Liberating "Davy"

I got this quarter back in change from the coke machine at the LaCrosse, Wisconsin Airport. It is a Texas quarter. I felt it my patriotic duty as a proud Texan to liberate it from the clutches of the nefarious Yankees heretofore holding it in bondage. I will keep it with me for the entire trip, until we’re both back in Texas where it will be free to roam free in the pure air, bluebonnets and endless expanses of the Lone Star State. Just like all Texas quarters should do. I will name it “Davy.”

Command and Training

I arrived at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin on Saturday at sundown. The bus dropped me off at one of literally hundreds of identical old WWII barracks. I introduced myself to a chief, who was sitting on the porch. He said, “Oh, you’re an officer. I didn’t know we were going to have any officers. That means you’re in charge.” As we are the only Navy unit going through training, I find myself the commander of the entire navy detachment. In fact, whereas the ratio of officers to enlisted in the reserves makes me about the exact mean of people in our unit, it’s a lot different here. Here I outrank about 75 percent of the people on base.

So in addition to training, I’ve got 16 sailors I need to watch over, and prevent from getting themselves arrested, run over by a Humvee or whatever. I’ve got to coordinate our training routine, fix administrative problems and go to meetings with the base commanding officer and other bigwigs. I somehow need to fit this all in with all the training. Fortunately, I’ve got three chiefs (senior enlisted sailors), who are pretty squared away, as well as an LPO (lead petty officer) who knows his stuff. To the degree that I can, I will delegate.

As for my position, I have some pull, but it’s not infinite. The army refused my request for a microwave, but they did give us an industrial size ice chest. I bought some soft drinks for my people and stocked it.

To get an idea of the training we’re doing, forget entirely that I’m in the Navy. To borrow a line from “Stripes” we’re doing “aaarrmy training” here. We are all going to Iraq and will be on the ground in country. No navy training we could get at this point would be relevant. And we are on base permanently now. Can’t even run down to the local Wal Mart. Of course, they’ve got a store on base, so we don’t need anything there.

The training is really in flux, but we’ve got a bunch of classes to get through in the next few weeks. We start each morning with a 5:45 PT run in formation. I ordered our guys to do this, even though I don’t really want to do it myself. But we’ve got to get in good shape, as we’re soon going to be hiking around with 40-60 lbs. of gear, including body armor and weapons. Although we are not necessarily going to do all of this stuff we’re training on over there on a day-to-day basis, we have to know how to do it, in case we have to.

Yesterday morning, we started out with our initial hand-to-hand combat training, plus a five-hour Arabic language class, which we continued today. Most days we’ll be returning to the barracks in the late afternoon. However, next week, we go into the field for a week at a “forward operating base” which is like a campout inside a razor-wire enclosure with fun exercises like hiking, weapons training and convoy exercises. We’ll live in tents there, but it’s really not so bad.

Chatting with the Army types today, it began to hit me a little more the reality of what we’re going to face. All of which brings home the point of how important the training is. When we face the enemy, we win and they lose, and the reason is training. That’s not new. At the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914, the average Russian soldier could only march 5-10 miles a day. The Germans, on the other hand, were highly trained and in excellent physical shape, and they could march 20 miles a day with full gear. They were able to envelop an entire Russian Army and inflict a staggering defeat. History is full of such examples. Of course, I almost outweigh the average Iraqi, so there you go…

I’m getting a better idea of the work I’m going to be doing, but I can’t talk about that now. Most of the training we’re getting, however, is training that everybody who goes on the ground in Iraq gets. There will be Navy guys doing a lot of this stuff, riding in humvees and going on convoys. Whether I will be with them, or whether I’ll be sending my enlisted guys out while I have to stay behind, I’m not sure. I’d rather be where my guys are, but we’ll do what the mission requires.

I’m staying in an open bay barracks, just like in the movies (no A/C either), so I don’t have a ton of space here anyway. I can shove stuff under my bed to my heart’s content, because I’m the officer in command of our unit, but I don’t want to abuse my privileges and make all these enlisted folks jealous. So for the most part, I’m living out of a foot locker like everyone else. We all sleep in one room, with the exception of our two females, who get an entire floor to themselves.

Gulfport, Mississippi

Howdy!

Been enjoying the fun and sun of Gulfport, Mississippi for the last week, and learning all the joys of active duty Naval administration. Unlike Navy Reserve administration, which is amateur chaos, active duty admin is professional chaos. Anyone who joins the military to get structure to their lives is in for a great surprise!

Of course, this is an organization, like all military organizations, designed to kill people and break stuff, as Rush Limbaugh likes to say, so anything that does not directly aid in that result is not the first priority.

Still, there are lots of fun things to report. Got to go into supply and that was great. Like Christmas, except all the ugly sweaters your aunt gives you all look alike, have your name stitched on them, and are camoflauged. And they’re not sweaters. That would be too hot for the desert. I now have six pairs of identical uniforms, although the four I got here are from a different manufacturer than the two I had, so they fit slightly different.

I also got a new pair of boots. This is the best part. I’ve had the one pair of blister blasters for a year, and they’re your standard run-of-the mill combat boots. But now, I’ve got this awesome new pair of Converse desert tan combat boots that wear like tennis shoes. They are incredible. I actually LIKE walking around in them. I’m thinking of writing an ode to my boots. Or maybe a sonnet. Don’t know if they’re as durable as the old ones, so I’ll take those along as a spare pair.


I now have six hats. This, I think is ludicrous, as I only have one head to wear them on, last time I checked. I already had two of the eight-point marine-style caps, one that was issued and one which I bought myself because the first one looked so terrible. They gave me the same issue as many folks who didn’t already have desert uniforms, which means I have too much. I didn’t need a new cap, and they gave me two. I asked for just one of the cool boonie hats, but they gave me two.

I’ve also been in Medical hell, mostly because I got a staph infection back in Texas three days before I was to leave. That’s mostly cleared up thanks to the Air Force docs at Wilford Hall in San Antonio, so I’m feeling better. Just in time to end my good feeling, however, they stuck me with Smallpox yesterday. For the next month, I will deal with that and can’t be around pregnant women and babies. Not that I was planning that anyway.

I’ve enjoyed my time, despite the admin hell, here in Gulfport. Got to go down to the water and look at what’s left of the Hurricane Katrina devastation. Seeing Jeff Davis’ house in ruins was tough, because so much of that history was lost. The rest of the town is rebuilding well, and a couple of brand new hotels have sprung up right on the ocean next to shattered businesses that have spray paint on the walls saying, “We shoot looters.”

And the base is cool. I get to hang out with a bunch of Seabees, who are really cool guys. The stuff they can do is pretty amazing. In WWII, they could build brand new runways on swampy Pacific islands under fire in a couple of weeks. I really need to find that John Wayne movie about them and watch it again.

I leave tomorrow for the next leg of my trip, and more actual training. This next stop includes a combat training course, which sounds like tons of fun.

Pursuing a higher purpose

The following is my email message that I sent out to my friends after my orders to Iraq came through.

Friends,

Those of you who have known me for many years know that I am a person of deep and solemn convictions, a commitment to principles, and a belief in a higher purpose – in relation to which I am merely an agent. You also know that I am a bit of an anachronism. In this cynical age, which scoffs at patriotism, courage, and honor, I steadfastly hold these to be the highest of virtues.

It is for these principles that I have made the most important decision of my life. Friends, I’m going to war.

There is a time in our lives when we need to evaluate why we’re here, and what we are doing in our short time in this world to make it a better place. This isn’t a question we usually ask ourselves one day when we wake up, it’s a mental process we traverse over the course of years.

For me, this question has always been near at hand, and so, consequently, have been the answers. That’s why I do what I do without hesitation, knowing in my heart the path that I must take. We are here to serve. To follow the advice of Sam Houston, we must “Do Right – and Risk the Consequences.”

With that in mind, I raised my right hand three years ago to serve my country in the United States Navy Reserve. Folks, I did not do it to add ink to my resume, rather because I believe it is the duty I owe to those who have gone before and those who will come afterwards.

This past week, I once more raised my hand – this time to go forward – and will soon be deployed, boots on the ground, in Iraq.

Entrusting myself to God and His providence, I go with heart calm and head uplifted. Thank you all for the roles that you have played in my life, and for the roles which I hope that you shall continue to play upon my return.


James Aalan Bernsen

A word about myself

The idea of blogging requires that we exercise an organ that for most of our lives we've been taught to suppress: the "me" gland. Nobody wants to be thought of as egotistical or Narcissistic, and any action or inclination to action that we have along those lines is considered a fault.

Friedrich Nietzsche, my favorite philosopher, has a lot to say about that, and rightly claims that the self-suppression of pride in oneself is a very dangerous thing indeed. Even so, when I decided to do a blog, I was convinced that it had to be about something more general than "me." Not only because writing about "me" is arrogant, but writing about "me" typically isn't good writing.

Real good writing, even when it is about one person, or one event, or one place - illustrates a greater truth about life through that one event, that one place. In "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemmingway writes about youthful adventurers in Pamplona, Spain. But it could just as easily be Mongolia. The movies "Lone Star" and "Fargo" tell a murder mystery in the vastly different settings of South Texas and North Dakota, but the elements are timeless.

So even when it is about "me" it's not really just me. "Me" is just a metaphor, so to speak.

That being said, for this blog to make sense, and for my readers to have a starting point, I do have to give background on who I am and what I've done.

My life so far has been kind of like a real-life version of Forrest Gump. I've kind of been everywhere and done everything. Or at least it seems that way. I grew up in Southwest Texas and attended Texas A&M, where I got my degrees in Journalism and German. While in college, I took a year to study at the Eberhard-Karls Universitaet in Tuebingen, Germany, where I studied European history, European politics and European women. The first was too bloody, the second too socialist and the third too hairy. But it was a fun time.

Returning to Texas, I completed my two degrees, and qualified for a third degree in history, but some bureaucrat said there was a rule against giving out more than two. If I ever do run for governor, as my high school goverment teacher told me to, my first act will be to find that guy and fire him.

In 1996, I joined the workforce as a new reporter at the acme of Journalism - the Stephenville Empire Tribune. After stops in such Pulitzer-worthy locales as Uvalde and Lake Jackson, Texas, I then got another chance to go to Europe, this time with the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, which is an exchange program between Germany and the U.S. For a couple of months, I worked at the Berliner Zeitung in Berlin, writing stories in German for that paper, and in English for my paper back home.

Politics had always appealed to me, and through my connections made in the newspaper industry, I got a job in 1999 as the Deputy Press Secretary for U.S. Senator Phil Gramm. I subsequently worked on several campaigns, in the Texas Legislature, and as a reporter for a political insider newsletter in Texas, the Lone Star Report. In 2006, I left that job to work for Kay Bailey Hutchison's re-election campaign. When that race ended, I started my own political public relations company.

One of my most surreal moments came in 2003, when the Democrats of the Texas House of Representatives decided to shut down the Texas Legislature by busting a quorum and hiding out at the Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma. All of Texas was looking for them, and we in the legislative staff suddenly found ourselves with no real work to do in the height of the political season. So, taking a cue from U.S. troops who had created a deck of playing cards to locate Saddam Hussein's inner circle, I created a deck of cards featuring the missing 51 members of the Texas House. Although I did it initially as a joke, my boss, a Republican state rep, showed a deck to a T.V. reporter, and the cards were on CNN the next day. I ended up selling a couple hundred of the decks, and got my cards in Texas Monthly (above).

Somewhere along the way, I also found time for all of my hobbies. I got my pilot's license in high school, but don't get time to do that much flying anymore. I've been the lead guitarist in a couple of ill-fated blues/rock bands in Texas and Germany, but I mostly play Texas country/Americana music these days.

For two years, I served as a volunteer crewman on the Elissa, a 19th Century square-rigged sailing ship homeported out of Galveston. Working on the weekends, I helped maintain the ship, trained on it, and sailed as part of the crew around the Gulf of Mexico. (In the second photo, that's me out on the jibboom).

Along the way, I've tried very hard to keep myself loyal to some basic principles of family, country, duty and honor. These aren't old-fashioned notions, they're timeless. On September 11, 2001, I was working in Senator Gramm's Dallas office when the first of the twin towers collapsed in front of my eyes. As the enormity of the attack came into focus, our office was evacuated on orders from Washington. However, with the capitol shut down, we had no way to get out press releases from the Senator. So, late that afternoon, I came back to our office and sent out press releases and took a few press calls. But mostly it was quiet.

As I sat there watching the coverage of the attack, I decided that this was truly the calling of my generation - the chance we all have to make history. Growing up idolizing the World War II generation, and venerating the unfairly maligned heroes of Vietnam, I felt that whatever I could do to make a difference I would do.

So, after finding a service that would take me at my advanced age (32), I joined the U.S. Navy reserve as an intelligence officer. In June, 2007, after completing my training, and having met all the other requirements for deployment, I raised my hand and volunteered to be deployed to Iraq.

So that's why this is about "me."

(Photo: Taking the oath and receiving my commission in the Texas House of Representatives Chamber, in front of the San Jacinto Battle Flag)