting away about how they’re feeling and what they’re doing from moment to moment, all hosted by their government computer. One forty-something Navy captain (who commands something noteworthy) seems addicted to Facebook AND get this: he appears on site in uniform. (There is no recruiting value in his online kingdom.)

Defense officials fear that use of the sites on government machines leaves prized portals vulnerable to hackers. They just figured this out?

These sites already have been shut down on some bases (by smart commanders) only to be opened again to standardize free-flowin’ cyber access across the Army. Mystification aside, these sites present a much bigger challenge.

Beyond hacker fare, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and other cyber cohorts on the workfront amount to a security smorgasbord for those who monitor U.S. personnel 24 hours a day.

According to one intelligence source who, after his obligatory defense of the First Amendment, explained “they” are well aware that military purveyors of these sites share their comings and goings and musings throughout the day. String a few of those together and you soon could have a top secret document, he says. (An evite to the world’s top 10 intel networks might be more efficient.)
These networking sites open new ways to share sensitive information. Closing them down on the government end may solve the portal problem and should help with intel concerns. We would think the verbose and self-absorbed will be less likely to share military secrets outside the palace walls. The whole gold fish memory thing may come into play.

DoD will continue to have its arsenal of social networking site operatives, be they E-0 or GO. The bold and the beautiful will handle recruiting and service promotion as they always have. All will be right in the land of the free and home of the brave.

For everyone else, there’s always eBay.

* Note: The Marine Corps has banned social networking sites effective immediately.