The Path Taken

Yellow Barn Farm: The church path again that Valentine’s Day in 1971. Promises rendered through muted screams. Two betrothed while three excised, seemingly discarded. The church sanctuary in proximity to the once known fielded hills. The yellow barn farm, a new place again with adventures, tragedy and an escape. The tracks across endless fields to the home of the cacciotores. Freedom to grow amidst domestic strife, abuse, mental illness. Potatos, corn, and alfalfa growing in fields plowed then tended. The harvest ripe brought in by families, friends and neighbors near slate mound hills piled high at Chapman’s Quarry. A good farm with good people, less one whose demon tormented soul inflicted cruelty beyond reason on mother and children. A place where learning to hunt was as natural as learning to eat pie. The smoke house outings with fires raging to keep us warm. Skating at the mine hole over clear ice looking down a muddy bottom. A Christmas Eve trek up mountains and across fields, finally home at nightfall. At times tranquility with visits to Chautaqua. The yellow barn farm more hell than haven, yet those who knew understood.

The Turning: The turning came amidst the tumult of once again new surroundings. The place next to a church with old plaster walls and horsehair paste. Gray flowered wall paper, dingy and dark, on the side of a street called Coplay. The bad side of the tracks deflecting the possible, defeating the positive, with glimpses of success through an adulterous lens. The loss of heart from years before, left on a football field in Slatington. Never did it recover to what it once was, instead a less than hearted attempt to belong. The victorious in 1976 gave way to the vanquished in 1977, we were the Whitehall Zephyrs. The love found, forever gone in two years time. The world beckoned.

Young Man West: The night in Telluride gave way to day. A fifty-dollar bill for breakfast of cakes and coffee. The job paid well. At nineteen, six-hundred dollars, a fortune. Spent at will on whiskey and beer. Hair grown to length falling on shoulders as days passed to weeks, drilling, drilling. Naturita, Paint Brush, the rush of the San Miguel’s torrents, spitting out life where death was certain. Saint Michael protects us. Moab and night swimming in the Colorado’s canyons beneath a billion stars. Monument Valley toward Flagstaff, pick up truck rides through deserts of sun-baked rock and sand. A bus through Yuma, then Phoenix to San Diego and Oceanside. Tuna fleet, hillside mansions gated estates. A flight to New York for New Have and East Rock.

A Long Road: The unsettled years began in Houston, Corpus Christi, Alice and Victoria. Drilling work. Dominoes. Long Horn grazing in lush green pasture of tall soft grass. Beer stacked high as walls, money pooled for billiards. One eyed deck hand, catline, toolpusher’s joints. One-hundred-eighty feet of derrick turning night into day. Bubba Hoser’s daughters were not for me, despite the fried chicken and iced tea. The disinherited drinking whiskey and beer. A pilot's dreams grounded, drowning, never to take flight again. The Lincoln driving girls could not keep me. Bus to Casper, a long way north. Coming up empty with no job found only meant one thing. The long road’s return through Cheyenne and Pine Bluff to Pittsburgh. Then Allentown and the cement milled steeled valley of the Lehigh, work barely paying rent.

A Calling: In the Coplay Street house of our mother, summer’s empty venture filled with one planting and a prayer. A Gentle rain arrived in response bringing tears. Lehigh Parkway, serene and tranquil. The promise, borne by a collective effort and one letter of recongnition. A path to take, not yet taken but unavoidable. God’s hand surely steers the course of our lives. Or does he? Duty. Honor. Country. Meaningless words unless acted upon when called. A calling, like that of the clergy to serve. Inspired by the Divine, or divinely inspired to set a course. To see. To witness. To learn and act with hard compassion upon lesson’s drawn from life’s well. The turning point, at which time one comes face to face with the reality of what is.

To Guns: The call of the guns. Commissioned. A lifetime of service to protect and defend. Saint Michael protect us. Patron saints, and patrons of bars, patronizing those solely interested in living life fully. To each their own. Cliché. The protectors succumb, to modern oracles espousing, the Holy American Empire, as the world spins, evolving, changing, marching, to interests of those serving themselves. The guns dangled in front of young men, enticing, daring, snaring the flesh and blood of youthful innocence to commit to a “higher” cause. One higher than themselves. The politicians sing for their corporate suppers, urging young men, cajoling them, remanding them, blurring the distinction between patriotism and corporate greed. Sinicism and contempt, masked by political oratory and feigned patriotic fervor, sentencing young men to death without regard.

Under a Thin Veneer: The unholy alliance of corporate greed and political ambition robs the every-day-man of his hard earned wages. The tax flow, fiscal dole, legislated handouts, corporate controlled. The black hand, dictates command to us all. Look beneath the thin veneer. See the patterns of power a they are. Shaping our world, our thoughts, our wants, our needs. Duty, honor, country, a magnificent ploy ensuring continuation of the cycle. Those of us who succumbed, gave everything to the cause. Vocation, family, future, sometimes our lives, sometimes our lives changed forever as we ran to the sound of the guns. Our minds forever conditioned by systems designed to ensure commitment to the needs of the few, the machines, uncaring, pedantic.

To a Soldier’s Life: Soldier life. Exchanging identity for uniformity, profession for vocation. Individuality gives way to cultish adherence, deference, military code, and subscription to superior’s inherent flaws, biases protected from scrutiny, not subject to questioning. Behavioral norms give way, abnormal behaviors abound. Family forsaken, slavish work, training to kill, killing when told. A culture of death and destruction masked by a common theme of doing as your told regardless of the toll it takes on you as a person. A technical life outside of civil society, disdained, despised, hated for the rampant disregard for human life, recognized with bits of metal and strips of ribbon. An oddity amidst a sea of human discourse, necessary, malevolent means to ends controlled by factors to which the soldier responds.

Bavarian Beginning: Nuernberg. Historic alt stadt. A place to begin. Naïve, mindless, gullible misdirection, and eight inch guns. Field work, charge-seven-white-bag, the lanyard pulls sending two-hundred pounds of shrapnel to time on target. The “King of Battle” or so it goes, raining metal death. Cobblestone respite, Tiergarten views, Strassenbahn’s clang, Deutzenteich muse. Bier hall cellar, cold stone arch, turn the golden ring, the Haupt Markt Platz. Christkind zeit, Bavarian delight, booths, smells, costumes, in the holiday light. Birth of a child, now a father and a son. Paternal happiness, ended, by a mad man’s gun. Darkness and despair, a deep dark well, a once bright spirit, into the deep it fell. Our Nuernberg home, forever it will be, the place our life began, despite horrific tragedy.

Arabia (1988): The call came too real, a Persian Gulf war, of tankers attacked, surreal. A low intensity skirmish from Kuwait to the Strait of Hormuz, Earnest Will indeed, Praying Mantis lit a fuze. Sahand and Sabaland, two scourge of the Gulf, after May forever gone. In the heat of July, an aircraft fired upon, the pride of Vincennes, no more, anon. Abu Dhabi, Manama, Muscat. Camel market, gold souk, barren land of rock and heat. The sheikh selling pearl inlaid muskets, curved daggers, and stories of life and family. Silk rug works of art and pistachios from Iran. Perfume permeates the souk while dung heavy dust musk camel market smells, amidst corrals of braying beasts, shroud the P.L.O. café.

Stalemate in Korea: Narrow crowded roads, channeled, mountain peak markers, Imjin and Han. Hand carved tunnel, rock chiseled in chains. Ondol burning, dog flesh hibachis, well tasting after late night soju and beer. The temple grounds, sacred, irreverent seduction of kimchi. Morning mist, low, paddies shrouded, a lone crane gliding across. Sun, burning, turning red, clearing late morning exposing God’s handiwork, punctuated, terraced, flowing from mountain peak to valley floor. Heavily guarded divide, demilitarized militarization. A peninsular island of fear and reckoning unbridged by lack of will. Stalemate! Mounded graves stand sentinel, ancestral lands waiting unity, north with south. Prayers unanswered still, remaining.

Haiti: Across Windward Passage, from Guantanamo Bay, Port au Prince at first light arriving, upon a September day. Anchored by chain, many more on board, a presence on the water, waiting changes upon the shore. 1994, the year we went pursuing, upholding democracy, for the Haitian people to restore. A return in 1995, April of that year, impoverished as it was, Haiti needed more. Sources in the night, money spent in bars, a castle on the mountain, stained glass, island stars. River stone carving, brightly painted scenes, stealing food from humanitarians in Haiti was routine. A body in the street, bathing in a large mud puddle, an open field as commode. The people of Haiti, just ninety minutes from our shores, living in conditions, we can only abhor.

Bosnia: Flying from Tazar across the Sava river. The approach to Sarajevo high and steep, mountain walls framing narrow valleys. Brown, gray, green fir mottle views of villages, or what once were. Suddenly Sarajevo. The crushed cement of the newspaper building. Zetra, skate mark fragments, intact since the Olympics of 1984, criss cross the floor beneath my feet. White posts marking graves blot out the earth, an eerie macabre reminder of death, rolling across sloping hills. Iliza’s springs boiling, Pax Romana, isolated, desolate, explosive fields bounded. Night time controls sinister, peering, at intersections passed. The road to Mostar, past gated cadres, weapons nearby, ready to resume the killing. Street cleaner’s hose washing the dirt of war, a modest attempt at normalcy, alongside the lone street car line. SFOR in, IFOR out as JSTARS flew overhead looking at static airfields, instead of monitoring threats to freedom of movement on the ground where soldiers tread.

The Darkness at Leavenworth: The darkness began as an effort to end bulimia. A prescription pill and eating disorder group therapy with mostly women ran by an emaciated anorexic clinical psychologist named Claudia. The diagnosis of dysthymia followed by a prescription for Paxil. For sure the darkness would end. It only worsened. Amidst the hallowed halls of Bell Hall and classes on tactics, ethics, military law and military history, the darkness led down a path away from family and friends. Writing a Masters’ thesis was hard, challenging – almost discarded by an addiction, an affliction exacerbated by the newly prescribed drug, controlling the most base impulses. It’s chains pulling constantly, interfering with completion of academics and enjoyment of home life alike. The phone call to a long ago memory, failing to do anything but promulgate the fanciful ruse. An injury, a physical that I was no longer an athlete, just a shadow of a scholar, awarded a degree for mastering what I don’t know, in spite of it all. And then came Norfolk.

Three Months of Hell in Norfolk (1998): Leavenworth complete, a short stay in Michigan, then the family to Pennsylvania. Off to Norfolk, an escape as much as anything, but still the darkness followed. Joint classes on War with Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine classmates, our mentor a retired three star. Armed Forces Staff College could barely get me out of bed. A hurricane and trip to the Voodo lounge, young man with pierced nipple, Virginia Beach and the soothing assurance of the Atlantic. A visit to the USS Montgomery – capable of mass destruction on an unprecedented scale. The night in Norfolk when the woman with no name demonstrated to us that our profession was more about humility than arrogance. The crazy beer drinking, party time, at the run down officers’ club with Hawaiian shirts and the Hawaii Five ‘O theme playing, while the petit Air Force Major surfed on the back of the push up Marine. The animated presence of a former JSOC/SOCOM Commander, unable to give more than a one word answer. The purgatory finally ended, back to family and on to Germany – again.

Back to Germany the First Year (1998-1999): September came. Family and pets flew to Franfurt. A van ride to Heidelberg followed by days of admin. A key to a house in Rauenburg, amidst the vinyards. Working with allies, British, Belgian, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Norwegian and Polish. And again the darkness followed. The wanderings, hours long hikes, along paved paths and cobblestones to Mannaberg, a sanctuary for the soul, followed by ice cream at a street side window. The visit to Nuernberg, our old home. Normandy beckoned with thousands of soldier graves, a path to Pont Du Hoc, and Mont St. Michel. The Eiffel Tower soared as driving around the Arch de Triumph posed challenges for the most experienced driver. A ferry ride, then London and the Baden Powell Centre, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens and a visit with Peter Pan, the theater district and “CATS,” followed by a taxi ride from a Sikh. The underground experience at Rupertsweiler, fun at first. The Fishers and a barking Golden Retriever that bit. Ziggy and Spargel, unique. A dreary, weary, routine up Autobahn 6, the weekly briefs, Kosovo and the U-C-K, what was happening and why. A Poet Leader in a time of strife. The unethical ethics of senior officers using soldiers to enrich themselves, a disdain before I have not felt for those in “the profession.” And then the bombing began.

Kosovo (1999): The word came, the bombing of Serbia began. General Clark on secure video ignored by British underlings, Great Britain no longer great, allowing Russians to enter Pristina first. “We are not going to start World War III,” they said, passively, selfishly, giving away control of a vital strategic air head. The ARRC deployed from FYROM, as Macedonia was called, we soon followed after a flight into Skopje. A television station for a headquarters, infested with white mice, on a tall hill, with a view of a tall red and white striped smoke stack belching black-brown burned peat soot and ashe. Night shift with the mice, the morning radio update and a recalcitrant Germany General Staff Officer. At 2:00am a visit to USNIC and an argument over SACEUR promising Kosovo to the Kosovars if they behaved, despite Kosovo being an autonomous province of Serbia. My military career plateaued.

From Dark to Light (1999 – 2000): Unceremoniously returned to Heidelberg from Kosovo because of a disagreement. The US analyst was unapologetically cavalier about US intervention in the land of the Kosovars. Sent back due to character assassination taking place long before arriving in Pristina. The little men of Heidelberg, hiding behind desks, chattering like the small minded minions they were. The time allowed reflection and weekly sessions resulting in discontinuation of Paxil as it amplified rather than alleviated the darkness. I was relegated to biding my time creatively, informed I was not part of the team, finished as an officer. And as suddenly notifications I would be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and the senior Commander in Bosnia wanted me as his Military Assistant. The small minded ones never aptly recovered their credibility with me, as they had none.

Sarajevo: 2000: Lieutenant General Ron Adams asked me to work for him in his capacity as COM SFOR. From February through August of 2000 I served as his senior Military Assistant. Sarajevo, the Butmir complex, after a short period at the Iliza compound. Flying in back of UH60 Cinc Hawk helicopters to remote corners of Bosnia. The Lear jet rides to Vicenza, Italy and Zagreb, Croatia. Meetings with NATO Chiefs of Defense; Bosnian tri-Presidents and their military chiefs; Bosnian Croats – Muslims – Serbs: all united in disunity. The Princes of Butmir, dinners in dark lit Serb restaurants, beer after hours on Butmir; the in office socializing on Friday nights with collapsible shot glasses filled with slivowitz – subjecting some in the morning to misery. Country wide visits, assurances of peace from all including Gucci watch wearing Arab man with neatly trimmed black beard, in a gray cinder block garage meeting with a local Muslim Mufti.

Bosnia (2000): Principals meetings, COM SFOR, OHR, OSCE, UNHCR, UNMIB, ICITAF all together looked good, yet very little moved forward. Children were still killed in abandoned minefields, Muslim women continued in mourning for loved ones killed at Srebrenica, American contractors purchased women as sex slaves at Arizona market, and evil hatred remained between the three Parties to the Conflict. The French DCOM married his busty blonde aide. The humor of the British DCOM OPS kept spirits light. The U.S. Brigadier General who worked as Chief of Operations lacked humor and personality, his departure was a blessing and his relief, Brigadier General Elton Bargewell brought credibility to the position. “Raven” gave the position the stature it needed. The U.S. Congressman in uniform on my phone with his staff in Washington, negotiating backroom legislative compromise from my desk in Bosnia. Wild Bill who’s real exploits will never be fully know. Bosnia.

Germany (2000 – 2001): The last year in Germany, Information Operations and more trips to Rupertsweiler while working for the Dutch Colonel Thom Karremans – the Dutch battalion commander at Srebrenica as husbands, fathers and sons were butchered. NATO School SHAPE in Oberammergau with late night drinking and an introduction to Grappa; Brunsum, Netherlands and a nearby cheese market with wheels of gouda; Naples, my German office mate’s mastery of the Russian language on the tram in Naples speaking to a stranger gave me pause, and, Livorno, Italy with visits to Firenza, Piza, and Rome. A small café outside the fortress walls in Naples gave a spectacular view of the bay. Carrera marble, white as snow, quarries squared along narrow winding dirt roads. One last trip to Kandersteg. Rauenberg hiking continued, Tiergarten Schnitzel the size of a plate. Our Son’s Golden Glove award for MVP at his youth baseball championship, and solitary tear at the news of losing his Pap as his brother howled. Friends made, friends gone.

Carlisle (2001 – 2004): Miraculously, somehow an assignment to the Army War College teaching national security strategy, nearby to Mary’s mother. My care-giver wife, meticulous, attentive, devoted. She served her father as a private nurse in his last days. Now she served her dying mother. The suicide attempt was hardest. Soon after a false alarm brought the family together. Finally Gram died, perhaps helped by a kind nurse giving morphine to end the pain. A murder in the home next door, heard but not seen by our oldest. Suzy Bartlett’s life was a bizarre mix of public deceit while internally raging at her children. She was a whore who abused her children, as men left the back door of her house satisfied. The teaching, the students, Eagle Scout projects and a new house first time owned. A New Year’s Eve call and a second Masters degree. Three years a blurr.

The Africa Years (2004 – 2006): An assignment at the United Nations, Portfolio: Sudan (both South Sudan and Darfur). Living in Brooklyn, express bus commute. The twenty-second floor of one of the, if not the, most recognized building in the world. Summoned by partners, Swedish, Danish, Pakistani, to explain, provide, details of what was needed in two very different regions of the same country, one the size of France. Travel to Addis Ababa, working with the African Union. My time with Henry Anyidoho, I listened to Romeo Dalaire, and used Mamadou Khan’s phone. Then on to Khartoum and the United Nations Mission in Sudan, followed by flights to and around Darfur, over endless miles of sand and hundreds of burned villages, where the African Union Mission in Sudan took a stand. Time in El Fasher with a murderous police chief, Tine the end of the earth just a stone’s throw away in Chad, El Geneina and leaking fuel fixed by Ukranian pilots unable to speak with us, Nyala and Kalma Camp growing and growing, a meeting with rebels in a remote wadi of north Darfur a diplomat’s camera with immodest scenes of a half naked African woman. Life changing, as a technical advisor, nothing more. The RoadHouse chicken was good, but malaria was bad. I watched the hedge hogs dance their circle dance under the full moon of an early Darfur morning. Brahimi’s admonishment not to expect the expected, it would take time, a realist if there ever was one. I wanted more, to stop the bloodshed in Darfur, my work with AMIS unfinished. The State Department’s Sudan Programs Group, London, Paris, Ottawa, all sought to impose their will. The German Muslim during Ramadan. A piece of chicken for Thanksgiving in Khartoum followed by notification of no more promotions. A bad choice, suffice to say at times I thought was right. I opted out to stay in. Security Council briefs, the plan for Darfur, UNMIS and UNAMID deploy, Darfur remains and South Sudan burns. I miss Angela.

Leaving New York (2006): I took an apartment for a week preparing to depart the UN. Kazia Sperling, a Polish Jew, Shipped to Siberia as a girl, escaped to Uganda during the War years never to return to her homeland. I wrote Poet and the Painter in her small studio apartment, a place I felt so comfortable in. I left her there, on a street corner, steps from the sub-way. She wanted me to stay, to come back. I could not, would not, the unknowns were too frightening and my sons too important. She implored me, and I lied that I would. I came home, stayed, retired from the Army and had a party instead. I saw her late that year in a cold empty room from my childhood. I would never be hers, never. My life’s direction now changed. Back to Carlisle to work, to my family, to feel and to see. Was there anything more worth doing than what I had already done? The memories of New York and Africa haunt me still.

Back to Carlisle ( 2006 – 2007): The Peacekeeping Stability Operations Institute, working doctrine for peacekeeping: the UN’s doctrine for peacekeeping; NATO’s doctrine for peacekeeping working with DCDC in Shrivenham; JCOM and the US Joint Operations Environment and questions to Petraeus about militias. US, UK, CA, AS quadrilateral consultations on how to engage the C-34 without any understanding of how DPKO works internally. A flight to Rome, then Turin for consultations with the Italian Army Center of Excellence for Post Conflict Operations. Amazing fish dinner in Turin, at night, on a large round crust filled with tantalizing flavors, followed by Limoncello and visits to bars. Afterward, Vicenza and the Italian Carbinieri Center of Excellence for Stability Police Operations. A short visit and then on to Venice and a flight to the UK. Driving in Britain, pub grub, and a happenstance meeting with a British Army Major most likely MI-5. A golf course hotel and more work on the doctrine of peace with the Americans. Eric graduates high school, the most important thing that year.

Carlisle (2007 – 2009): The Center for Strategic Leadership, Information in Warfare Group, strategic communication the focus, editing a student anthology. The misfit Professor with her doom and gloom prognosis that the sky was falling, her bullshit elective a waste of time, my time, but perhaps a respite for her students. The Mass Atrocity Response Operations Project beckoned from Harvard University, how could I say no. Then the Preventing Genocide Project, Albright and Cohen, again how could I say no. A trip to Dublin, Ireland where Mary did 26.2, and I did nearly as much chasing her that day. A glass of Guinness and a kiss of the Blarney Stone, its legendary gift of eloquence still chasing me all these years. A trip to Geneva, Switzerland for Harvard and the Security Manager’s Initiative at the Geneva Center for Security Cooperation. Men on horseback galloping up cobblestone streets climbing stone stairs with their steeds, as cannons boomed and hot vegetable soup was served. A conference in Monterey, at the Naval Post Graduate School, the Joint Information Programs Office run by CIA. I created a web site for my boss to blog, I called it DIME: Information as Power and got the Army’s Civilian Superior Service award on my way back to PKSOI. Austere Challenge in Grafenwohr, Germany was just that. A General nearly sent us all home, not that it would have mattered. Finally back to Vicenza to conference with United States Army Africa and a decision to leave the Army behind.

2009 – 2012: Training at QT introduced me to my new endeavor. Jim Monroe was a classmate. I liked him a lot. He was a walking encyclopedia of everything Rock and Roll, and could not let go that West Virginia became a State. He died recently, and I will always remember him for the way he cracked me up. Cat is an artist, I love her work. I hear from others from time to time. My job, my people, a variety of capabilities, we get the job done, which in itself is a small miracle given how many things we address each and every day. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings…as I know there will be a surprise.