Soldiers may be required to walk 12 miles with combat gear including boots, L.C.E., helmet and 40-pound ruck sack. Do I have any medical condition that prevents me from doing so? If no, skip to question 23, if yes, do I have any medical condition which would prevent me from walking eight miles with boots, L.C.E. and helmet, no equipment?

Do I have any medical condition that prevents me from doing three- to five-second rushes under direct or indirect fire?

I think: Does sanity count?

(Read more from opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)

It’s difficult to write about Ukraine without writing about history, and it’s difficult to write about Ukrainian history and still leave room for anything else. I want to write a travel essay.

My parents were encouraged to visit Ukraine in the 1970s after a friend of theirs did so and suffered only a long interrogation by Soviet agents. The lady happened to run a hotel in New York’s Catskill Mountains, and her interrogators revealed their knowledge even of the price of pierogies at her hotel’s restaurant. (Read more at GoNomad.com)

Something Worth Fighting For

A colonel once advised me to never, ever, under any circumstances feel like I’m pulling one over on the Army. We were friends despite his higher rank, and I had been struggling with a form DD 1351-2 to be reimbursed two bucks a day for laundry expenses.

“The Army is very good at treating you the way a juicer treats a lemon,” he went on. “You need to make yourself the juicer, and let the Army be the lemon.” This philosophy was easy to adopt.

It was summer, 2007 and I had just reluctantly returned to uniform after a few years of civilian life for a third combat tour . . . . (Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)

Yes, I’ve used this title before.

I’m honor to be participating in the NY Time’s homefires blog:

LIFE LESSONS

I’m occasionally asked what I’ve learned from my experiences in the military.

My responses, particularly before my third tour, have always involved leadership, confidence, knowledge of myself and of people in general. This hasn’t changed. I remain grateful.

Sometimes I feel the pressure of expectation to cast myself as a victim of my experiences, but in truth, I think I’ve benefited from them.

The Army, and especially the infantry, gives its junior leaders tremendous responsibility. The rough world of the 82nd Airborne Division was a steep learning curve for me, a freshly minted lieutenant accustomed to the studious habits of Stanford University, of its School of Engineering, no less. I learned an awful lot and, I think, emerged a better person.

More recently, I’ve realized some of my beliefs have formed so slowly and subtly that their learning has been entirely unappreciated. I’ve learned that no matter what, life goes on — it’ll do so with or without any one of us — and I’ve found a measure of respect for selfishness; for people who look out for themselves and their lives yet to come. This is surely cynical.

If there’s redemption in the selfishness, it has to do with loving life, with respecting yourself enough not to end your days prematurely or in futile pursuits. Yes, I said it. Somewhere between my second and third tours, I came to believe that our foreign, undeclared wars flaunted our Constitution and made us less safe — from terrorism, from debt and from tyranny at home. Believing this wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t help it. Without faith in our military endeavors, my long-held notions about duty, heroism and fighting the good fight didn’t survive long.

I think you’re only a hero for as long as your image is useful. . . . (Read more from nytimes.com)

Now that I’m published in the NY Times, am I still allowed to complain about the media?

We canoed the Upper Iowa, and spent most of the first day floating and fishing from the canoe. We’d cast into the dark deep swirls in bends behind rapids.

This was ideal. Where there were no such spots, we cast where little creeks flowed into the Upper Iowa, or behind fallen trees, or into deep spots.

When possible, we cast upstream, and pulled our lures down toward us ahead of the current, so they’d wiggle in the water. I caught the first fish, which was a joke. It was barely double the size of the lure. An ambitious little guy.

In places, the river was wide and no more than eight inches deep all the way across, the surface rippling over the stony bottom. Now and then, the canoe dragged, and we pushed against the bottom with our paddles.
(Read more from gonomad.com)

In their March/April 2009 edition (online), STANFORD Magazine published this brief essay, a rebuttal to my own perspective, Email from Iraq, from five years earlier.

“. . . . I have not been victimized by my military experiences, or by the Army. Claiming so is such a common refrain among veterans I’ve been tempted to adopt it, simply because it would require less explanation. In truth, I’ve benefited from my experiences. I have no complaints about pay, though I would likely have done better following through with my long-forgotten computer science degree. I haven’t suffered from shortages in benefits or care, though I don’t doubt others have. I enjoy the respect and credibility veterans seem to get for free and entirely independent of their competence. I’ve made many friends, and got to bear witness to that mysterious and heavily mythologized thing called combat. The great responsibilities I’d been entrusted with—leading men in combat as a platoon leader, preparing paratroopers as a jumpmaster, serving as a diplomat with Iraqi councilmen or Afghan tribal leaders—taught me much about myself and about people.

I think the breadth and depth of these responsibilities overwhelmed my perceptions when I wrote “E-mail from Iraq.” To me, now, it reads like war propaganda—a demonstration of the goodwill, energy and character of war’s participants, while beckoning the reader to ignore how we got there. . . .” (Read more at STANFORD Magazine)

From the Lava Tower, we began a two-and-a-half day traverse of Kili’s southern slope. That afternoon, we descended to the beautiful Baranco camp, with steep cliffs on either side of the broad valley, the snows of Kilimanjaro peaking through the clouds behind us, and villages glimmering through the blue haze on the distant plane to our front.

Cartoon-like trees called Senecio Kilimanjari in my guide book stood throughout the valley.

The porters, who’d walked directly from Shira to Baranco, had already set up camp. They rested in their crowded little tents or stood with hands in their pockets, joking with one another.

I was lucky. My body adjusted well to walking and altitude and I had been wondering if it wouldn’t be truer to the spirit of adventure to carry my own tent, food, fuel, but I quickly grew accustomed to the luxury porters provide.

My only task upon arrival at camp was unzipping the door of the tent they had pitched, pulling some belongings from my pack, and waiting for the assistant cook to summon me in his broken English to dinner. (Read more from GoNomad.com)

Also, see more photos here.