David's Desk...

I retired recently as an Operations Specialist first class in the U.S. Coast Guard. I worked in command center helping to coordinate missions such as Search and Rescue for thirteen years.

So, I retire from the U.S. Coast Guard just as one of the biggest search and rescue cases in modern history unfolds and is being coordinated by my old unit in Boston… just as I’m saying goodbye to that life. I’ve had a lot of questions so I’ll just post what I know from my walk of life here:

1. This case is remarkably difficult. It’s a small object with five people on board that is underwater, and it (possibly) sank into a debris field of the most infamous wreak in maritime history. So it’s a needle in a stack of needles.

2. The search area is massive because nothing is known of what happened to the sub because all the command ship knew was it lost contact with them. The sub could be on the surface, it could be floating just below the surface, it could be on the bottom of the ocean amid wreckage.

3. Time is critical. There’s a finite window of life support, and that’s so damn difficult. The USCG, they excel at multi platform coordination, and that’s what is happening in Boston. And we used to train on this, a lot, scenarios and mock ups, full dry runs so we’d stay fresh, because there’s always unforeseen complications to any case.

4. Decency. I understand the irony of some rich people paying money to endanger themselves over the most famous wreck where rich people died from what amounted to a lot of hubris. But that’s as far as I’ll go. These are human beings who are possibly going through hell right now. Surrounded by crushing, pitch black and freezing water and knowing these may be their last moments.

Literal hell.

So to see people making memes about this truly upsets me. Beyond words.

5. The search isn’t over. I speak from experience that the USCG has a propensity to “what if” itself to death. And we did but for good cause. If we could imagine a scenario that someone, somehow, was in danger on the water, we would launch and exhaust ourselves with the search. And sometimes that paid off, that’s why we did it. Yes it was frustrating, but not as bad as the guilt of not launching and someone dying on our watch. As long as USCG personnel can figure out scenarios, the search will keep going.

Hope in a rescue can keep people alive. It’s one of the core tenants of search and rescue.

…

A sequel to Labyrinth (1986). Honestly this is just the kernel of the idea of a film but, what if Sarah defeating the Goblin King actually made her the ruler of the Goblins? She literally summoned them all at the end of the original movie. What if it’s like a curse and that’s what Jareth was trying to do all along was just find an heir to take over for him?

So now there’s this girl who has been stuck progressively longer in the land of goblins losing her identity and becoming more like Jareth. Jennifer Connelly vamping it up as the Goblin Queen.

She just watched episode three and has, I quote, “been ugly crying for an hour.”

She finally is moving on saying “nothing in the next episodes can rock me like this.”

😬

They were overwhelmed, the amount of insanity, revelry, the floats, the fact that parades are happening every day in the final week up to Fat Tuesday.

And then on Ash Wednesday I took them out and the sheer silence, no one on the street, as if everyone had disappeared severely unnerved them.

My friend turned to me and said “I can’t believe it but I miss the parades, this is too quiet.”

I gave a nod, and said “you’ve got to witness the quiet after Mardi Gras, it makes you want to live it all over again.”

And now a brief break from the Last of Us and it’s episodic heartbreaks for a Mardi Gras update post.

Like, “and now a trap moment from Bill and Frank.”

*SNAP*

The Last of Us episode three left me speechless with its utter perfection.

I didn’t have the words to pay it Justice. I love Bill’s arc, Frank’s portrayal, both actors giving it their all, and succeeding.

I was just gonna let it go but now to hear homophobic bigots review bombing what I (and a lot of other folk) believe to be one of the best episodes of television EVER seen is too much.

To the bigots, I’m sorry you don’t know how to experience love but giving this episode a one star review won’t change shit. You’re still you. This show still is amazing. It still exists and season 2 is going to roll. No one cares about your useless hate. The LGBTQIA+ community still exists and you can’t shut it down.

The idea of climate change causing our own demise is terrifyingly and deliciously delivered by Jonathan Miller.

Now I’ve got friends being like “how would we know if we’re infected?”

I’m particularly amazed at the realism that traffic in Austin Texas is always bad!

…

My father always had a thing for paint ponies. The type of horse whose hide was a patchwork quilt of colors, the way you see very white and very bad actors portraying Native Americans riding in the old western films, well sometimes they were Native Americans but that was rare. The horses were real enough though. Anyway, my father loved the wild looking horses and anytime we would drive through Nevada, if he saw wild ponies we would stop and watch them. Being younger than fifteen and having no recollection of riding a horse at that point in my life, I really didn’t understand what the big deal was. But it was time with my dad, and I enjoyed that, even if I didn’t know exactly what the hell it was we were doing.

 They say that genetics is strong, and when it comes to things that you like or dislike, you can get that from your folks. Well, clearly the love of horses skipped past my genetic code like a motorist ignoring a hitchhiker. But my older sister? Well, she loves horses more than anyone in my family except for perhaps my two uncles. That may or may not be a serious source of contention in the future, and I may have just started a family feud. Only time will tell.

 My sister’s ranch is in Elgin, a small conservative bastion at the liberal event horizon known as Austin, Texas. Elgin though is small, it’s quiet, and it’ll thank you kindly to keep your weirdness to yourself. Visiting the place feels like you’ve somehow slowed time. All the buildings in the small downtown area were built at the turn of the 19th century and the heat has baked the painted brick to several shades more mellow than what it once was. That same baking process has been applied to the town’s people. They all seem tanned and faded by the heat as much as the strong, ancient buildings. People ride horses through the downtown area. Not to show off mind you, but rather to just get to where they are going. Perhaps the heat is the reason that time seems so slow. It’s too hot to move fast. You need to slow down in Elgin, move at a glacial pace, think cooler thoughts and hold your water. Otherwise you may lose your cool. Are you catching on? Then maybe you can stay a spell.

 Her ranch was just outside of town, on a small road over a set of train tracks that make you want to get your car’s alignment checked each time you go over them. On the far end of the road is a small V.F.W. where I would like to someday get a beer, but feel like perhaps I’m still a little too young to be a veteran. Maybe in another decade or so.

 At one point in the many horses that have come and gone at the ranch (it is a horse rescue for mistreated equines) there was a paint pony named Chavez. He was a small horse, if something that weighed hundreds of  pounds could be called small.) But he was smaller than some of the other horses. There was a scrappiness to his build and to his nature. He had a way of looking at you as if to say “well, what?” He was perhaps the first horse I actually liked, maybe because he understood I was never going to ride him and he let that show in his personality… or maybe the horse didn’t give a shit. Either way. I called the horse Chango, a nickname also bestowed upon a good Army friend of mine whose name was also Chavez. The horse didn’t seem to care what I called him, as long as he was fed and not ridden by me. We had a good understanding of each other.

 He was also the favorite horse of my niece, Sahanna, who shares so many genetic markers with my sister that I would joke that human cloning had in fact been invented and the proof was before us all as the little girl ran around in galoshes espousing her love for all the horses. All the horses, Uncle Dave!

 Now, if you’re on a horse ranch, and you’ve never really been around horses, things can get a bit too real a bit too fast. And that day happened all too soon one hot slow summer when Chango started to feel his oats and that scrappiness turned into pure, bald wild asshole-ish aggression. With this new change in the rules, I stayed the hell away from the horse, and he was fine with that. My sister, monarch of the horses that she was, was not fine with this aggression. One morning, during coffee and looking out the window at the yard she broke the quiet in the kitchen with a royal decree.

 “The ferrier’s coming today to geld Chavez.”

 “What?” Was my reply, as I drank tea, and was not up just yet.

 “We’ll take Sahanna to Walmart while he works.”

“You’re gonna have Chango’s balls chopped off while we go shopping for Snuggies?”

 My sis merely nodded and drank her coffee. Everyone loves Snuggies.

 Around two in the afternoon, the ferrier arrived. His tools were all in the back of his monstrous truck. Chango was brought out on a halter from the barn while the ferrier gave him a quick tranquilizer. No one noticed that Sahanna was at the screen door watching. After the shot, Chango gave a few wobbly steps before a spectacular collapse. Sahanna began weeping immediately as we had clearly killed her favorite horse. My brother-in-law Marcus was quick to scoop her up.

 “Chavez is dead! He killed him!”

 “No, no, honey, Chavez is sleeping. He’s just having a nap.”

 “No one takes naps like that! He’s dead!”

 After a few more minutes of crying, and persuasion, and an introduction to the idea of ‘dead things don’t breathe, see how Chavez is breathing?’ we finally piled into the dodge and were off to Walmart. Sahanna was still sniffling in her car seat next to me. Finally she looked at me, a whole new wave of tears prepared if my answer was incorrect, and dear god what will I do when my as of yet unborn child asks me such questions…

 “Uncle Dave, is Chavez really okay?”

 Thinking about how I’d seen the ferrier bending over him with a scalpel in preparation to remove the horses nuts, I replied “Well, he’ll be okay eventually.” Damn it. Why?

 After a warning glance from my sister, I corrected course. “Yes honey, he’ll be fine, a little sore, but fine.”

 “Dave!”

 “What?”

 After at least two or three hours of people at walmart, we were finally back at the house. The ferrier had gone, gate locked securely behind him. And there was Chavez, standing in the yard. My niece was overjoyed to see her favorite horse arisen from the near dead. I was amazed as well because I sure as shit wouldn’t be standing after having had, so recently, my balls removed. As we exited the truck, I saw Chavez was looking in at a small pail in the yard. There was an incredible measure of sadness to the small horse’s posture. Upon walking over to investigate I saw that the ferrier had in fact used the small pail to drop Chango’s testicles into after their removal. Now I truly understood why the horse looked so sad, it was one thing to take your balls, but to leave them there on display to look at? That was a new low…because even though a horse can be small, his balls are usually incredibly huge.

 “Oh, Jesus Christ. SIS! You gotta see this.”

 To this day, I like to think that if that horse could have spoken, he would have sounded exactly like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh, only his conversation would have been far more depressing.

 “Yup, there’re my balls, totally useless, should’ve seen it comin’.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve wrote anything of merit. But this is something that has to be put down in words. 

 So few people understand that war is not a constant cavalcade of firefights and explosions, if it were, a lot of us would be in much worse shape than we are already. The truth is there can be a lot of down time when in a combat zone and soldiers will do almost anything to pass time. We watch movies, we work out, we talk, and talk, and talk. And then there are the care packages that are sent from loving people that really make our day. At one point my unit was sent a badminton set and there arose a badminton tournament that became so heated amongst us that our CO eventually took the set away for a time. He eventually gave it back but forbade any more tournaments. Oh well. 

I’d brought several books, and I was astonished when I finished them within two weeks. And thus began my scavenging for reading material. And that is when I picked up a Discworld novel by Sir Terry Pratchett. 

I’d unknowingly started the series with Night Watch (which is very far along in the storyline.) But even though I had very little idea to the world Sir Terry had built in these stories, I quickly became enamored with it all. It was so colorful, so magical*. And then I saw that there were over twenty-five books in the series. Quickly I wrote home and asked folks to send me any Discworld novel they could. The first to arrive was Reaper Man featuring the greatest Anthromorphic Personification, Death, the Grim* Reaper. And that’s when I truly fell in love with these books. 

My days in Iraq became more bearable each time I received another Discworld novel in the mail. Sir Terry’s humor and magnificent wit gave me something to smile at when many times there was nothing funny at all. I read and reread so many of the books. And when I left, I handed a dusty, torn copy of Reaper Man to another soldier and said “Here man, read this, it’ll change your life.”

That’s the thing about Sir Terry’s work. Any time I was having a tough time, and life was getting me down, I had the Discworld to go to for a laugh. Ankh Morpork, the City Watch, Commander Sam Vimes, Lord Vetinari, Death, and so many other characters were so well known to me. Those books influenced my life. 

I was informed that Sir Terry Pratchett died today. For several minutes I didn’t know how to take this news. I’ve been around death, and it was odd that when I was so very close to it*** is when I was introduced to Pratchett’s work. I will so very miss his writing. But from the looks of it, Death came for him on his faithful steed Binky****, the realest horse there ever was. I’m hoping that Sir Terry was given the sword, he was not a king, perhaps in the whole crown and royal chair and all, but he was patriarch none the less. I’m especially hoping that before heading to the desert in the endless night, Death gave him time for a game or two of chess*****.

Farewell, Sir Terry, thank you so much for sharing your world with all of us. And thank you for all the laughter I had during one of the most trying times of my life. 

*DID YOU NOTICE THAT? IT WAS A PLAY ON WORD’S WITH PRATCHETT’S FIRST NOVEL. HOW QUAINT. 

**I’VE ALWAYS FELT I WAS A MORE CORDIAL REAPER, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

This happened ten years ago.

  It’s funny how many times I have told this story but never written any of it down:

  The biggest problem with leaving a combat zone is your worth to the military. In 2004 most if not all of us knew that we would be coming back to Iraq much sooner than we wanted to. Words like “stop loss” and “extended deployment” were being thrown around a lot. It seemed that there was no escape from the cycle that we were in. But accordingly, if you were still in that cycle it was easy to get around.

  Unless you managed to break out of the cycle completely, in which case your worth to the military shrank drastically. For those that were going home to get out of the military, or going on to officer candidacy programs getting out of a combat zone became an epic poem of just trying to get home.

  My last patrol went through Ramadi, Iraq July 19th 2004. It was not considered the most friendly of places and is still a seat of sectarian violence. I was in the back of an LMTV troop carrier fighting to stay awake (how the hell do you sleep your last night in a war zone?) I would snap awake to any sound other than the droning of the engine. I prayed that no one would ambush us and that I would make it to Baghdad alive.

  That was the easiest and sanest part of the story I am telling you now.

  I thought Baghdad would be the solution to all of my problems. I was wrong because I hadn’t heard of this other word… transport priority. I learned that men and women who were going on their rest and relaxation tours and would return had a higher priority level than myself. In fact everyone had a higher priority level that me. I was told to listen closely for my name to be called out for a C-130 flight. It was July so the temperature was about 110, maybe 120 degrees outside. The iPhone hadn’t been invented yet so I had no way of checking. I sat down with my bags and waited in the scorching heat with nothing but some ratty camouflage netting to give me shade. It didn’t give shade for shit. I sat there in the ungodly heat for hours. Finally I broke down and left my bags to grab a bottle of water from the large fridge they had sat next to the ticketing office.

  “It’s no good man.” A Private told me as I approached.

  “What?” I rasped.

  “The water’s hot, the fridge motor is busted.”

  I shrugged, how hot could the water be I thought to myself before burning my mouth with water so hot I could have made a fine cup of earl grey with it. Sitting in that terrible heat with no shade and drinking bath temperature water I began to wonder if I had not in fact been shot in the convoy and was in some version of perdition. I sat there until, mercifully, the sun started going down. After that I ate chow and walked over to the plastic portable sinks people could wash up in. The middle eastern sun had turned all the dust and pollution into an artists pallet of orange and pink that was far too beautiful to be believed in a place that had caused so much misery for those deployed here and for those who lived there. In that moment of splashing slightly cooler water on my face and neck everything almost seemed all right. An hour later my name was called and I was told to be ready with my gear at 0300 in the morning for a plane ride to Camp Doha in Kuwait and a plane home. I set my watch alarm and collapsed on my duffle bags. I had been awake for 36 hours.

  This is not the craziest part of the story.  This is just the warm up.

  0300 is the worst time. It’s more ungodly than 0400 because at least then you know breakfast is happening somewhere nearby.  0300 is a desolate time where nothing moves for fear of being roused and made to work. I stumbled with my gear over the sleeping forms of so many other soldiers (there was no real place for any of us to sleep so we slept outside) until I reached the office at the edge of the runway.

  “Name?” Asked the Airmen in the office with the manifest.

  “Volkmar, David.”

  “Hmm. I don’t see you on here.”

  “I’m priority four, but they told me to be here.” I began to grow nervous wondering if I’d ever get out of this place.

  The airman looked closely at me.

  “Going home?”

  “Yeah I’m going to West Point.”

  “Good for you,” He said with as little interest as possible. “Tell you what, if this guy on the list ahead of you doesn’t show up you get his seat.”

  “Great!”

  I’ve never been so happy for someone else to miss his flight. Unfortunately I boarded the plane and it proceeded to sit on the runway for four hours before taking off. I didn’t reach Kuwait until sometime around eleven in the morning. Hurry up and wait is a bitch.

  Now for those who do not know, the logistical side of moving an Army or a Navy is an absolute miracle. Being able to supply and move that many people is an act of sheer will power and undoubtedly heavenly intervention. There are several problems with this though. One is that many such people who run these machinations end up spending an entire combat tour in the safest place possible, the rear detachment, or the rear as most soldiers derogatively call it. Being in “the rear” for such a long time makes you into what we like to call an “entitled asshole.” The sort that complains when they don’t get the right type of creamer in their coffee, even though there are at least five other types of creamer. But I was military intelligence, who the hell was I to judge?

  I finally found the office where I was to be issued a plane ticket out of Kuwaiti international. At the front desk I found a private sitting with his feat up on the desk.

  “Help you?” He drawled at me when I came in the door. He did not add my rank of Specialist, which normally I did not mind. But the way his feet were up on the desk made me mind it now

  I was a mess. Dust covered my uniform, salt and sweat stains ringed my back and anywhere else you could see. I hadn’t shaved and I was dead tired.

  “I’m here about getting a flight out of Kuwaiti international to attend West Point, here’s my orders.”

  The private looked them and typed a few keys on his computer.

  “I can get you out of here August 29th.”

  My start date for the Academy was in mid August. I told the private so and his response agitated me even more. He merely shrugged and told me I didn’t have the priority rating to get out before August 29th.

  “Surely,” I said trying to check my billowing anger, “you can do something?”

  “Look here Specialist I…” The private got that far before my temper snapped.

  “GODDAM IT YOU LOOK HERE PRIVATE, I HAVE ORDERS TO WEST POINT I WAS PULLED OUT OF MY UNIT TO GET BACK THERE FOR SCHOOL ON TIME AND I INTEND TO DO SO. THIS IS BULLSHIT! HOW ABOUT YOU DO YOUR FUCKING JOB!”

  At this the Private’s commander, a Major, came out and asked what was going on in her office. I responded something along the lines of the Private not doing his fucking job… then saw who I was talking to and added a respectful “Ma’am” to my statement. The Major looked at my orders, asked me a few questions then told the Private to get me on a plane leaving the next day. She then showed me her Academy ring.

  Now… we get to the craziest part of my story.

  The next day started with another sleepless night. One because the enormous, warehouse sized building they had us sleeping in never turned out the lights and two because even if the lights were out I wouldn’t have slept for excitement.

  At the muster area for the flight, I signed in, showed my orders and ID then was checked for contraband. Finding none I was ushered into a large room with about one hundred other soldiers. It was here I learned another Army term. Accountability. Apparently the Army had been having problems for people walking out of airplanes in Europe on their way home and never returning, they called this AWOL or absent with out leave. To quell this issue they locked your ass in a room until it was time to board the plane. And when you were at the airport you were only allowed into certain rooms and so on. It is a military tradition that because of the dick-ishness of a few asshole individuals that everyone must suffer asinine rules and regulations. But what can you do?

  Well for a start you couldn’t smoke. A friend from a sister company (Diaz) walked to the double doors guarded by two military police, popping a cigarette into his mouth.

One MP held out his hand as Diaz approached.

  “Sorry Specialist, you’re not allowed outside for accountabilities’ sake.”

  “How am I gonna smoke?” Diaz asked.

  “You can’t.”

  Diaz responded with the perfectly sensible “ fuckin’ kidding me?”

  I sympathized. While I did not smoke myself I knew most of the soldiers in the room did. Can you blame them? Many had been through so much stress that the constant feed of nicotine and caffeine (which I did partake) was the only thing that kept their fractured nerves going. Telling someone who smoked at least two packs a day they suddenly could not smoke was trying to say to someone they could no longer breath. Stop breathing right now! See it doesn’t work, does it? I remember one soldier begging to be sent back to his unit, that he wouldn’t take his two weeks vacation, just so he could go outside and smoke. He was sent back to his seat by the MP.

  Four hours rolled by. I watched as Diaz became pale and started to sweat.

  Finally the bus arrived for the airport. Everyone crowded in and three quarters of the bus began to roll down the windows and started to light up. The driver, looking back at us through the rear view mirror, began to shout in broken English and Arabic.

  “No smoke! No Smoke! La La La (*No No No*) No Smoke!”

  Diaz was sitting behind me when I heard him again mutter “fuckin’ kidding me?”

  It was a two-hour bus ride; thus far the two pack a day soldiers had gone roughly six hours without any form of nicotine and there was no AC on the bus. Amidst the sweating, stinking mass of over a hundred soldiers in the early stages of withdrawal I watched one man rip open a cigarette and eat the tobacco inside. He gagged a few times but must have reached some form of relief because he kept chewing with a slightly sickly look of joy on his sunburnt face.

  I suppose it would be cruel to point out that there is no smoking in most airports besides designated smoking areas due to airline companies fear of FOD (or Foreign Object Debris IE cigarette butts) being sucked into jet engines. And maybe it is cruel but we are all laughing about this now so I’ll continue with the fact that the bus drove right onto the tarmac and they would not let us get off the bus while the jet was fueling. This took another hour.

  Sitting on the jet, we were handed hot towels, menus, thanked for our service and politely reminded that none of us could smoke on the plane otherwise we’d be in a world of all kinds of shit. Literally, this was word for word what the flight attendant said to Diaz who responded with yet another “fuckin’ kidding me?”

  I heard a retching sound and turned to see the guy who had been eating the tobacco from his cigarettes vomiting into an airsickness bag. When I asked how many he had eaten, his buddy next to him shook his head and shrugged.

  The captain of the plane gave his customary greeting after take off, with the usual information that no one really listens to, except for one particular bit when he uttered the following:

  “And if you’ll look to your right you can just make out the lights of the city of Baghdad.”

  From the back of the plane a soldier loudly “NO ONE WANTS TO SEE THAT SHIT!”

  One of the flight attendants quickly rushed to the back of the plane and we didn’t hear from him anymore. I quickly nodded off, but before I did I noticed Diaz sitting next to me, paler than before and slowly rocking back and forth. When I woke up untold hours later as we were landing he was still rocking. Just as I was wondering where the hell we were the captain came over the intercom.

  “And ladies and gentlemen we are now descending into Shannon, Ireland for your layover… please take all directions from the gate personnel.”

  Ireland? I’d always wanted to see it. Unfortunately it was eleven o’clock at night and all I could see was rain and some blurry hillsides. I’m told it’s really quite lovely.

  Now, for those that have stated that there is no such thing as fairies, the fae folk or anything like a leprechaun I challenge them with the man who came on board the aircraft to speak with us about our layover. He couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, wearing a dusky green jacket, with thinning bright red hair on top.

  Diaz looked sleepily towards him and muttered “fuckin’ leprechaun man.”

  The man looked us over quickly from the front of the plane then grabbed the intercom.

  “Welcome to our fair airport here in Shannon, Ireland.” He dutifully saluted us and continued on in his brogue. “You shall be staying here for a total of five hours. Now, for those of you that are the smokers, I’ve some news. There is no designated smoking area within the airport and you canna go outside.”

  And here now we reach the craziest moment of the story, where I watched a plane rock so hard that the tips of the wings were touching the tarmac. The tobacco eater began screaming hoarsely over and over like an air raid siren. I saw one soldier running up and down the aisle clutching at his hair. Diaz began punching the seat in front of him screaming obscenities. I was certain now I’d meet my end trampled by tobacco crazed combat veterans. Then a Colonel stood and grabbed the intercom from the shocked Irishman.

  “Men! Men! Calm down, damn it CALM DOWN! BEER IS ON ME AT THE BAR!”