Earthquake in Karamursel

Opass, a favorite Blog buddy of mine, posted a funny piece last week that he calls “Earthquake.”

Yesterday, we got together here at my place for one of our regular Sunday afternoon “speak easies,” and once again we swapped stories and opinions for almost half the day. The mark of good conversation is continuity, where one story leads to another, which leads to analysis, and then to even more stories. Opass and I didn’t talk about his Guatemala earthquake experience, although I intended to ask him about it. Just the same, I think I’ll describe now one of my own poignant earthquake memories. As I said, one good story leads to another… Well, you decide if it’s good or not…

So there I was… It was nighttime, maybe 9 or 10 p.m. I was in bed munching an apple and reading a good book. It was one of those adventure novels centering around a young male protagonist, a boy about my own age—at the time I was just 12 years old, going on 13.

My brother, 4 years younger than me, was already sound asleep across the room in his own single bed. In mine, I was on one elbow facing a dim lamp and absorbed in my reading while happily crunching away on my apple. But I stopped reading and eating when I heard something.

At first, it sounded like a horse and cart passing by outside on the cobblestone street. This quaint narrow ribbon of neatly buried cubed stones separated our building from the normally calm waters of the Bay of Izmit (once called the Bay of Nicomedia), an eastern arm of The Sea of Marmara. The street we lived on in the Turkish town of Karamursel was in turn protected from the sea’s waters by a break wall. It sounds charming, and indeed it was a very beautiful place to live, with a stunning view of the sea and of the green hills across the bay.

But the sound I heard, this far off rumbling noise, was not from a rolling horse cart at all. At first it was faint and distant, but in seconds it grew much louder as if a monstrously large scary vehicle was quickly and ominously approaching. I had never heard anything like it and I found it quite puzzling. Then, I began to get the picture when to go along with the rumbling sound, every object in the room began to buzz, shake, clatter and tap, depending on what object was involved in this jittering "dance of things."

I was mostly calm UNTIL assorted items like pictures, vases and flower pots began to fall over or off the wall and crash to the floor. That worsening racket coming from every room in the apartment caused my calmness to begin to collapse into a sea of panic. The rumbling from deep within the earth grew ever deafening while the sound of glass shattering and objects clattering became even more intense and alarming. To make matters worse, we lived atop a three-story apartment building. I’m sure the swaying and trembling was made much more severe by being up there.

Just after the extreme noise of breaking and falling things began, my dad threw open my bedroom door and with a wild-eyed look he yelled at me to get my brother and get downstairs, quick! That sounded like an excellent plan. As he spun around to see to my two younger sisters, Mary Kay and Gail, I set about following his orders. All semblance of physical calmness had vanished when I had seen the look of purposeful urgency on my father’s face. He was not playing around, and now, neither was I.

Immediately, I sprang out of bed and turned to my brother who was now groggily sitting up with the covers still over his legs, his eyes huge and unblinking. I went to him, shook him hard by a shoulder and yelled in his face, “Kevin, get up! Earthquake! Come on, let’s go!”

I turned and bolted for the living room, at which point we lost power and lights. Sure that my brother was right behind me, I hurried to the door leading to the stairwell and began to descend it in the dark as fast as I had ever done so, even with lights. I kept a hand on the guide rail and in no time flat I was at the ground floor landing along with most of the other apartment dwellers.

More than a dozen of us stood there on the landing just inside the wide-open double wooden doors leading to a large fenced courtyard that doubled as a parking lot. Moon and starlight provided a bare modicum of visual capability. In the blackness, we sensed more than saw each other. I heard my dad trying to account for us; I believe he was still holding my youngest sister, Gail, who was just 6 at the time.

Right about then we heard the plaintive voice of a young child. “Mommy. Mommy.”

My mom reacted immediately, “Oh that poor child,” she said concernedly.

“Mommy!” the little kid called out, sounding even more frightened than before.

Both my parents realized simultaneously that the “poor child” was Kevin, which came as quite a shock to me since I thought he was right next to me. Oops.

“Oh my God! That’s Kevin!” My mom cried out.

My dad quickly handed Gail over to my mother before springing back up the steps into the pitch-blackness above us to retrieve the last of his four progeny. I felt terrible at not accomplishing the simple task of making sure my little brother came down the stairs with me. Hell, I still feel awful about it almost 40 years later.

I remember standing there just off the bottom step, being glad that the quake had stopped, but still holding on to the railing for dear life, and waiting anxiously for my father to come back down with my brother. For the first time in my life I knew the sickening feeling of adrenalized fear, how it causes one’s knees to continuously buckle, as if tendons and ligaments down there have turned to soft pliant noodles.

On June 29, 1975, a scant six years later and me barely 18, I would flashback to that dark moment on the lightless ground floor Turkish landing, when my knees buckled exactly the same way during my first wakeup call in the Marines. The first morning wakeup experience at 3 a.m. in Marine bootcamp can be quite harrowing, as countless other marines can bear out.

Actually, I like Opass’ earthquake story much better than mine. His is amusing, and for me, funny is always better than serious. Still, it’s all I have… Except for all those worrisome aftershocks that continued to shake us up over the next few months. In many ways they were even worse than the real quake. The smaller shocks kept us on edge and it gave many of us a light case of the posttraumatic syndrome experience.

It turns out that our “big” earthquake was nothing compared to others that struck that area in the decades to come. In fact, during the big quake of 1999 hundreds of Turks died in buildings much like ours when they collapsed into mounds of debris. I’m glad I didn’t have to witness such a thing. Although, I would have had a heck of a story to tell if I had.

Three Men, Two Points of View

Every other Sunday or so, I have one of two visitors over. Over coffee and tea we speak of “things.” Sundays, especially those Sundays, have become my most favorite day of the week.

One of my two Sunday visitors, “E-Man,” matches up almost perfectly with me and my worldviews; the other, “Tommy Gun,” likes to argue about nearly everything. So, Tommy-G is “Mr. Contrary,” while E-Man is “my choir” (and conversely, I am his). I enjoy conversing with both of these fellows, but there is a marked difference on how I feel during and after our lengthy discussions, depending on which of them it is that comes over that day.

E-Man, my intellectual “bird of a feather” is just plain fun to talk to. Our “speak easies” start at noon and end only when the sun’s light has faded. Sometimes it seems we come to our senses when it starts to get dark out, having lost all track of time. Without his own transport, he doesn’t like to be on this side of town trying to catch jeepnies home in the dark. I don’t blame him; this part of the Philippines can be dicey even in the day.

Now Tommy-G, well, he challenges me on almost every subject. As far as the two of us goes, no two people could possibly be so seemingly opposed in viewpoint; therefore, I’m sure he purposely “goes adversarial” on me mostly because it’s his nature. That’s why I call him Mr. Contrary. The time goes by pretty quickly with him as well, but I’m tired and mentally used up when its time for him to jump astride his motorcycle and roar off into the evening.

Both men are a study in where they come from. E-man is from the Northern Midwest; he’s exceedingly polite, diffident and self-effacing. Tommy is from the Northeast; he’s brusque, impatient, and strident. If you had to characterize the people of those two stateside regions, both men’s personalities would match up as expected with the average profile of the region where each comes from. In other words, to put it succinctly, Midwesterners are nice and Northeasterners are ornery! I wonder what it says about me that I’m also from the Midwest like E-man, but my personality more mirrors Tommy’s aggressive persona than it does E-man’s more serene one.

These days, Tommy and I have an unspoken agreement to NOT discuss Middle-Eastern politics, including and especially Iraq and Afghanistan. However, on his way out the door last Sunday Tommy-Gun snuck in a couple jabs at me stating snottily, “9 more of our brothers died the other day—did you see that?”

What Tommy-Gun believes is quite simple: The Middle East is a screwed up place filled with mean spirited people that have been slaughtering each other for millennia and not one of them is worth even one American GI’s life.

Tommy is a military veteran just like E-man and myself; so all three of us have that in common. Tom’s dad was a marine in the early 50s and his pop is vociferously against us being in that part of the world even more than his son is. For Tom, perhaps it’s a case of “sometimes we are who raised us.” Now, that is somewhat true with me too; my parents are very traditional and I absorbed many of their worldviews, but my views ALSO come from my own world travels and travails.

In the case of E-man, who is a fellow from one of the most liberal States in the union, HE (like me) is definitely a man who has BECOME decidedly conservative BECAUSE of what he has seen in the world, and he has lived in and seen a lot of it. When college professors told us how we SHOULD feel about things, neither of us made our minds up based on the lectures of these mostly half-baked theoreticians who had never been anywhere or done anything. Both of us have spent years (hell, decades!) in college classrooms, but because we have very pragmatic backgrounds, unlike most of our easily impressed and inexperienced younger classmates, we did NOT simply swallow every professorial opinion we were subjected to.

So, with Tommy-Gun I find myself mostly debating, defending and arguing. He’s a very smart guy (just ask him!) and I rarely feel like I’ve ever made much, if any, headway on convincing him of anything. Of course even if I did manage such a thing he’s so headstrong that he’d never admit it. The good thing is that in going through my points in my arguments with him—by being forced to give voice to them—in the light of day they either make sense or they don’t. So, once spoken, there are times that my line of reasoning doesn’t seem quite as vigorous as I thought. It is then that I find myself “evolving” and even rethinking my positions. This is especially true when Tommy finds “holes” in them. (Call me a flip-flopper if you must; I call it being thoughtful and open-minded).

History and culture are E-man’s forte; in fact, he has a degree in history. I love history; and I can’t get enough of being around others who love it as much as I do, especially since fellow lay historians are so few and far between. With most folks, once I start into my “lectures” on some historical aspect, I can practically see the glaze come over their eyes. When E-man and I start “swapping knowledge,” as I call it, before we know it, six hours has flown by. If you can imagine sitting in the same chair through 3 extra long movies and not even noticing their length, THAT is how a Sunday afternoon passes into evening when E and I have our discussions.

The funny thing about E-man is that even though he comes from such a socially and politically liberal place, he has been taught by his experiences of living in the 3rd World that most tenants of progressive liberalism are faulty and untenable. Based on E’s viewpoint, Katana, one of my fellow bloggers and a very nice person, would undoubtedly label him a “neo-con,” which, by the way, is liberal-speak for “moron.” These days, anyone with a strongly traditional or conservative belief system is called the “n word,” which seems to be a tag with negative connotations made up by “progressive” academia for anyone with whom they disagree. (The left loves to label people negatively and then dismiss them outright as being contemptible and stupid).

A final point on my “Sunday conversations” with both E-man and Tommy-G are our blatant and persistent lack of observance of political correctness. We trust each other implicitly, thus, we are totally comfortable with using any words and expressions we desire, no matter how racist, sexist or otherwise inappropriate they would be in any other setting. Generally, we don't say too much that would be considered anti-social, but if one of us "slips," we don't jump down the other's throat over it. I have to admit; being free to say anything, no matter what, is cathartic; I recommend it to anyone every so often.

After all, there’s a time and a place for everything… For me, its Sundays.

What's the difference between the VA and a con artist?

Nearly everyday I meet with veterans to discuss their next moves in their ongoing struggles with the VA. Today was no different. This time I met at a local hotel restaurant with a retired master gunnery sergeant, a marine of course.

Strategically, I chose a table with a direct view of the pool—you never know what you might see, hopefully NOT some fat hairy European in a Speedo. Fortunately, even when there is a “Mr. Speedo” there is also usually a cutey in a bikini to keep him company; so I guess it all evens out.

My friend had an uncharacteristically troubled look on his face as we shook hands and took our seats.

“Up until about ten minutes ago I wasn’t sure I was even going to make it here,” he said, shaking his head while opening his briefcase. “I was in my car stopped in traffic just down from Kokomos, and this chick walks up next to my car. She put one hand on her forehead and then slammed the side of my car with her other hand. Then she fell down on the street and started groaning like I’d hit her.”

“Oh man! She was trying to scam you… It just never ENDS around here,” I complained bitterly. “So what happened?”

“A bunch of people suddenly surrounded me, all of ‘em looking at this woman lying on the ground. I didn’t know what the hell to do. And then a motorcycle cop came up and grabbed the woman by the arm and forced her to her feet. He told me he saw everything and to go ahead and go.”

“Dude! Good on him! He saved you a whole bunch of hassle, if not a whole lot of pesos.”

“Yep. He acted like he had been watching her, like he knew she was going to try something like that. She must have a history of scamming foreigners.”

“I hope he takes her to jail and roughs her up on the way there. I wonder how many tourists and foreigners she has already bilked? I guess its just one more trick we have to watch out for.”

He shrugged resignedly, “Well, at least that policeman helped me out. All’s well that ends well…”

I chuckled, “Well, if it’s not the VA screwing you over, it’s a local con artist. You gotta love it!”

Gulf War I Revelations

Sometimes you think you know things, and then, when you learn otherwise, the particulars can come as quite a shock.

While sitting on the recumbent bike and peddling away like I do almost everyday in my neighborhood gym, I had a running conversation with another retired military man, an ex-Marine ten years my senior, a man I highly respect. I’ve known him for more than a year. I’ve long recognized in him the telltales of PTSD, so I watch what I say. His anger can flash over in a heartbeat, and I would just as soon keep him as calm and agreeable as possible.

He was an ordnance man over the bulk of his long career; although back in the 60s during the Vietnam War, he started out in intelligence. Just before calling it a career in the mid-90s he served in-theater during the 1st Gulf War, which coincidentally was the only war in which I had the opportunity to serve during my own 27-year career. So, as far as having shared experiences to discuss, other than my comparatively brief time in the Corps, The Gulf War is about it.

But, compared to my buddy’s experiences in the Gulf, my own were myopic. My “little” job was to directly supervise and manage a dayshift of aircraft repair specialists. We kept a fleet of a dozen or so C-130 transports in flying shape by fixing them when they broke, and better yet, by maintaining them so that they wouldn’t break. Our mission was much complicated by the dusty sandy atmosphere that played hell with the engines, hydraulics and flight controls. Those 30 odd men and 12 aircraft was my world for the 7 months of that very short war. In other words, I had a very narrow view of the whole thing. I did not have much of a sense of the “big picture” at all.

On the other hand, during that 1st war with Iraq, my friend was a senior ranking warrant officer, a “gunner” as they are called; his job being to keep our frontline troops stocked with bombs, shells and bullets. In a way, it was probably one of THE most important jobs of the war. Without guys like him—the army, air force, marine and naval “trigger pullers,” like the bomber and fighter jocks, artillerymen, infantrymen, and tankers—NONE of these actual war fighters, can do their jobs.

In a very nonchalant way, Gunner shared with me two startlingly eye-opening pieces of information about “our” war that I hadn’t a clue about—not even an inkling. As he shared them with me, I asked him if he was sure the info was no longer classified. He assured me that it was all declassified by 2001, ten years after the war ended.

The first incredible piece of intelligence he had for me was of the presence of tactical nuclear weapons onboard the ships he served on. Now that alone is not shocking to me, since tac nukes are always an optional part of any American theater commander's list of “possibilities,” albeit a remote one. What I found incredible was how apparently ready we were to use them. I asked if he was sure, and he promised me that it was absolutely so. “Guns,” another nickname for “ammo” guys like him, vowed that he personally oversaw the preparations of these miniature nuclear devices. They were armed and made ready for immediate and judicious “delivery” to the very heart of Iraq.

He claims that the “trigger” for the “nuking” of the Iraqis was simple—if Hussein dared to use chemical or biological weapons on our troops, and it was confirmed, then the use of “tac” nukes was going to be our “measured” response. I’m sure Hussein was apprised of our intentions; otherwise the “threat” of their use would have been lost on him. I must admit that just the thought that we were that close to escalating the war to a nuclear level makes me shudder, even now.

The second bit of eye-opening information came about as I opined to him of my deep dissatisfaction with Colin Powel and the first George Bush, about how angry with them I was that they had “pussied out” and did not finish off Hussein and his malevolent army when we clearly had the means to easily do it.

I explained, “Because of those two numbskulls, Hussein had 12 years to prepare the current insurgency that’s got us all tied up in knots now. If that idiot Powel hadn’t gotten soft after the so-called “highway of death” we wouldn’t be in the pickle we are in today. We had them beat. All we had to do was go to Baghdad and take over!”

Gunner chuckled at my apparent naiveté and deigned to straighten me out, practically flooring me in the process, “Well, I hate to bust your bubble, but all we had available at the start of the offensive was just 30 days of ordnance. That’s all any of our contingency plans called for. The opening bombing campaign went on for a lot longer than that. What was it—40 some days? By the time our ground troops started rolling in we were all but out. We had shot our wad!”

I was incredulous. “You’re kidding. Why in God’s name would we put ourselves such a situation?”

“At the time we thought our factories and supply pipeline would be able to step it up and keep up with wartime requirements, but it didn’t turn out that way. At the end, as soon as the ordnance arrived in theater we offloaded it for immediate use. It went straight out of the crates and packaging and into the war. We could not rebuild an inventory.”

Some things began to dawn on me as I listened to him. I remembered how intense our C‑130 cargo missions had been towards the end of the war.

He continued, “We were so short on deliverable ammo that I remember offloading obsolete bombs that were clearly marked for disposal. We ended up dropping everything we had in the inventory, even the outdated stuff, and still we ran out. We just didn’t have enough ordnance to keep the war going at that intensity.”

Hearing this stuff, I was dumfounded.

“They asked me to figure out a way to safely stack bombs on deck and get underway because we needed to move as much as we could all at once. The Navy ended up paying me $20,000 based on the procedures that I wrote to do exactly that. Everyone else in the ordnance career field said it couldn’t be done. As far as I know they still use my procedures.”

I congratulated him. “Nice bonus! Its true isn’t it, that necessity is the mother of invention?” I chuckled at my own clichéd cleverness.

I’ve read lots on the Internet and seen plenty of TV productions concerning all aspects of The Gulf War; yet, I’ve never heard a thing on either of my very credible gym buddy’s two amazing assertions. Of his two claims, I find the most amazing his allegation that the war might well have ended prematurely NOT JUST because of a lack of willingness on the part of our leaders, but MORE PROBABLY because we had simply run out of bombs.

I would go so far as to deduce that at that moment, as a nation, we were in a very dangerous state of military NON-preparedness. The fact that the Cold War was over and won was a VERY lucky thing indeed; otherwise, it would have been the perfect time for the Soviets, or any enemy for that matter, to attack us or to pursue some other act of aggression.

On further thought, perhaps the fact that we were so low on conventional armaments is a prime reason Gunner had been ordered to rack and stack those tactical nukes. When it comes down to it, if we had actually run out of the conventional stuff, perhaps Schwarzkopf saw the use of “non-conventional” explosives as a viable alternative. It’s not likely, but still its food for thought. After my revelatory discussion in the gym I’m realizing all the more that sometimes things are not always as they seem.

Listen UP! I'm STILL in my 40s!

For another hour and a half I can STILL say that I am in my 40s.

This past year has been a different one for me compared to past ones. Before my 49th, starting every April or so, when asked my age I’d just bump it up to my upcoming one. I don’t know why I did that—its just a habit that started when I was very young when I still actually looked forward to being older and hopefully wealthier and wiser.

It’s funny—I just haven’t been able to get myself to say the response, “I’m 50.” I’d start to think about what I’d say and I’d just go with “Oh, I'm 49.” I noticed that the apparent extra thought I put into answering it would cause a few raised eyebrows. But starting tomorrow, I’ll have no more choice; although I suppose I could just lie. Nahhh! That’s just not in me to do that I guess.

I’ve been thinking a LOT about age lately—imagine that! I’ve been considering how we look at it. Generally, it seems to me that we classify people by the decade in years they are.

We think of teens as inexperienced and searching for identity. We give them absolutely no credibility whatsoever. The teen years are something to "get through." I despised my teens ALMOST as much as my pre-teens.

The twenties and thirties tend to be lumped together—those are the years of our physical if not our mental “prime.” I LOVED my 20s and 30s!

When folks hit 40 they start thinking of their mortality, and of course the deadly idea of "middle age" rears its ugly wrinkled dried up old head. But, we do tend to give folks in their 40s lots of extra “credit” for intelligence and experience. In truth, most folks hit their "working prime" during their 40s, supposedly the years noted as prime for making the most money, which was certainly true for me.

Military folks (like me) rarely stay in the service past the age of 50, except for some generals, E-9s, reservists and guardsmen. Most of the rest of us are in fact forced out before the age of 50. So, over the years, 50 isn’t an age I ever gave much thought to. To me, anything past 5 decades was a black hole of nothingness—its not something I ever wanted to consider.

The age of 60 denotes the beginning of old age; while 70, or OLD age, for most of us marks the beginning of the end of our last decade on earth. Anything past 80 to me is gravy, and 80 is a slim 30 years away for me now. (Mom and Dad, disregard this paragraph; it doesn't apply to you guys!)

So, in less than an hour I will be 50, and I must admit that I feel a little distressed about that. I didn’t feel anything at all when I turned 30, and 40 barely rated a shrug. But 50! For the first time in my life I kind of want to turn back the clock. It tastes unpleasantly bitter and I want to spit it back out before even tasting it.

After all, 60 is ONLY 10 short years away, and I DO mean short. I can’t believe that time can spin so quickly forward. I really thought that once I retired and had fewer things to do with my days that the passage of time would slow down.

But no, the passing days, weeks and months seem to be quickening their passage, even as I have less to do during them. Perhaps that’s the origin of the phrase “its all downhill from here!” because ALL things speed up when going downhill, right?

Ahhhh "momentum"--you SUCK!