Letters to the Editor

Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado
May 24, 2007


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On war, weapons and shields
Dear Editor,

I first want to express my thanks to the sons of both Joyce Holman and Kristi Nicholls for their service to our nation during its most trying time of this generation. I empathize with the feelings expressed in their letters of May 8th and 10th. I am both awed and respectful of Sgt. Holman's spirit and would love to hear first-hand the feelings of Ms. Nicholls' son, as I am always wary of making judgments based on second-hand information.

As a parent, soldier, and a veteran of the current conflicts, I want to word this carefully out of respect for the anxiety and trepidation of these parents.

Personal body armor is designed for protection against small arms fire, and all soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have it. This means that they have the ballistic plates, otherwise it is not armor, but merely a fabric vest. In some cases, the enhanced plates are not issued until troops reach staging areas near Iraq, as it makes distribution more effective. This was not the case in 2003-4, and some troops bought armor at personal expense for which reimbursement has been offered. Personally procured body armor is no longer authorized to prevent the use of inferior and defective body armor, to include Dragon Skin.

Losing soldiers to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) is preventable, but not through technological means as Ms. Nicholls states. All HUMMWVs that travel the roads of Iraq are armored, some more heavily than others; but as the armor increases, so does the lethality of IEDs. While prudence demands the use of armor against smaller, more easily-identified threats, bombs that leave swimming-pool-sized holes will defeat not only the best-armored HUMMWVs, but Strykers and tanks as well.

The race between better weapons and better shields will always be won by the weapon. See both www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/jungle-law.htm and http://bdelapla.typepad.com/firepowerforward.

The key to prevention lies in avoidance. That solution is ultimately political, and the responsibility for its implementation lies with all of us.

Brian Delaplane

Mehlingen, Germany

"Are you an assassin?"

"I'm a soldier."

"You're neither.  You're an errand boy sent by a grocer to collect a bill."

-Apologies to Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen

Okay, so it wasn't quite Apocalypse Now and I-95 isn't exactly the Dong Nai river, but as we load all the Red Storm Battalion cadets into busses and vans and pointed them towards central New Jersey you definitely got the feeling that we were leaving civilization behind us and heading in to the heart of Darkness.  Things worked out much better for us than they did for Martin Sheen or even Joseph Conrad's protaginist.  We descended on Ft. Dix in the middle of the night, left our mark for the next 2 days, and then disappeared like smoke in the wind.

The MSIIIs got their first taste of the field environment under the tutilage of MAJ Hamner and MSG  Nathan while a great many of the MS Is and IIs got their first taste of a field environment period. 

The weather held out for us while all the cadets zeroed and fired the M-16, rceived l and navigation classes, rappelled, and worked through scenarios on the Field Leadership Reaction Course.

A good overall weekend and the challenges for the cadets will just inrease from here.

Flipping through the Sunday paper this morning, I suddenly confronted by a ghost from the past.  In an article in Newsday titled "No 'Ordinary Life' in Iraq" was this picture.  Tyler was one of my cadets at St. Bonaventure when I taught there as a captain in the late 90's.

Getting ready for the Fall FTX, the Freshmen and Sophomore cadets learn the basics of rappelling during the September 13th leadership lab.

View the complete photo album from the link on the left.

I have a hand towel in my office emblazoned with a Denver Bronco logo that boldly declares "I Helped Move the Thunder".  The Denver Broncos played at the old Mile High Stadium through the first 40 years of their existence.  The upper decks of Mile High was comprised of an all metal structure that was unceremoniously stuck on top of the concrete lower decks during the stadiums expansion back in the 60s.  The result was that when the 40,000 or so Broncomaniacs who filled the upper decks got excited, they would begin stomping their feet on the metal flooring and the resonating cacophony would be deafening.  The noise came to be known as "Mile-High Thunder".

When Denver's new stadium was built, there was a very strong sentiment from the old faithful to not sell corporate naming rights and keep the old "Mile High" name.  Of course, money won out in the end and the mutual fund company who bought the naming rights made the token of effort of calling the house that John built "Invesco Field at Mile High".  Trying to build goodwill amongst the old faithful, Invesco distributed the towels that declared "I Helped Move the Thunder" to all fans who entered the stadium to see the Broncos play their first game at Invesco field.

I attended that game, a Monday night contest with the New York Giants. A Bronco win, a national TV audience, a gorgeous Rocky Mountain night; although the old thunder was missing , it was pretty much everything that could be asked for from a Bronco fan other than Denver's Ed McCaffery going down hard in the 3rd quarter.  The Bronco's performance was decent and their prospects for the season looked good although Eddie Mac was a vital part of the offense and we would have to wait until the next day for the full analysis. 

I took my towel and followed the crowd out of the stadium relishing my small part in a bit of sports history.  It was a wonderful experience with the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of a big sporting event swirling into the excitement of a gorgeous new facility.  It was a night grounded with hope, steeped in history, and decorated with the glitz and glamor of NFL football.  There have been many days since that I have longed to turn back the clock and re-live that night again and again.  It was September 10th, 2001.

This morning as I made my way onto the Grand Central Parkway in Queens I listened to the radio's non-stop coverage of the 9/11 memorial events complete with 6 moments of silence at the times when hundreds or thousands of Americans were taken from us 6 years ago (go ahead, count them, there are six).  I couldn't escape the irony of the fact that six years ago I had turned on the radio on the way to work expecting nothing worse than bad news about Ed McCaffery's leg only to hear that life as I knew it was slipping away.  Now here, 2000 days, six moves, and many tears later, fate brings me to the epicenter of those events that ripped the normalcy from our lives.

I silently weep for the naivete and innocence that was taken from us that day, and I curse those who preach an ideology of hatred focused upon us.  It angers me to know that the seismic waves that resonated from this epicenter in 2001 uprooted us from the security of our home and have carried across the world and back but it angers me even more to see the lack of changes that have occurred here. 

There was a short period after 9/11 when I still carried on my life as a civilian, a time before I was mobilized by the Army Reserve which led to me returning to the Regular Army.  It was during this brief time akin to that pause between the flash of the lightning and the roar of the thunder, that my civilian job brought me to Lower Manhattan where I sat in a meeting gazing out the 17th floor window into the hole of ground zero.  Seeing my distraction, my host took me to an even higher floor where I could get an even better grasp of the catastrophic effects of that day, at this time, less than a year removed.  She recounted the events from her perspective, the shock of the second plane strike, the numbness, seeing people falling from the towers, rooftops littered with bodies, streets clogged with emergency vehicles as firefighters and first responders fought their way into the towers, the pandemonium following the collapse of the south tower; it was the closest description I could imagine of absolute terror.

When I left her building on lower Broadway that day, I walked around the small chapel across the street from ground zero, all but obscured by the banners and photos.  There was a silence and reverence all around which even the ever present street vendors seemed to honor.  In October 2003 as I was preparing to ship to Germany, I visited another friend at the World Financial Center across the street from ground zero.  A huge banner hung from the abandoned Deutsche Bank building testifying to the spirit of perseverance.  There was still an air of respect but the more prominent theme was hope and rebuilding.  Today, that spirit seems to have dissipated.  As Pam and walked the area a few weeks ago those themes seem to have degraded into an annoyance at the disruptions and inconveniences and a frustration as to why we haven't returned to our September 10th lives.  That annoyance and frustration seems to be pacified by iPhones, Starbucks, and street vendors with knock off Gucci bags.  The banners are gone.

Pam was visibly upset that evening as we rode the train back towards Long Island.  The events that occurred at this place violently stole her life away from her.  They forced her to move back and forth across the country and across the world, she lived in a foreign land where she attributed their indifference to the fact that 9/11 hadn't happened to them.  She has seen her family torn from her and dissipated across the globe, more than one directly into harm's way.  Her work was taken from her, other people are living in her home and here, where those events should matter to people most, people seemed callously indifferent and annoyed at inconveniences that seem trivial from her perspective.

While I lament the loss of the life we had and would trade all I have to bring that life back, I consider myself fortunate in some small ways.  I am thankful that I have lived in and experienced the Muslim culture that has been wrongly vilified because some of it's fringes have been bastardized by extremists.  I am fortunate to have lived in Europe and found that the, contrary to popular belief, they do not categorically hate Americans.  Mostly I am fortunate to have found myself in a position where I can not only make a difference today, but shape the future.

These things pass through my mind as I drive to work this morning, and I think of that towel in my office reminding me that "I Helped Move the Thunder".  I think of the officers that I have commissioned and the cadets that we train at the Red Storm Battalion.  I think of the battalion motto "Stormbringers".  Tomorrow morning as I make the drive in the morning darkness, I will be guided by two towers of light emanating from lower Manhattan, and I will think of Kurt Russel's line from Tombstone, "You called down the thunder, well now you've got it."