Over the years I have been injured hundreds if not thousands of times. Some, the follies of youth, inevitable outcomes of sports and the side effects of training in the military. In fact, I think I caused more long-term injury to myself running around in full kit, usually with a ruck on while being yelled at by an NCO. At least that’s what my knees and back tell me. It…
Working in Intelligence you learn that 100% success, predictability or perfection in assessing is not possible. So over the years I have learned to stop and evaluate my assessment, plan or progress regularly. I did this to make critical adjustments, identify changes in the battle space, enjoy the successes or laugh about some of the mistakes along the road before I had to cry. These evaluations have made me a…
Shortly after I got back from my one year tour in Korea, I passed the one year mark of active duty service. My wife and I went out to dinner, because it was her anniversary as much as it was mine. You see we had been married 6 years when I joined and already had 3 children, so we all but signed the contract together. Looking back at that dinner…
As an Intelligence professional the work was never done, because another question, answer, due out, crisis or critical moments are always looming over the horizon. So when you complete one task it always led to dozens of others. The same can be said for the work here on LFV’s Urban farm. The last 2 weeks have been full of summer harvesting, preserving and reseeding. As well as the occasional project…
As a child one of my favorite movies was Time Bandits. It may have been the chaotic nature of the film or the idea of jumping through time itself was so satisfying. Of course the off hand crazy characters that the former Monty Python included definitely helped. As an adult I have found the chaotic nature of the small actors amazing. Unfortunately, I have had to many run ins with…
The why and how someone joins the military is different for each individual. Of the thousands of Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Coasties, or as they are commonly known, Ground pounders, Taxi drivers, Crayon eaters, Chair sitters and Puddle pirates I have heard almost as many versions of enlistment stories. To include: I had nothing better to do; I got bored living in the basement; this was going to be…
In January 2007, I got off the plane in Baghdad Iraq having returned from my 2 week leave excited to get back to work. After getting off the bus on base I started to walk to my unit HQ, bags in hand, to get my weapon and get a back brief from my NCO on what fell through the cracks in my absence. When out of no where, I was…
When I was finishing the last few days of Warrant Officer Candidate School over 10 years ago, we had some of the most fascinating classes. All the classes were given by CW3s and CW4s and they were fascinating because of there succinctness and directness. One of the classes was on skills you must master to be a great Warrant Officer. I was reminded of this class during a 5 day…
In the last 17 years of military service, I have see lots of updates to programs or doctrine. Some have been good like the counter insurgency doctrinal changes and the bad like the gender neutral PT test that failed over 50% of all females so had to be illuminated. For us most of them have revolved around spacing or planting guidelines for next year. The most interesting we have written…
Over the years both as a soldier and a Warrant Officer, I have had to start over again and again. Whether that was due to reassignment, change of mission, or change of command problem is the same, new people, new, place , new mission. As a soldier I did my best to read, study and follow orders to become a productive as possible. I relied on the knowledge of my…
