I think that what I have to say may be misunderstood in the emotional atmosphere surrounding today's activities.  So let me start by saying that I am a red-blooded American boy;  my flag flew today on the front of my house, I went to church, I prayed for those who lost someone to that terrible day, I support our war efforts to eradicate the jihadist threat, I mourn and feel and bleed and I have backed it all up with twenty-six years of my own life.  Having said all t...

  I am sure that this weekend will be filled with serious articles about remembering 9/11 and all that.  And that is as it should be.  But in the vein of not letting the terrorists win, I have a challenge for you.  I have found that kids see humor a little differently than adults do.  Especially three to five year olds.  They hear someone tell a joke and they see the reaction it gets and they want in but they don't get the idea of misdirection or nuance that ...

  It was the end of February, 1969.  We were preparing for a full layout inspection in the company and to top it all off, I had Staff Duty NCO that night, meaning I would be sitting up all night watching the battalion sleep...I hoped.   I got a message to report to the First Sergeant and the messenger said that the First Sergeant was MAD.  I thought I knew what it was about.  Anyone who has had a German Shepherd knows they shed.  A lot.  Try as I might...

  My first gunnery rotation to Grafenwohr was October 1965.  We were billeted in concrete barracks in an area designated as "Normandy".  We slept in our sleeping bags on cots;  heat was provided by wood-burning stoves, and for a "field exercise" it was preferable to sleeping in the  Bavarian woods in October.  It didn't matter to me much;  I was a fuel truck driver so most of my time was not spent in Normandy, it was spent on the firing ranges refueling ...

  Just a little military flag etiquette for the uninitiated.  On US military bases all over the world (except in certain Arab nations), the US flag is raised around sunup and brought down again near sunset.  When the flag is raised in the morning, it is accompanied by a bugle call named "Reveille".  If a soldier (or any other service member;  I will stick with the Army for convenience) is outdoors when the bugle starts to sound "Reveille", he comes to attention, faces...

  Late summer around the Monterey Penninsula is best described as "sultry".  The mornings are cool and foggy and a damp sea smell permeates everything;  the air is heavy and feels thick.  As the sun burns the fog away, the temperature climbs into the high seventies to low eighties.  The fog melts and the air becomes thinner and easier to breathe, but still feels slightly damp.  The sun is bright and not quite strong enough to sting the bare skin;  but warmin...

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/11/military-budget-recommendations-retirement- cuts-111710w/ I shouldn't write about stuff when I am angry...but...this morning's news and recent articles in print news have me in knots.  Gotta write to vent.  The above link says it all, or almost all.  The politicians have spent us into a corner;  we are bombarded with "news" stories about the terrible things that will happen if we don't borrow more...

  It was Sunday night after a long and exhausting weekend.  We agreed to meet back at Randolph Park after we dropped the girls back at the dorm;  they had to make bedcheck by 11 pm.  There were some guys at the Park who may have needed a lift back to Huachuca.  Vern picked up our traditional six-pack on the way.  When we got to the park, all the rides had been settled and a few of the guys were just hangin' in the midnight heat, smokin' and jokin', sw...

  In previous articles I have written about how MamaCharlie and I met.  It was a blind date arranged by her roommate, Cathy.  Cathy was MC's roommate in Arizona Hall, a dorm at the University of Arizona.  I met Cathy one night when I needed a ride.  My little GTO was kept in the shop and there I was, more than 70 miles from Fort Huachuca with no wheels.  I knew that one of my buddies from Huachuca was dating a girl at the U of A and he had mentioned the dorm ...

  I woke up this morning to the chirping of my alarm clock.  Trash day.  I went through three snooze button cycles before I forced myself to sit up and start getting dressed.  Like every morning, I sat there taking a short inventory of sensations:  lower back pain still there, ankles and knees and wrists and thumbs all flaming with arthritis, headache behind the eyes, blood pressure up, blood sugar too high, and obviously, a shower should be considered soon.  I t...

  Anyone who spends any time in the service will have a story or two about the quirky, weird, and unusual people they run into there.  When young men join the military,  many times it is the first time they are away from their own little worlds.  They are thrown into a microcosm of American society, suddenly faced with people they would never have had anything to do with otherwise.  So what seems quirky, weird, and unusual to a lad from Iowa may seem perfectly normal ...

  DID I MENTION JOHN WAS BIG??  Big and baggy and both hands in his pockets...that's my John. When I wrote that last piece about fairness and the military, one soldier kept popping into my mind. My first contact with John was observing him during a training session. The training had to do with the care and maintenance of the M-60 machine gun. The platoon had four M-60s laid out on tarps on the ground. As I came up on the group, they were disassembliin...

Lunch at Chili's...Southwest Eggrolls, Santa Fe sizzlin' Quesadillos. ( By the way, adding cilantro to something doesn't automatically qualify it to be called "Santa Fe" or "Monterey" or "Southwest".  I don't like cilantro).  Anyway,  while we were eating, MamaCharlie pointed a woman out to me, discreetly of course, and I casually glanced over my left shoulder and, discreetly, spewed some precious eggroll onto my shirt.  She was seated a couple of t...

    In the late sixties the war in Vietnam had begun to wear down the Army's retention program.  Pay was still embarassingly low and lots of Army-trained tradesmen found they could do better on the outside...and no one was shooting at them (unless they lived in Detroit or East LA).  The Army started coming up with pay incentives to keep folks around.  One of the extra pay opportunities was based on an annual test of each soldier.  Each MOS (Mili...

I don't know what is going on. I try to post an article here and it shows up about three pages wide! I don't see how to adjust the margins. Any help?