Mark's blog

2010-03-02T17:28:00.001-08:00

I was going through some stuff in the basement a few months back and found some photos from Somalia. So here goes a little stream-of-consciousness rambling on Somalia. I'll add a few photos when I get time.

Seventeen years ago, I was a newly-married 23 year-old helicopter crew chief in the U.S. Army. I’d done a two year tour in Germany as a Cobra crew chief and was sent back to school to learn the systems of the newer Black Hawk. Pretty good timing – Black Hawk school started in October 1990, and ended in January ’91. By the time I got to my next assignment, the Gulf War was winding down. Instead of being deployed to the desert, I spent the first couple of months of ’91 painting empty barracks while the rest of the 101^st Airborne Division was still in Iraq/Kuwait. Not much else for a helicopter mechanic to do when all the helicopters are gone.

The luck ran out a couple of years later, though. I was deployed to Somalia in April, 1993. It’s strange – in a way, it was almost a relief to be deployed. All we did in the Army was train, train, train. Training missions during the day, training missions at night. Sling load training, air gunnery training, field exercises… it was never-ending. The prospect of doing something real was quite invigorating in a way.

We flew to Somalia – about 90 of us from B Company, 5^th battalion, 101^stAirborne Div., if I remember correctly… Black Hawk crew chiefs & pilots, mostly – on a Sun Country Airlines charter. Stopped in Ireland to refuel, then on to Cairo where we were told to pull the window shades down while we were on the tarmac. Then off to sunny Mogadishu, right on the Indian Ocean, and not very far from the equator. We spent the night sleeping on the concrete floor of what was left of the airport parking garage, then drove a couple of hours inland to Baledogle the next day. The sand of Mogadishu gave way to the red soil of Baledogle, the steady ocean breeze slowing to a stifling stillness.

The temperature rose about twenty degrees, up to around 115F. The first example of African wildlife I saw was a green mamba which darted under the wooden pallet flooring of the tent I was about to enter. Not exactly comforting. We spent the next few days doing not much of anything but sitting in shorts & t-shirts with damp rags on our heads & drinking gallons of water. I learned to cover my water bottle with a wet sock to keep it cool. It’s hard to believe that a few months later I’d be wearing a parka at night to keep warm – in 70 or 80 degrees.

Baledogle was teeming with wildlife, all of it fascinating, and much of it quite nasty. Camel spiders skittered across the floor. Tiny brown scorpions less than an inch long and big black scorpions the size of a large boot. Lizards which would crawl up the walls of our makeshift wooden shower stall. Giant tortoises. Six-foot termite mounds. Snakes of all sizes & colors, the scariest of which was that sleek green mamba I already mentioned. When you went to sleep in Baledogle, you carefully tucked your mosquito net under yourself. I took an extra precaution by duct taping the thing down.

I didn’t fly much in Baledogle – I wasn’t assigned as a crew chief while we were there – so I stayed on the ground & fixed broken helicopters. Didn’t get to see much.

After about a month, we were told to pack up & head to Mogadishu. Apparently Baledogle was getting rather shaky, security-wise, so we were consolidating with the U.N. on the coast. Fine with me. What wasn’t fine was that first we got to pack up a bunch of large tents which had been there for a good six months at least (we took over for another unit which had headed home). The flooring all had to be pulled up, too, exposing all kinds of the aforementioned wildlife.

I didn’t fly back to Mogadishu – I drove a 5-ton truck with various ladders & aircraft maintenance work platforms in the back. No M-16; just a 9mm pistol for protection. I’m trying to recall the ride. Try not to stop, I was told… which was difficult because we were part of a sizeable convoy which kept spreading out & bunching up, accordion-style. We were stopping all the time. Not many people around, though, until we got to Mogadishu. I remember some kids throwing rocks at us. I also remember stopping in a jam at a traffic circle smack in the middle of Mogadishu, looking around and thinking that we were sitting ducks if anyone wanted to take out some American soldiers. Some kids ran up to the truck in front of me, opened up the jack compartment, took the jack, tools, etc., from the inside and fled.

I remember the smell – it was a burnt, ugly smell. Huts made of plastic bags stretched over sticks. Emaciated people sitting by the side of the road, some amputees, some dead. People wearing simple clothes, often just one piece of fabric wrapped around them. When it rained – and it rained torrentially at times – they’d take off their clothes, stomp them in a puddle to launder them, and put them back on.

Our home was Mogadishu airport, right by the beach. A hangar with no roof (they added one within a month of our arrival), and a tent city right next door. About 8 of us to a tent. My first job was to repair a helicopter which ‘browned out’ upon landing in Mogadishu. The pilot lost sight of the ground as the sand rose around him, and he put the Black Hawk down hard. The main rotors flexed down so far they hit the tail rotor driveshaft (you don’t have to be a rotor-head to know that’s not supposed to happen). I seem to remember that we had to replace the entire tail rotor drive chain – driveshafts, gearboxes… and the main rotor tip caps & spindles. At least it was about 20 degrees cooler here, and breezy (esp. in a hangar with no roof).

The bugs were much more tolerable in Mogadishu. The breeze kept them at bay. We didn’t even sleep with mosquito netting. The only snake I saw there was a dead one. No scorpions. Some camel spiders, and a few cats & dogs. A new pest, though, was the RPG. Old Russian rocket-propelled grenades. The Somalis would fire them towards us at night. Some went off, some didn’t. The closest one came to me was in the middle of the night when it took out a generator about 20 feet from our tent. An incredible BOOM and a fireball which scared the shit out of us but thankfully did no worse than that.

I flew much more in Mogadishu, as I was assigned to an aircraft after the ‘brownout’ bird was fixed. I mostly flew with Chris – another crew chief. We doubled as door gunners. We’d go up, head out over the Indian Ocean & test-fire the M-60s before heading back inland for our ‘Eyes Over Mog’ mission. We had to wear heavy armor chest plates & the floor of the helicopter was armor blanketed. We’d fly with the doors open, pretty low over hotspots such as the market, the old soap factory, and a couple of other places I can’t remember now. We’d fly so low over the market that every now & then a corrugated roof would fly off.

Every now & then we’d spot guns, and sometimes even a good-size gun mounted in the back of a pickup truck. They’d often disappear just as soon as we spotted them.

The RPGs were aimed at the helicopters, too. I remember being in the hangar & seeing a beer-can sized hole in the stabilator (rear flight control) of a Black Hawk. An RPG had gone right through it without detonating.

Flying doors-off, close to the ground (nap of the earth – NOE – it’s called) is really exhilarating. Even in a combat zone. Especially when you’re 23 and don’t realize the gravity of the situation you’re in. Chris wired his walkman up to the intercom system & bingo – we had our own in-flight entertainment. Suicidal Tendencies’ The Art of Rebellion was a favorite. Alice In Chains’ Dirt was another. I think I listened to that cassette every day while I was in Somalia.

Speaking of music, I also remember sneaking away and sitting on some rocks, facing out to the vast Indian Ocean and listening to Quadrophenia.

Seeing the people and the living conditions, I was obviously empathetic. I felt awful for these people and wanted to help. But having them shoot at us, and throw rocks at us – even the kids threw rocks at us – dulled the empathy. I volunteered to go to an orphanage to give inoculations to the kids one day, probably around June. We were sitting in the back of a 5-ton truck, baking in the sun, waiting to go out, when BOOM. A hummer ahead of us was blown in half by an IED buried in the road. Then the Somalis opened fire on the wreckage. Four soldiers dead. Our trip was canceled. We didn’t drive in Mogadishu again.

Things got worse in a hurry. About 20 Pakistani soldiers were killed & mutilated. We started going after the warlord General Aidid. We had a mission one day where a couple of Cobras fired upon a house where a top-level Aidid meeting was being held, and then we dropped a couple loads of troops on the ground to see who they could round up. This house was a large, beautiful white house – well, it’d been beautiful at one time. Mogadishu was pretty ravaged by the time we got there since it’d been through a civil war, and many of the original residents had fled.

The house was reduced to smoking, bullet-ridden ruins. Aidid got away.

Pretty soon four AC-130 Spectre gunships arrived at the airport and started flying night missions, hitting various targets. We’d do damage assessments the following day. It was amazing to see the accuracy of the hits. Aidid had a radio station & the Spectres took out the generator room in one building. The rest of the building was intact. The generator room – about 20 feet square – was demolished.

The Spectres would fly low & slow, often shooting from over the sea. We’d hear them fire while we were laying in our cots, then we’d hear the rounds hit their targets. When they went after arms caches, we’d often hear secondary explosions. The first night the Spectres fired, I freaked out & got everybody up because I thought we were being attacked. I heard loud booms from the friendly side of the airport. Didn’t know it was the Spectre firing.

Some nights the sky would light up with tracers from machine gun fire. The Somalis in the city would just point in our general direction & start shooting. We’d return fire from our sandbagged fighting positions if we could find a target. One night we were in a pretty hellacious fire fight when all of a sudden a line of BIG tracers (50 cal, maybe bigger) shot over our heads from BEHIND us, from the ‘friendly’ side of the airport. These were big, fast, loud rounds flying past us. About 10 feet over our heads, they were whizzing past the guard tower, lower than our guys who were firing an M-60 from the tower. The guys in the tower were looking down, dumbfounded. Us on the ground were in the unique quandary of having to figure out which side of the sandbags was safer. It turned out that some overzealous Malaysians had decided to return fire from their position right by the water’s edge. They didn’t realize that we were camped right in between them & their target.

The U.N. force – of which we were part – consisted of quite a mix. Italians, Romanians, Malaysians, Russians, Canadians, Pakistanis. The Canadians left not long after we got to Mogadishu. They had beer. The Italians had soft mattresses & fresh cooked food. We slept on shitty cots & ate MREs and T-rations. The Italians were the friendliest – we’d visit them, they’d visit us. I ate linguini over there. Traded flight suits with a guy who always addressed me as MARCO! in a loud voice. The Russians had this big Mi-26 helicopter that looked like it’d never be able to take off, it was so unwieldy-looking. It was rumored that the Romanians brought their own prostitutes, to encourage their soldiers not to hook up with any of the local women. The Pakistanis would hold hands. Weird to see two guys on guard duty with AK-47s slung over their shoulders, holding hands, walking down the beach.

I think there were some Norwegians there too, at the Embassy. We flew over there early on, before things got too bad. There was a cafeteria set-up at the Embassy & we ate there once. The cooks were Norwegian (I think). Our pilot made a deal with them that we’d give them a doors-open, NOE ride in exchange for some decent food. We gave them a thrill ride; they gave us a garbage bag full of bread and some frozen steaks. Had a cook-out that night!

We flew over to the stadium at least once, taking a General over there to meet the Pakistanis, who’d set up camp there. After we landed on the field inside the stadium, once the rotors stopped spinning, a herd of about 20 goats meandered over & set up shop under the helicopter in the newly-created shade. The Pakistanis brought the goats for food.

We went inside & were treated to quite a feast. It was unsettling – kind of like the court of Jabba the Hutt. The Pakistani brass would order these guys – basically servants – to keep our plates full. I just stood there & ate off my plate, which would be re-filled automatically by one of these servants who wore military uniform but with no rank or identification.

After a few months, our tent poles came down & they put up wooden frames to drape our tents over. They brought in two huge Cummins diesel generators for our tent city, and we got flourescent lights and even refrigerators. We even had a fan in our tent at night. Which reminds me… we had some extremely potent spider-killing spray which we sprayed liberally around before going to bed (those camel spiders did not look at all friendly). We found out that it melts plastic. We had a chem-stick jammed in the top of the oscillating fan so we could see where it was. Well apparently we’d got some spider repellent on the chem-stick. There we all were, laying in our cots in the dark, when POOF! The chem-stick melted into the fan, spraying its luminescent contents all over the inside of the tent. Instant planetarium. We promptly broke open a few more and did our best Jackson Pollock impersonations to complete the job.

MREs had gotten quite tiresome by this point. The only candy in MREs at that time was M&Ms and Tootsie Rolls. Mostly Tootsie Rolls. The M&Ms would all be white & powdery looking because they’d melted so many times. I asked my wife to send some candy. I probably don’t have to tell you that she sent me a big box of Tootsie Rolls. Ah well.

Before things got bad, me & Chris flew some Colonel or General, whatever, to the port on the north side of Mogadishu. There was a little restaurant there – we actually sat there & ate at this place in the middle of the worst third world country on the planet. They served spaghetti, which seems extremely weird until you think about the fact that Mogadishu was part of an Italian colony long ago. A good portion of the architecture, now damaged by decades of civil war, was beautiful Italian-style. God knows what kind of meat was in that spaghetti. But I didn’t get food poisoning.

Toilets over there consisted of a 4 x 8 piece of plywood with 2 holes cut in it, sitting on 2 halves of a cut-in half 55 gallon drum. So quite often you’d be sitting next to your buddy while doing your business, sharing the same roll of T.P. Both of you staring straight ahead at the sand, wondering what on earth you’re doing there. Once a day a truckload of Somalis (and I mean about 15 Somalis all piled in the back of a dilapidated Toyota pickup, all singing together while hanging on somehow) would pull the shit-filled drums out, pour gasoline on them & ignite them. That’s when I realized where that smell came from.

A couple of times a week we’d see some massive airplane land on the dusty runway. Either a C-5 or C-141 would resupply us. This would mean that we’d get mail. Very nice. Our only other form of contact with the outside world was a satellite phone. One phone for about 300 of us. So get in line if you want to use it. And you’d have to get up around midnight to get in line if you want to catch your significant other during waking hours back in the U.S. The Air Force guys, who stayed in air-conditioned trailers a short walk from our tent city, had 5 or 6 phones. And there were about 40 of them. They also had a big-screen TV. I have advised my kids that the air force is the better choice. We got caught using Air Force phones a few times, but it really didn’t matter. What could they do to us?

There were constant rumors of our departure date. The flight home finally came in September, just a few short weeks before the guys who replaced us endured the horror which was later retold in the Black Hawk Down film. We flew in a C-5 to Cairo West, out in the middle of the desert, then on to Germany (Rhein-Main?). Our ride home broke there, so we spent the night in a local barracks after our commander gave the rather uncooperative property owner an earful. While things were being ironed out went to a local bar & had a beer. All we had was the clothes we were wearing.

We got off the plane at Fort Campbell to an Army band playing Neil Diamond’s ‘Coming to America’. I had such a tan at that point that my wife didn’t recognize me.

2010-01-31T18:28:00.001-08:00

Song I can't get out of my head: After The Storm by Mumford & Sons.

From the album Sigh No More. Good, honest music about love, life & death.

2010-01-28T17:38:00.000-08:00

Howard Zinn

J.D. Salinger

Rest in peace. Your work lives on.

2009-06-28T07:34:00.000-07:00

1984

I’m more than a little embarrassed to admit that I’m 39 and have only just got round to reading this. It’s my second Orwell read – Animal Farm was my first – and although I found Animal Farm a striking and thought-provoking book, 1984 proved a far deeper dive, affecting me to the core. I could see myself in this book.

To me, the theme of 1984 is what Tracy Chapman sings about in All That You Have is Your Soul, or what Oscar Wilde meant when he wrote “shallowness is the supreme vice”. It's in a million different forms, all over the place - books, songs, poems, epigrams. It's spelled out quite nicely in the e.e cummings quote a few entries below this one.

Contrary to what I'd heard prior to reading the book, I don't think that 1984 is simply a warning about fascism or communism – that’s Animal Farm. To me, 1984 implores you to hold on to what makes you human. It has been my experience as a typical working person in the U.S. that every day I am constantly encouraged to adhere to the same beliefs as everyone else, to like what everyone else likes, to talk about what everyone else talks about, and to do what everyone else does. To fight this constant environmental stimulus is to invite sarcasm, skepticism and ultimately ostracism. Every day we have a choice - remain true to our own beliefs and principles, or adhere to those of those who surround us. If you're lucky, those around you may adhere to your core beliefs anyway, but in the working world, we often don't get that luxury.

Discussion of the battle to retain our individuality and our human-ness is nothing new - as I said earlier, it's all over books, music, etc. - but 1984 drove it home to me quite forcefully.

2009-03-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

Spin The Black Circle

After spending the last few weeks recovering from a storm which deposited nearly an inch of ice on this area of the U.S. (and which pulled down thousands of trees and power lines, leaving us without power for eight days in freezing temperatures and depositing countless snapped branches in my yard/on my house), it was good to spend a recent night listening to music and recounting some old memories with my kids.

The catalyst was a turntable. We decided to re-do my twin sons’ room – nothing major, just re-bunking their beds & rearranging furniture – but the resulting extra space in their room prompted me to dig out my old turntable and hook it up to their stereo. They already had a portable, suitcase-type turntable, but this one’s a vast improvement.

The comeback of vinyl is a very cool development. Radiohead’s In Rainbows sold nearly 30,000 copies on vinyl last year – this in the age of iPods, mp3’s and CD’s. I’m no Luddite, but I will always cherish my memories of poring over album artwork and lyric sheets while listening to my vinyl records. I was much more engaged in the process than I am now, listening to my iPod while doing a thousand other things. My sons Nick & Sam began collecting vinyl about a year ago, focusing on some of their favorite bands, including the Germs, NOFX, Sex Pistols, Bad Brains and Radiohead.

So this weekend I not only blew the dust off the old turntable, but I showed Nick my old record collection and we picked out a few for a listen / trip down memory lane. Now Nick is 14 and not particularly inclined to lay back and listen to the Who or some of the others whose music I hold dear, instead being drawn to the harder edge of my collection. These albums date back to my high school days. He grabbed a couple of Anthrax LP’s, Iron Maiden’s Powerslave and Dio’s Holy Diver, and I upsold him on Judas Priest’s Sad Wings of Destiny. He wouldn’t bite on any Deep Purple or Thin Lizzy. Maybe next time. My original copy of Quadrophenia, too, can wait.

It’s been over twenty years since I listened to some of this stuff. The boys knew Holy Diver from the Killswitch Engage cover a few years back – which I admit is pretty good, having heard the recording and then a live rendition at the Warped Tour – so they wanted to hear that first. After being transported back to high school by the first couple of Dio songs, I was espousing the virtues of Vivian Campbell’s guitar mastery, and Ronnie James Dio’s powerful pipes. I regaled them with stories of the ridiculous stage set (which featured lightning, flamethrowers and a large pyramid/drum riser) on the Last In Line tour back in ’85… I think. I also impressed them (they acted impressed) with my story of meeting Vinny Appice backstage once. They’ve probably heard that about 30 times now. (For the record, even back then at the age of 17 I was constantly preoccupied with the Who. I asked Appice what he thought of Keith Moon. He told me he was a big fan, and to listen to the end of… I think it was Dio’s Don’t Talk To Strangers… he plays a Moon tribute there, and indeed I remember listening to it at the time and agreeing that there were some appropriately Moon-like fills)

Next up was Anthrax, whose Among the Living was another favorite of mine back in high school. I’m not denying, however, that I didn’t still enjoy a run-through of the LP this night. Nick, a drummer, was instantly drawn to Charlie Benante’s fast feet, but had a hard time stomaching Joey Belladonna’s falsetto.

So it was a cool night of bonding with the kids and taking a trip down memory lane. We stayed up too late but bid each other good night with wide smiles and a mutual appreciation of the power of music. Music was my refuge back in those days, and I guess to some extent it still is, whether it be delivered via iPod, radio or CD. But that crackle as the needle hits the groove – what a sound!

2009-01-25T04:36:00.000-08:00

I need to read more e e cummings...

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.

2009-01-02T16:22:00.000-08:00

When I saw those photos of Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey at the Kennedy Center Honors a few weeks back, I couldn’t help but think how uncomfortable Pete looked in his formal wear. I wondered if he really wanted to be there at all. I didn’t question his appreciation for receiving the honor, but I just wondered if he approached appearing at this event as he has sometimes approached touring with the Who – “This is boring – I’d rather be at home!”

He and Daltrey certainly enjoyed the musical tribute to Morgan Freeman, with back to back appearances by Blues legends Koko Taylor and B.B. King bringing wide grins to the faces of these American blues aficionados. Townshend gleefully participated in King’s ‘let the good times roll’ call-and-response, cupping his hands while yelling the chorus.

The Who tribute started off with Jack Black setting a suitably silly but reverent tone before Joss Stone kicked off the music with My Generation. This and the ensuing Dave Grohl-led Who Are You, both frustratingly abbreviated takes on the originals, brought smiles and waves from Daltrey and Townshend.

The tone shifted significantly for the next act though, as singer Bettye Lavette delivered a stunning, emotional take on Love, Reign O’er Me which left Townshend visibly moved, emphatically mouthing “wonderful, wonderful” to Lavette as she took a bow. The camera work during the song was priceless, showing Townshend transfixed as he alternately nodded and shook his head, lost in Lavette’s interpretation of his work.

When Rob Thomas sang the first words of Baba O’Riley, the emotional edge established by Lavette’s performance appeared to dissipate, but not for long. The ‘teenage wasteland’ chorus was abetted by a sizeable contingent of New York firefighters and police officers, a powerful tribute to the Who’s triumphant appearance at the Concert For 9/11. Townshend and Daltrey were again floored, Daltrey grinning widely while Townshend warmly patted his chest before raising his hand in salute.

Did Pete want to be there? I have no idea, but I know I (cynical to a fault) was distinctly underwhelmed when I heard that he and Daltrey would be honored at this event. I didn’t expect to find anything particularly emotionally moving when I tuned in to watch this event a few nights ago. I certainly didn’t expect to feel tears welling up in my eyes when witnessing Pete’s reaction to Bettye Lavette’s incredible performance, or when watching his response as the backdrop rose during Baba O’Riley to reveal several dozen of New York’s finest.

The emotion I’m left with? Pride. I’m proud of him. He’s my fucking hero.

2009-01-01T06:14:00.000-08:00

Feeling Good (Newley/Bricusse, 1965)

Birds flying high
You know how I feel
Sun in the sky
You know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by
You know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

Fish in the sea
You know how I feel
River running free
You know how I feel
Blossom on the tree
You know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

Dragonfly out in the sun
You know what I mean
Butterflies all having fun
You know what I mean
Sleep in peace when day is done
That's what I mean
And this old world
Is a new world
And a bold world
For me

Stars when you shine
You know how I feel
Scent of the pine
You know how I feel
Freedom is mine
And I know how I feel
It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me

I'm feeling good.

2005-09-24T18:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big blogger, I'm afraid... Started this blog so I can comment on Pete Townshend's 'Boy Who Heard Music' blog. I'm rather a student of his who started writing about him as a hobby in 1997. The result is at www.townshendbio.com if you're interested.