Welcome to:

Sean Murphy's Home Page

My Home Page Site has a new/alternate Internet address:

http://users.asisna.com/mauricesean/

Please change your bookmarks, as the old site (http://users.sisna.com/mauricesean/) will be coming down soon, when? That's up to the crew who checks up on these things, but when it goes down (ZAP!) you won't find Jack @ the old URL! Just a small change, pulling the data that makes up this voluminous web-page from storage in a Salt Lake City, Utah I.S.P. closer to home. The only real change is 1 letter 'a' in front of 'sisna.com' making it 'asisna.com'; the rest is the same: 1 tap below takes U there :-) No changes to my private e-mail delivery address, the layered spam filters it passes through or the actions I take to make spammers lives as miserable as they try (and fail) to make mine. I will continue to update both sites until the sisna.com/UT one is closed. After a few months of this being a notice to all my visitors, it seems I have 2 identical home-pages up & running, more work for me, but once I tweak & save the changes I make to the original template of this page, it just means I FTP it up to 2 different servers, which has its benefits, if one goes down, the other will probably stay up and both are identical.

For frequent visitors to this page, you will notice that I have cut a lot of data out, simple: this is my life story and many people come & go to check up on me (or so my hit counter/I.P. tracer tells me) or have passed through my life that to name them all would be very confusing. If I know you then you probably are a person who can contact me by phone, e-mail or a visit, if I knew you and you are no longer part of my life then you may get a mention here, but I save that for only a very special few who changed my life or still enhance it of fill it with crap so they know who they are and a reader who wants to know only about me shouldn't have to wade through unknown names and incidents which make this a very messy unprofessional autobiography. It is not a good reference if I start with input that happened a week ago up top, and you have to scroll down 1/2 the page to get to my birth and follow that through what led me to where I am now over a 1/2 century later. It captures a unique period in the cold war, what led up to my inclusion in that and what happened after I retired from the U.S. Army after 20 years and many adventures in 1997. I will not be placing new-news up top and from now on there won't be many more changes to the format of this auto-biographical history of my life. If new news gets inserted it will probably be near the bottom, as it should be on a birth through life chronicle. For visitors who find my home page a little too colorful and love plain old normal black text on a white background, copy & paste the whole page into your word processing program like M.S. Word. I did try it all in black text on a white background, BORING, even I lost interest an hour into it. Get rid of the JPG's, and turn the multiple text colors and backgrounds I use into a medium U like. All the text is Ariel for international compatibility. Save it for a less flamboyant read. Regular visitors do the same and replace old saves with updated ones. My whole page in basic HTML fits on one 3.5" floppy disk taking up around 800 kilobytes, or 3-4MB's if U include the pictures. U will lose all the photos, and the built-in live links to other web-sites, but this page is not for the glitzy, it is a text rich chronicle of my ongoing life and does fit on a 3.5" floppy disk. A-drives are now taboo to most new computers that don't even come with one of those quaint little add-ons, unless U get a plug 'n play USB peripheral FAT-32 version as I have on my Dell laptop. So for just my words... save it to your hard drive, a flash-stick or a CD/RW as a text only file. IMHO it's my life story that counts, not the JAVA add-ons. U can find on much more Flash/Shockwave intensive web-master works of cyber art sites on Google! This site allows you to figure out who I am and saves me a LOT of time answering your questions when we first meet. After scrolling through the 4-hour read site you can then decide if I would make a good friend or we are not even close to being on the same wave-length. A wind-fall for you and a time-saver for me :-)

My life and story starts in a very rough & poor part of London, England.

I was born Maurice Sean Murphy on a wet and chilly late winter morning in 1957 in a large public hospital in the inner London borough of Saint Pancras, next to Westminster, or very close to the sounds of the London Clock, 'Big Ben' is the largest bell inside & up-top of that large clock tower (connected to the British Parliament complex, the Houses of Lords & Commons) as it is correctly named, and the entire ancient structure, an iconic land-mark of any London post-card mistakenly called 'Big Ben' even by those who grew up there and know the difference, making me officially a Cockney by birth or so the ancient tradition goes. There is not one drop of English blood in my family tree so being British is by birth only, my 1st pass-port was emerald green and had a golden harp on the front, Irish by virtue of all of my fathers heritage and 1/2 of my Mother's. I am an only child of that cursed union and have no children of my own. My ethnic make-up is 1/4 German and 3/4's Celtic. U.K. citizen by birth (London) but Irish by citizenship from my immigrant Irish dead-beat father. My Mother's name was Monica, the last and maybe the prettiest, most reserved yet very self-educated daughter of seven children (five girls and two boys), born to my mostly Irish and Scottish (Celtic) Grandmother Catherine Sullivan, and my (1st generation German immigrant to England) Grandfather Ernst. I have an uncle Terry in Ohio, now the Patriarch of that line, and in California aunts Aurdry, the eldest of my grandmothers 7 children, but sadly we don't have much in common that would bring us back into contact, I will probably hear more about her than I ever will from her, or her husband Jim. Then my God Mother younger by 10 years Aunt Bernadette still alive today but now sick and living in an assisted-living environment called 'The Meadows' for the elderly who also suffer just normal aging or aging plus medical problems. A recent call to my cousin Liz and several from my cousin Dave have told me she does well in this new environment and in her golden years it may help bring the family back together from many fractures and feuds that permeated life in my family, and also in so many families I know/knew. I remember times when they all were alive and the interactions I had with each one were kind and loving, those days are long gone, but I am slowly reaching back out to each of those in my family who can accept me for who I am, not harp on about any mistakes I made, sure I made some whoppers but I don't know too many folks who skated through life untouched by some bad calls or feuds. So back-track some more over a century. My Grandfather was the son of a German migrant who moved to England in the latter part of the 19th century from a large family who fixed clocks and repaired broken fine china plates, some where called to a life on the seas, Northern Germany, Hanover I think. That is where my the Germanic enters into my bloodline. As a young man he fought against the Germans in World War One, probably trading fire with some of his own kin! He was gassed and survived four long years in the trenches. His civilian trade was a coal stoker, a hard life until he married my grandmother and together they leased and ran a inn/boarding-house for sailors and merchant marines. WW I was something so terrible to endure for 4 long years of bloody trench warfare that he never talked about it to me or anyone else, I don't think he could bear to remember the carnage so he blocked it out with fits of rage at times for no good reason, then cried like a baby, something known today as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but back then called 'shell-shock' a badge of cowardice that could get a solider shot for incapacitating fear. My Grandmother told me that a rat was considered a good meal by the starving British troops. The rats grew fat on the un-buried bodies of Tommy and Kraut alike that no one could recover, so they just lay out in 'No-Mans Land' for months and rotted, a smell so strong it drifted to G.B. when the winds blew from the east. The first battle of the Somme (in France) was so loud that it was clearly heard across the North Sea back in England, lighting up night skies for days and worrying my grandmother and many other wives to misery that no letters had come back from her once dashing/charming young lance-corporal husband in months. They lived in South Shields in County Durham in the north of England when my grandfather came back a very different person, quick to anger and stern with anyone. During the next World War at the start (1939) was when Monica the youngest girl contracted and suffered through 2-years of tuberculosis was confined to a sanitarium in Durham. Totally isolated from the rest of the family for their protection from a disease which was common in the 1930's, where she suffered along with the 50% who never left that sanitarium alive, but at the cost of a lost lung to a primitive medical procedure to save her life at age 12, so all through her life she was always sucking for more air that folks with 2 lungs took for granted. Upon her release my Mother was evacuated into the country-side, in her case a country hamlet Vicarage, to avoid Hitler's Blitzkrieg which was bombing any city, especially the prime targets of the dock lands and rail-heads of the river Tyne where my Grandparents still owned and ran a boarding house for dockers, Royal Navy sailors and merchant seamen. She told me they were some very good years amongst loving people, she was 16 when the war ended and she returned to help my grandmother run that boarding-house doing menial chores for many years. Out of all the girls, my Mother stayed while the others found 'G.I. Joes' to take them to America as wives and 4 of them followed that route in the 1950's. My grandfather 40+ was too old when WW II broke out for recall to duty, but as required of any able bodied male he became a member of the Home-Guard helping out during and after German air-raids or manning 'pom-pom' guns (derived name for the sound they made with each volley), heavy anti-aircraft machine guns designed to bring down Nazi bombers. My Uncle Donald became a Merchant Seaman at age 16, and went off on convoy duty from England to Murmansk, Russia. He survived several direct torpedo hits from U-Boats on the vessels he served on, sending many to the bottom, and leaving him afloat in a lifeboat for days in the freezing Barents Sea. Convoys who stopped to pick-up survivors often joined their comrades in disaster. He could not survive the alcohol which took him in the end many years later, a broken man who shook with the fits of the addiction, never worked and drank his life away. He was buried at sea over the wreck of the Titanic by the Captain of the Q.E.II, arranged by my late aunt Vera, his twin by birth, and a good person who I loved dearly in her sorrow filled life. On my Mother's side of the family, Ernst remains the only soldier I know of in my lineage, until me, some 60 years later when I became one, but in a very different Army. I remember him as a bitter old man who died of colon cancer when I was still young. My Grandmother was a wonderful person who I loved dearly. I was raised very close to the Common Gate Pub in Walthamstow, (the urban mess that is part of the expanding Cockney East End of) London E-17, England. My Irish born father's first name was also Maurice Patrick, so very early in my life my Mother, in her wisdom, called me by my middle name: 'Sean' and it stuck throughout my life. It is the Gaelic name for John. It is the name I still go by to all my friends and family, except when dealing with official 'stuff' or folks. I should have dropped the Maurice part when I became a U.S. Army Combat Engineer, then a Combat Medic, then a U.S. citizen. Oh well! That name alone got me into more fights after school as a kid. It originated as 'Moorish' or 'Dark Skinned' and dates on record from the Muslim Moors who conquered most of Spain, until Christian Knights (Crusaders) chased them all the way back to their deserts. That name had one benefit I didn't fully appreciate at the time. I was getting good at fighting and soon earned a reputation for it. "Hey More-Rice where'd you get that pansy name from?" WHACK! Two years of formal training in Shotokan karate (later in my teens) made me an even better and effective weapon. The rigorous training eventually taught me that walking away or avoiding a needless confrontation is a good tactic too! I had many occasions to defend myself over the years and can still drop most with no frills moves that would end fights real fast. Thankfully it's been years since I last had to use it on anyone. Violence (IMHO) is the last option of dialogue. The English waves of invaders couldn't pronounce the name of my clan Muirchu,so they morphed it into Murphy a name of English creation as so many Irish names are today. Real Celtic language or names were prohibited to even be spoken under pain of death from Norman then Plantagenet then Tudor kings and a brutal Liz I to Oliver Cromwell, the only (non-royal) dictator and ruler of England after a bloody civil war (1599-1658) found itself rued by 'Ollie' when he had King Charles Stewart I's head lopped-off at the Tower of London for being a tad too anal and in the bad habit of dissolving parliaments that were supposed to represent the English people (landowners, not the tenants who were just worker bees with no rights to do much but put up, shut up and do as they were told), or who (unless they were the king's landed and titled court gentry "Yes Sire!" sycophants) saw no use in waging very bloody wars in distant Europe, getting issued armor, sword, and shields then off they went following the local knight wherever the king sent them, or staying home, farming the lands, paying taxes for royalist armies off fighting all takers over trivial matters and staying broke at home in England wondering WTF their monarch was up to and why the only thing coming home was bad news or broken veterans of those follies. The (Catholic) Irish people were never much more than bonded chattel to their hated (Protestant) English masters until Eire found freedom circa 1921 following centuries of revolts and bitter defeats, but still leaving 6 counties up north still under the rule of the British (Protestant) crown but still full of Catholic Irish who had lived there from birth thru death since Saint Patrick or Padriag, a Roman pilgrim & Christian convert who sold them all on the proper way to worship God, in Latin of course not even understood by any but the rich educated classes of Europe or the Romans whose mastery of it was total. Padriag is also credited for casting (Wizard stuff) those nasty snakes out of the island, or so the fable goes, more likely any snake caught by a starving peasant was a meal so they were probably consumed into extinction, not cast-out! That religious hatred made growing up in the 1970's an exercise in avoiding IRA bombs in major U.K. cities with London (my digs) a prime target. N. Ireland violence filled our evening news and hunger strikers became (Catholic Irish) martyrs when in fact most had a lot of innocent blood on their hands and weren't in HMP Long Kesh, Belfast for shop-lifting, generating more agro each time one died, or a Brit Paratrooper shot a brainwashed kid for throwing a petrol bomb at a patrol. Murphy (in Gaelic Muirchu) is a masculine surname that pre-dates Christianity meaning 'sea-warrior'. One of the ancient kings of the clan was always present at the Halls of Tara, the place now called Newgrange where a highly civilized Celtic culture once ruled Erin that rivaled ancient Greece at its climax. It marked all who bore it as originating from southern Ireland around modern day County Cork in Eire where around 500BCE their Bronze-Age men-folk made a decent living raiding Phoenecian traders and later Roman galleys. Enough history to fill a library, seldom taught (correctly) in British vetted history books, but facts on my home page that is already way too big, to convince you that somewhere way back all of my clan had a common royal ancestor. "Every Irishman thinks he's a king or descended from one!" were not kind words but they mocked only a much deeper truth. That 80-year [abbreviated] snap-shot of my family history is but the very start or prelude of my own life's story, which now follows:

ANGLO-AMERICAN seeds are sown, and take root.

I detested the poverty I was born into and soon realized after exposure to American culture (almost from infancy) that there were better places or ways to live than my miserable part of England. By age 10 I had already seen almost every touristy item that London had to offer, some many times, so please excuse me if I take for granted the Tower of London, containing the Crown Jewels, the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace or Tower Bridge that still spans the Thames. I had seen and lived with the freedoms and luxuries of the United States throughout my most formative first years and then later into my teens without even leaving Britain. My first exposure to American 'norms' was when I lived/visited with my Anglo-American God Parents and their first two children; my cousins (big-sis) Cathy and (my age) Liz, in Banbury, United Kingdom. Normal working class Americans who took for granted a life-style not common (or even affordable) on most British salaries. These were constant extended visits throughout the late 50's and early 60's to bases like Mildenhall or Lakenheath. My uncle and God Father, Manual Eduardo 'Eddie' Facundo; a Hispanic American patriot was a young handsome Tech-Sergeant stationed at a U.S. Air Force Base 2 hours ride by train from London. He married my Mother's elder sister, my God Mother, Bernadette. So for periods of many months unbroken we were a combined family and life was happy. Or so I thought, and forgot about the mean guy Mum never talked about. My own father was rotting in one of the most notorious prisons in England called Dartmoor. Not a place for mere shoplifters! By U.S. standards an San-Quintan for the worst of the worst. For what I don't remember but our trips to Banbury ended shortly after his release. Then my uncle Eddie's tour was up and he took his family back States-side to a new duty assignment in Texas complete with his new son, my cousin Eddie Jr. They went on to have two more boys, David and Patrick over the next few years. They left a lasting impression on me and a void that was very hard to fill. I stayed in mail and sometimes even phone contact with them in America throughout the years from the early 1960's when they left England to go back to the USA, and dreamt of emigration. I didn't see them again until 1972, aged 15, and again in 1975 at age 18. Both trips were for two-month vacations spent in places from San Francisco's hippy havens, camping trips all over Northern California's many beautiful lakes, mountains, National parks and forests. I enjoyed great concerts galore, to the wonders of Disney Land in Los Angeles! Blasting rock from to Rod Stewart to Zeppelin! Much of summer 1975 further saturated me in U.S. culture, and I literally drank it up with honorable men like Ed O'Shea. A Korean War Veteran and ex-Prisoner of War. He earned this Nation's 2nd highest military award for valor; the Navy Cross, awarded to him once he came home, an empty shell of a human after years of North Korean captivity and torture. Bastards! Then there was CRAZY Vietnam Veteran Bruce Liker, U.S.M.C. sniper. "Reach out and touch someone!", 1-shot, 1-kill with over 100 confirmed kills to his credit and his tormented memory/flash-backs! The combination of Uncle Eddie, Ed O'Shea and Bruce Liker made a U.S. military experience something I had to pursue, but I would have to return to London and wait another long year before I could follow that path for real. Too much to tell in depth on a Home Page I AM trying to stop becoming an e-book ! Stop now for a sec please, or revisit when you have more time.

The Journey Begins...

I do not know how old I was when I first imprinted memories that I can still recall, most are just fuzzy memories of events around age 2-3 that were either very good or (mostly) very bad. 4-year fast-forward to my first trip out of England. When I was 7 I spent the summer of 1964 living in Marseilles, France where my (recently released from prison) father played chauffeur to some rich big-wig. Living in a nice hotel on the beach for free, learning to swim in the Mediterranean c/o my always drunk father who repeatedly threw me off the end of a long pier and pushed my head down until I frantically learnt to swim away from the bastard who would have called it an "accident" if I didn't surface. His first real attempt at getting rid of me for ever (and not his last) may have worked, but turned me into one hell of a swimmer. I picked-up some French words which kept me busy and sun-burnt. I watched artists with crayons producing wonders on flag stones, with a small can near by and the word 'Merci' on a sign next to it. I soon emulated their gig, and earned centimes for my hours of meticulous coloring. I guess that was the 1st job I ever enjoyed and even made money from. It amazed my Mum when I could buy her an ice cream cone from my own supply of francs and showed her how I had made my first real pay. It did provide quality time which I could spend with my Mother away from the nightly binges of 'dear old dad', off chasing the local whores, or hitting the casino. Driving through France in a Rolls Royce hauling a luxury yacht for his boss, we visited most tourist traps from Paris to the more famous 'must-see' relics of their past heading south to Marseilles. Yawn! I'd seen much better castles, bridges and churches in England. Although Notre Dame cathedral was impressive, even if trash blew around everywhere outside it. My Mother brought a complete photo-album in black & white with her to America which I now own. Some photos were taken before I was even born. A time capsule proper. Priceless! My father's only 'legal' hobby was photography, and he recorded the whole trip, and much more of our life in England on those photos he developed himself. It's a hobby I too adopted over time but all my photo gear was paid for and my photos became digital. A legal hobby if you consider that all the cameras Maurice P owned were stolen, as were all his suits and anything he could get his thieving hands on. He never left our home without wearing a complete expensive tailor-made (stolen) suit and tie, he had a wardrobe full of them, and was so vain in other's trappings, when his drinking chums wore plain old (honest) working clothes of course. He drove wealthy people around, gained their confidence, and then robbed them. I thought most of France was dirty and the French were (in comparison to the English 'norms' I knew) rude, unwashed and their food was the cause of constant viral food poisoning we all suffered through. Later in life ('77-'79) I trained with French conscripts. They were poorly led, arrogant from Private on up, insubordinate slackers during training, ill equipped and fed like convicts. They made us look like Rangers in comparison! Not sure who they hated more, the Soviets or us U.S. soldiers. Many stole from us at every chance and stayed drunk even on duty. I guess saving their ass twice in the 20th century was something often (conveniently) forgotten by most baby-boomer French people who never endured conquest that I have ever met, and that has been many over the years with only a few exceptions. Even to this day when a French skier comes to my favorite diner here and complains about the Rockies not being as good as the Alps. Then go home Jaques and don't come back! Their Government's favorite word seems to be: "Veto!". Friggin Frogs! I guess that makes me a racist, but there are a few cultures and places I have seen that I don't want to revisit, starting with London, E17 and moving into a few which were, and still are even in the United States. No offense meant Amish folks, or gang-bangers in da hood, but I don't plan on moving in! It was during my stay in the south of France that I got to shake the hand of (then) President Charles DeGaulle in Marseilles when he visited in his new aircraft-carrier, named after him of course! Thousands of singing & cheering Frogs going nuts drew/pushed me to the front of the crowd. This was a first for me, and him. I had never even seen our Queen, or any other person so famous, let alone shook their hand. I had seen our crown jewels in the Tower of London (many times) and wondered why I was always hungry when she had all this wealth just behind the glass. At age 7 there were many things I had not yet been exposed to, but I was learning fast. That was as far as I got away from London I got, except for the few wonderful trips I tagged along with my friend's family, or my own parent's caravan vacations to the Isle of Wight with forays into spooky Hearst Castle, my best friend as scared as me, with it's Mad Monk ghost legend. My next trip out of England was a few years later (without my Mother, or any friends) for a month in Cork City, Eire living with my dirt poor (boozing) Irish grandmother, father, half-brothers from my dad's first married fling during and right after W.W.II, which he sat out safe as an Irish citizen in Blackpool. Eire was not at odds with anyone but the British. Maurice P had women a-plenty whose husbands were off fighting a war against Adolph and his crazies. Being Irish there was no conscription for him. His first wife Margory gave him my half-brothers (Michael and Tony Murphy) who were criminal clones of my father. Both were trouble. If either of you aging wankers ever reads this, leaving you crooks in England was almost as good as leaving our dear bastard of a father; bugger off! A trip to 'see me' in America may be your last trip anywhere, you have been warned! Add many shifty uncles, a few cowed aunts and a load of cousins I had never met before, for a long drawn-out drunken clan funeral & wake during the late 60's. I think my paternal relative's funeral may have had IRA connections, as they even showed up at the grave-site in ski-masks and camouflaged uniforms! They even fired off a rifle salute over his grave then raced away in a V.W. Microbus. Literally thousands of other mourners followed the Hearse, or were leaning out their windows crying and shouting as we walked to Seven Hills cemetery with me and my cousin (?) leading the entire way. Weird. I wonder what that bastard did in life to merit that outpouring, and I never asked. My Mother had barely survived two IRA bombings in the business district of London, one of which trapped her and hundreds of others in a smoke filled tube (or subway) for hours killing some and hospitalizing the rest, remember she only had 1 working lung! For that reason alone I disliked their cowardly methods, them, and stayed clear of any who boasted support for those early terrorists! Like I distanced myself from all of my father's crazy/criminal clan. Coal Quay, Cork was enough to see what real poverty really meant and I actually missed London! Ireland was beautiful and green once you left the slummy cities. Loads of rolling hills, ancient churches and pubs, farms with cows, pigs, sheep and horse-drawn wagons, but little for any kid to do. That was the last time I saw most of them, thank God. The rest of my most vivid recollections concerns my best friend then (met at the age of four when we both started in our 1st class together, 1st lesson was memorize our Roman Catholic catechisms!) and now some 49 years later, Mick is still a presence in my life. I had the honor of introducing him to the young woman he would go on to marry, a relationship that still endures and he bore two fine sons. The years and miles that separates us have made us different people, but we both bear the London, E17 'stamp' from the Cockney neighborhood we grew up in. He often reminds me that I will always be older than him the more years we live out, if you count 57 days I guess he will always be a young pup :-)

Surviving the Monster!

Some folks are unlucky enough to have rotten or dead beat fathers, plain old bums, my Mother married a real charmer who turned into evil incarnate within a year of the worst mistake of her life, giving me life. My (way-jealous since my Mother shared her maternal love with my newly born self) father was a explosive, racist, violent, abusive bastard to anyone at any time, making me and my Mother an easy outlet after a bad day at the pub, a horse or greyhound race betting loss, or most often for no reason at all. Often putting us both in the local Emergency Room with serious injuries. File charges and live! Not likely! Yet he could be charming to those he wanted to impress, then later exploit, then rob them. From blasting (State forbidden) IRA revolutionary marches or ballads out our open front window while screaming drunken obscenities at anyone fool enough to say something, to Bobbies bashing down our front door was not uncommon, as he fled out the back way, or was hiding-out in London's criminal underworld. I seldom visited him in prison and my Mother told me he was "working overseas". Time passed as did that charade. Most of our family, friends and neighbors avoided us when he was around. It is terrible to be shunned for the crimes of another, which my Mother and I certainly didn't benefit from. When money was short, which was any time Maurice P. was around, he often took all her money by force and spent it all on himself in one night, then later beat us up because there was no food or heat in the place! For so many years we lived off her income alone or at the worst times the charity of others. She worked in central London for small pay and very long hours of arduous secretarial work she had done since I was a newborn. My father was a habitual violent drunk, career criminal, gambler, womanizer and very possibly a murderer. He carried a small semi-auto pistol, more as a last-resort weapon if the odds stacked up against him, but used a thick steel dog chain like a steel whip. Less noise and more 'effect'. We had a black terrier mix dog he took everywhere he went, and chains were expected with any dog. One heartless and brutal bastard! I had seen him fight and not many people he worked-over were even conscious (alive?) afterwards. I once saw him throw petrol over a poor fella who (he later claimed) owed him money, then he lit a cigar and burned the poor bastard alive as he tossed the lit match onto the bloke, I know not if he even lived and never asked. He constantly boasted about throwing acid in peoples faces, and I'd seen the results that caused when they got out of hospital disfigured and even blinded for life. That was his favorite threat to my Mother and her worst fear. May his evil soul rot in hell!!!! Nice thing to show your young son! Threats of reporting these acts of utter sadism to my: "Whore of a Mother if I ever told anyone..." ensured I remained too terrified to do much but keep my mouth shut and even wet my pants at times with fear when he turned his anger or pistol on me. Leaving him in prison seemed our only way to escape his psychotic brutality. He 'obliged' us by being incarcerated for armed robbery three years prior to us finally leaving. It made the T.V. news and all the major Brit newspaper headlines earning more ignominy for us; losing me my first real girlfriend of three years, and more importantly, my Mother, her job! She soon found other work under similar conditions but for even less pay. I soon found other girls existed, so we survived, barely. It was during this time that me and my Mother, in tandem with our family (the Facundos I knew as a toddler) in the United States, worked on emigration plans. A slow and bureaucratic two year process. Annual U.S. immigration quota caps was the main obstacle. I found out later in life that he died of alcoholism, alone and in the same city we left him in. A very fitting end for a monster who made so many other people's lives hell on earth, or worse. I hope it was long and very painful to this very day. That rushes 19 years of my life to this point. On 31 October 1976, my Mother and me left our (built in 1870!) slum in Walthamstow having sold or given away almost everything we owned, and carrying two suitcases each, headed west on a Boeing 747 arriving in the Untied States 15 hours later exhausted but jubilant. It was the first time she had flown in a plane and my third! My maternal Grandmother also came with us in her late-80's, but returned to London within months as (at her age) England was all she knew and the cultural shock of even suburban California was not something she could handle. She died alone in London some years later aged 94 when I was stationed in Hawaii. We were only able to emigrate through the sponsorship and kindness of my Aunt and Uncle, Bernadette and Eddie Facundo, who then lived in Petaluma, California. They literally saved us from a continuous reign of terror once my loser father emerged from prison, the very day after we had already split. Oh to have been a fly on the wall to see the look on dad's face when he arrived at a flat no longer his, with his bags packed outside. Homicidal might sum it up! He mailed a hate-filled letter to my Mother and divorced her many years after we left. Guess he'd found someone else to torment. Per his death certificate he died on the exact same day that I retired from a 20-year career in the United States Army. Many such unexplained coincidences abounded in my family. I won't list them as you, the reader, may think I'm making them up, yet others (family & friends) witnessed those eerie events too, so no list on this page ever.

Schools 'n Stuff!

I was educated under the 'tender' whips and canes of the Roman Catholic Church for most of my early youth.  They did a pretty good job of beating ANY religion out of me for many years to come. The beatings from the nuns and monks sucked, but the education was superior to the State operated schooling system. Corporal punishment was the domain of slackers or trouble-makers, like me! Even though I aced every exam they threw @ me. Art was the subject I always excelled in. 'Trouble' could be something as simple as a dropped pencil resulting in many lashes of a bamboo cane across the hands or backs of the legs delivered first by the Sisters of Mercy, my often bamboo-cane traumatized ass! I actually developed callouses on my hands and legs. I forced myself to smile when I was being beaten. This drove those sanctimonious child abusers into caning frenzies and there was no punishment they could inflict that I had not become immune to. In comparison to what my father dished-out to me for no good reason on a much more frequent basis, to the beating my Mother endured and sometimes even to my aging Grandmother, who he once threw down a 15 ft flight of stairs one drunken night. We all suffered through the years and those sisters and a brother who had already emigrated to America after World War II and became richer faster than the Facundos ever did, yet refused to sponsor us, or we may have left England in the 60's, I thank them in retrospect for their apathy! The Catholic's punishments were mild, even after they'd broken most of their canes on me. I ran from an Anglican 'priest' who lured young boys into his vicarage home with promises of "fun things to do". I was one aged 8 who found out once inside his home that he wanted much more than I cared to give him and found evil wearing white collars, in 'holy' places. I bolted and blabbed it all to my Mother. She called the police who would not believe her story. "A Church of England priest would NEVER do that, it's all Catholic gossip, click!" But as the complaints rolled in, and the young Church of England rectums got torn up by this rapist pedophile fuck head who finally went on to do hard time for his criminal perversions, but not before he messed-up many a-kid's life & mind. Further convincing me that any religion was crap. We evolved end of story. Today I am old enough to know I'm not wise enough to prove a Higher Power doesn't exist, so I have faith but still many questions. The Higher Power I do venerate is One that ties in with a 7-year duty-stationing in the islands of Hawaii, and is not a common deity outside of Hawaii to place my faith into. I find it very hard to believe that in an endless universe full of billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, probability dictates that some sentient life exists other than here. Running with that logical premise, how does the Maker present Himself to them? Or because if they ate meat on a Friday on a distant planet orbiting a star like ours, they're heading for a Catholic's version of Hell? How does one explain dinosaurs? Beta builds of hominids? Doesn't zound quite fair on E.T. or T-Rex to me! I didn't buy the 2 by 2 Noah's Ark story, yet I find it easy to accept that there was once a place called Atlantis and we are it's progeny. I resented being born with unbaptised original sin, as if it did go wrong in Eden, don't blame me not even born yet or old enough to lie well! That's a sin I learned for self-preservation in my childhood, and didn't like it then as much I disdain lies now. I lied to my teachers (from nuns, thru monks to non religious teachers) about where I picked-up so many black eyes, bruises or split lips. I was a frequent patient at Whipps Cross Emergency Room. So they thought I was a real brawler in & out of school, which did nothing to improve my standing with anyone. If I told them it was my own father's fault, then I had just signed my own death warrant or had my face burnt off with acid! I may have ended up in a foster home for my own protection, and this web-page would not have been created because I'd still be trapped in England, or dead by the hand of my own father. The school administered beatings finally stopped when I hit a State operated school after the private Catholic school I was in folded due to lack of fund$. Funny they had plenty of money to buy new whipping canes each semester! This was new to me, a place where no one gave a damn if you learnt or skipped. Now beatings were the domain of school bullies. After a few bad rumbles I started fighting back like a crazed imitation of my father. I soon became a fast slim dirty fighter others even older and larger than me learnt to leave alone, using some tactics I'd learnt from Maurice P. I admit I messed-up any punk who wanted to rumble, sometimes badly enough that they spent the rest of their time in that school dodging me, but I never seriously injured even the worst bullies, fear is a potent tool and using the unexpected got me results I wanted, I was seldom bothered by bullies, never got into trouble for those incidents, even the worse scum-bags who I always thrashed, left me alone as too much to handle. I'd be damned if I would take the same from these brainless racist (Irish surname hating) jerks too! I grew up in a city that the IRA bombed numerous times, and sporting Murphy as my surname made me, and my Mother the target of what later became known as racial profiling and hatred. In England we start school at age four and continue until we are 16, ending (12 years of education) in either (Ordinary) O-level exams or GCSE's, or CSE's when I took them. Run a search my non-Brit friends! Not as prestigious as the harder O-Level exams, but still valuable. Talented kids who did not have to go to work at 16, and had passed 6 or more O-levels and/or GCSE's often earned themselves a scholarship to 3 or (pushing-it) 4 (Advanced) A-level courses at a college. Two year courses of study putting them at U.S. Junior College Graduate education level by age 18 or even younger for truly talented kids, with 14 years of schooling behind them. England back then when your brain could get you into college, not the money you could tap into had a few benefits! For the elite or smart that was/is the doorway to higher college education. But for the majority of average working class kids who left school with only a few O-levels, GCSE's or nothing, normal entry-level work started at age 16 for very little pay. And Army recruiters filled their heads with dreams, leaving out any mention of a place called Northern Ireland! I started my school dayzzz in St. Patrick's Elementary Catholic School (Nuns!), then 6 years later entered St. Egbert's Catholic College for Boys, (Monks!) the place that went broke & closed. Then into the State run schooling of Heathcote Secondary Modern School (punks and skin-heads) and then 4 years at Sir George Monoux High School for Boys, a pretty nice place! I went on to do a year at Loughton College of Further Education studying A-levels in Psychology, Sociology and English Literature. 5 O-levels and 3 CSE's were my ticket to no-cost higher (literally!) education. I was also specializing in Badminton and chasing college girls. Dire Straights was an unknown band @ that time who played there regularly as many of their members were seniors in that college. Priorities: One year into that part of my life I had to leave college to earn money for emigration. During this period I also counted David (Blip) B. and Robin N. as close friends, involving them in many a party, pub-crawl or concert. From T-Rex to David Bowie I saw them all. I have lost contact with all my college days friends, maybe they'll find me here one day. I had worked in several small stores starting on weekends at the age of 10, and then moved into larger warehouses since I was 12 years old, on weekends or most nights earning me the pocket money my Mother couldn't afford to give me. By age 14 turned those 'skills' into a semi-full-time trade after school and college dayzzzz. Enough to convince me I didn't want to spend my life stocking shelves for a living, even with a fork-lift I learned to drive like a pro by age 15! At 16 I spent a year as a courier in London wearing suits and hopping taxi-cabs, busses, tubes or hoofing-it to deliver valuable or time sensitive documents/items all over the city which was decent work for good pay + tips and gave me an understanding of most roads and alleys in the HUGE capitol that normally only cabbies spend years training to pass a test they call: 'The Knowledge' a must if your calling puts you driving one of those black London cabs so common all over down-town. Wild wombats couldn't coax me into returning forever to live out my remaining years there. I am now a Yank and damn proud of that more so than I was ever proud to boast about the Victorian slums and poverty I left behind me, or would not even recognize now with a heavy Asian-Brit population who turned my memories of a white working class life into a place that has more in common with any Asian community when you start talking about Londonistan! British citizens all and loving the freedoms/money Britain gave them, but refusing to act like they were anywhere but still living in some shit-hole in Pakistan or India or name a shadow of the long gone empire that made them Brits 2nd but ALWAYS good Muslims or Hindus 1st. I may say the same about any community or nation when migration changes or displaces the norms of established folks. My journey through life continues, but I will never forget my roots nor the people, places and things who helped mold me into the wild-eyed teen who got onto a 747 on Halloween 1976 and never came back to London to stay, nothing personal to any Brits reading this, but that place was not for me, I had tasted America and that is where I wanted to move to, and for my sins I got my wishes granted. America is my home of choice and a place I love. The idea of going back there repulses me, remembering how much I hated living there and growing up to be a young adult there holds only bitter memories of not belonging.

What follows is my history, and many comments about my English youth, thru a 20-year career in the United States Army, to the present day Veteran I am:

I always wanted to be a soldier remembering how sharp my Uncle Eddie looked in his uniforms and the many tales he told us of military life. The Vietnam war had started at that point, but that was still 3rd page news in 1963 English newspapers. America offered me the opportunity to fulfill that dream. During my first trip to America in the summer of 1972 at the age of 15 I figured that if the British Army would take volunteers at age 15 (with parental waivers), I would try the very same thing. I got all dressed-up in my best suit and tie, then strutted right into the Petaluma, California U.S. Army recruiter's office, fully intending to sign-up and leave that very day for Vietnam. My cockney accent turned into the best Clint Eastwood Yank twang I could pull. The African American staff sergeant behind the desk had more ribbons and medals than General George S. Patton himself! He asked me my age so I lied and told him 17. I was 6 foot tall and weighing 160lbs. I looked 17-ish. He then asked me for my I.D., and I lied again telling him it had been stolen, and then he raised an eye-brow. Now totally committed to this situation I layered lie on top of lie until even I forgot how much utter bullshit I had spouted out. Finally he got way mean and stood up staring me down. I cracked and told him the truth. He was impressed that I had tried so bloody hard to B.S. him and gave me a stack of pamphlets, telling me to return in a few years and he'd let me sign-on. I dragged my sorry demoralized butt back to my Godparent's home, and he had called them! Yikes! I didn't even remember giving him their phone number but obviously had. Oh shit! My uncle & aunt finally stopped laughing around 10pm, and by then I had 'borrowed' a few beers from my uncle's stash and the humiliation was numbed into stern words about if I EVER tried that again they would take me SO far into the woods with a tent and leave me there so I could get a feel for what I wanted so desperately to do. That incident became a favorite story my whole family yanked my chain about for years, but if I could have lied, cheated or sold my very soul and managed to enlist, I would have probably been the youngest troop in 'Nam during it's last year of wind-down. Whole different story in 1976 when just three weeks after I emigrated to the United States, I DID join the U.S. Army as a Combat Engineer (12 Bravo) complete with all the documents required. I wanted to be an Infantryman but my ASVAB (entry level I.Q. testing) scores were too high, as in officer candidate high. Being a British/Irish citizen I couldn't become an officer. Even getting a security clearance higher than 'none' is the domain of non-U.S. born legal-alien Yank military anything like I was then, so most legal aliens or Green Carders are enlisted into jobs not requiring a need to know anything but basic levels of a very limited field of military occupations, most in combat arms. So I asked what other type of 'exciting' combat work I now qualified for. Combat Engineer was the answer. I was sworn-in that very day in late November 1976 and opted for delayed entry, meaning I had a few weeks to report-in, and had the best Christmas of my life with my new American family in their beautiful Petaluma home, complete with many visiting relatives and much love. Three days before I was due to depart for boot camp my (now passed on) Uncle Fred offered to get me out of my Army contract and send me thru medical school and with his funds he could have made that happen, he had well connected Masonic friends who were part of the Department of Defense and a single call would have changed my course in life. I declined his over-generous offer, he had just lost his only son, my cousin Jimmy in a tragic auto accident and I did not want to become a replacement for that boy in his life, which if I had accepted would have meant moving to Ohio to study there and forsaking the connections with my Mother and the family who in 1976 I honestly loved with all my heart. I was destined to enter medicine 4 years later but not as a doctor, and I am glad I chose the hard life over the emotional connections I was reluctant to commit to had I become a doctor by my mid-20's living in world that lacked the adventure I so needed to form my personality to what it is now.  Magical times that ended that chapter in my life as I closed the book on being a civilian. I always loved blowing stuff up as a kid with fire crackers, and I was provided many opportunities to indulge this desire with chunks of C-4, det-cord, TNT and other high explosive ordinance in the next 3 years!   I went through 16 weeks of Transformation at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri (Misery) starting 3 January 1977.  Talk about a COLD winter!  Colder than any winter I had ever endured in Britain. For anyone who has seen 'Full Metal Jacket', that was still the 'normal' way to turn raw recruits into soldiers. We were all called 'Cruits by the Vietnam-era soldiers, most of whom had been drafted, not re-CRUIT-ed. In their eyes we were green fools who had not earned the right to be called anything else. FNG! The 'Nam acronym assigned to any new replacements who the 'old-timers' didn't want to get to know, as they were normally the first killed in action in 'Nam. Fucking New Guy was the worst derogatory term still used to describe us. After a year there, we 'welcomed' fresh meat likewise, playing them just like our mentors/tormentors had treated us. Our only war was cold.... and scary. Many of our orders were barked out in fluent Vietnamese and we learnt the very worst phrases very fast, which I still remember and sometimes still use to this day, without even knowing I let them slip: Time to di-di mau or "Time to go real fast." The craziest old-timers had left their brains in 'Nam when that war ended and they came home to a country who wanted only to forget them and their war like sniper Bruce Liker who drank his nightmares away. I adapted quicker than most of the American recruits to the Spartan discipline and environment of class Delta-4-2. What was too tough for my American counterparts, I thought little of the B.S. The food was hot and filling with 3 meals a day (!!!), clean sheets and uniforms, the barracks with hot showers were all luxuries in comparison to daily 'life' in slummy Walthamstow and living with a maniac who made even our meanest Drills look like puppy-dogs. For my 'adaptability' I got my first chevron (/\ stripe) 2 months in and was one proud, young smart-ass Private E-2. Big deal! A few dollars more pay per month and more responsibility as a trainee Squad Leader in charge of 12 other recruits. Some so dumb that even tying shoe laces confused them, or the few who thought a shower was something a person takes when it warms up. Hill-Billy kids and inner-city gang-bangers were booted out even then, or went AWOL, then (predictably) ran right back to their homes & were policed-up by waiting cops, turned over to military M.P.'s and sent right back to the brig as deserters, now felons and breaking rocks 12-hours a day in places like Fort Leavenworth. Those few who could or would not adapt were finally booted-out with a trainee (general) discharge eventually after maybe a 3rd try at recycling them through another 4 months starting from day 1 each time. Hell! A few just swan-dived face first from 4th floor windows onto cement parade grounds 40 ft below, ending what they could no longer endure. Our senior platoon Drill Sergeant, SFC Brown, kicked ass! A strong love/hate relationship created a bonding and respect for this decorated 'Nam Vet who never once called us FNG's, but pushed us beyond our limits making us soldiers. So that's how it worked! Upon completion of my 4-month combined Infantry & Engineer (OSUT or One Station Unit Training) adventure I was sent right back to Europe after breaking my ankle 2 weeks into Airborne school at Ft. Benning, Georgia, my next stop after Fort Lost in the Woods, Misery. The 82nd Airborne Division was supposed to be my first assignment after a 3-week Jump School. At 20 I was super-fit and would have made that course with no problems, but you can't run all day long and jump out of C-130's on a broken ankle. I took some leave back in California to bid my family farewell and recovered from the ankle injury, then I was gone. That broke my Mother's heart and I didn't return the same person 2 1/2 years later. I sent my Mother one third of my meager monthly pay-check home to help her get started, keeping me one always broke soldier and I never enjoyed the the trappings my peers splurged on. Thank God she had family who stayed close and helped her start a new life in her mid-40's. She soon found good paying work and a new home of her own in Santa Rosa, California. Most of all she didn't have to live in poverty, or endure the daily beatings by my father ever again. What a leap of faith! My one regret is I did not visit her more as I globe hopped for 20 years. Europe was a place I had just left (!) but I had never been to Germany. I grew up in a country still recovering from World War II, that ended only 11 years before I was born. The trains I rode in still were steam engines, and puffed like dragons. I had seen the after effects of the Blitzkrieg. Where once stood family homes were empty weed filled lots where I played, all over my civilian east-end London neighborhood. So I did not rush into Germany with any "Gutten Tag" lines knowing they'd tried to whack my Mother's family twice! Until 9/11, a concept lost on most Americans who had their one Pearl Harbor to my family's nightly air-raids of prolonged terror and death during W.W. II. I spent the next 2.5 years in Charlie Company, 78th Engineer Battalion,   Rhineland Kasern, Ettlingen, or 'The Zoo' as it was known to the locals (and us) who insisted it was full of wild animals. They were not far off in that take on us as animals. That name came from a fire-base in Vietnam that was a very bad place to end up in deep in V.C. badlands. The 78th Combat Engineer Battalion no longer exists although the buildings remain right where I left them. It was the height of the Cold War. We shared the post with a German unit of the Civilian Labor Group (CLG), a para-military German & foreign civil engineer outfit. Good professional folks who went home at night to their own places & families in cars that very few of us even owned. The U.S. public and military were still stinging from the debacle of Vietnam. Saigon had fallen less than two short years prior to my arrival. All of my leadership had served tours there from my (crazy) squad leader SGT S., (an African American Buck Sergeant/E-5) who was a tunnel-rat in Vietnam, on up to senior still serving Korean War Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO's) from the early '50's. Few (normal) people joined a down-sizing military for $360 a month (Private, E-1) that in my opinion was still ill prepared, under-equipped, and NOT a popular profession. We (meaning everyone from the Battalion Commander on down) expected a Soviet invasion almost every day and full roll-out alerts were very frequent. Almost as frequent as wild parties from the barracks to the local beer halls or 'window-shopping' along the brothels of 'The Wall' in Nuremberg. A wonder to behold after 30 days in the field at training centers like Hoenfels, Vielseck or Graff, with a full paycheck (unspent) in our back pockets and a testosterone level bordering on overload! My favorite city in Germany was Hiedleburg. Only a short rail or bus trip from my barracks. Frozen in time, it was a unique and beautiful city filled with adventures just waiting to happen, like the annual 'Burning of the Castle' blow out! Since the Wall came down and E. Germany emptied it's jails, the Euro-trash flooded in, and with it Germany lost another war and started building new prisons to accommodate the worst of what emerged from E. German cells. 19th century Germany was once a proud European nation that rivaled any western power in most ways @ the time. The British royals are heavy on German genes. My German Great-Grandfather's lineage of watch makers and sea captains or ship-mates. That 25% of Germanic genes kept their wilder 75% of Celtic cousins, and me focused. But at 20 I was still one wild and reckless punk with an M16 to prove it to any bad old COMMIES who my leaders told me were sub-humans. I believed every word of it ;-} Sometimes my attempts to visit friends and/or my Nan back in London went smooth, but one try crashed in flames. Once upon a time in Germany long ago I saved up some cash, took 14-days leave and headed for London. I packed my duffle bag and bade my Yank M8's farewell, headed on a bus to Karlsruhe bahnhoff (train station). Before I split I took 1/3 of my spending money and stuck it in one of the combat boots I always wore for travel, a precaution which later saved my ass. Also stuck in there was a 3" switch-blade, a traveling precaution when not passing thru metal detectors or airports in a country where mugging solitary G.I.'s by gangs of German punks was common, and had saved my butt when they tried a few times, just by pulling and flashing it always did the trick, with no need for the stick. That rhymes :-) Whilst in Germany I made a few trips over to London to see old friends. This is how one turned out, or should I say didn't pan out anywhere close to what I had so carefully planned. Best laid plans... my ass!I was at the railway station by 9am I sat (sober) waiting for the train to take me to Calais, and a 30 minute hover-craft ride to Dover, my favorite & fastest way of crossing the channel (4 times between '75 and '79), followed by a quick train/tube into London, then a double-deckered bus, and finally a quick hoof-it to see my friends, and my aging Grandmother. Mid summer and me looking forward to a perfect vacation which started to go badly tits-up @ Karlsruhe bahnhoff B 4 it even really began in earnest. As I sat there checking out the fraulines, an RAF enlisted fella also heading home sat on the bench with me and we began to chat. He produced a bottle of schnapps and we passed the 1 liter bottle, taking bigger gulps each time. A warm fuzzy buzz crept over us as the train headed west and we chatted like troops do. The next thing I remember was a totally dark rail yard where they park the trains at night in God knows where. Something had gone VERY wrong very fast! Still groggy I lit up a match only to find a missing duffle bag, containing a carton of smokes, a gallon of Jack Daniels, all my changes of clothes and toiletries. Also missing my wallet (lifted right out of my jeans) and the $200 in cash inside with all my other forms of I.D. gonzo, my Army field jacket, my Army sleeping bag, my watch and most importantly my U.S. Army I.D. card plus my NATO leave/travel orders, which was as good as any passport then. Reaching down into my combat boot I found the cash I had stashed and that gave me a glimmer of hope, in a situation where most would have lost any! It was 1am (local) as I wandered up to the ticket window through rows of deserted trains 1 kilometer away. It was staffed by two folks who spoke no English and a little German. Lucky my German was good but not yet fluent. I had visions that I may have actually crossed into Soviet controlled E. Germany or even Poland and my ass was about to get fried bad! MOV. Missing on vacation to the max! I told them I had got mugged on the train, a 1/2 truth as I needed no bashing to rob me. God only knows how I made it through borders in the nations I traveled thru totally out of it, when it was common practice to check every passenger's I.D. & ticket before allowing them to go from one nation to the next. Especially during the Cold War! I saw a sign as I walked towards the station lights, dumping what could be construed as a weapon, that said 'Hoek van Holland'. I was on the coast all right, but about 100 klicks north of where I was supposed to be heading. And no bloody hover-craft or means to travel anywhere but back into a place I had strutted out of only a day before! Felt like a week had passed! At least I had not crossed the Iron Curtain and that was one huge relief. Explaining that to the KGB would not have been even close to a vacation, more like a 1-way trip to Moscow and a major diplomatic incident, as they would have charged me as a spy! Visions of Siberia flashed through my befuddled mind, as shock and cold air sobered me up real fast! It took a (collect!) call to my Company Commander in 'The Zoo' to verify who I was. Utter shame! I bought a train ticket back to the Zoo ($95), but still technically being on leave, I laid-low in a German M8's apartment for a whole day B 4 I dragged my sorry ass in front of a young Captain, my Company Commander, who bought my almost true "mugged on the trip" story, phew! It took me a whole month of pay to replace the stolen Army gear to add further insult to injury, and began a deep-rooted distrust of any wanker in an RAF uniform from a lowly Brit Airman through commissioned senior Wing Commanders. Contrary to my family's folklore here's a little gem from my time in Germany for your amusement: In early 1979 I attempted to fly home to California on a military transport (space-available) and rank sure hath it's privileges. I had to wear my dress-green uniform to fly with my Spec-4 rank sewed on both sleeves. The SNAFU that ended up being Space-A at Ramstein U.S. Air Force Base, Germany, where I spent one whole week out of the two I'd taken waiting around the terminal for an open seat that I kept getting bounced out of every time the loud speaker called my name and some fucking junior officer or NCO who'd just showed ran up to the counter and took my place, which by day 6 and 12 flights later, my uniform a wrinkled mess and smelling like I had been in the field for week (showers not part of the waiting area) sent me into fits of rage that even the Air Force S.P.'s had a hard time with. That botched attempt had made the 'World' (California) a place that only a commercial jet could take me, that I couldn't afford a round trip on then, 3 months in pay alone, with no spending cash. The experience made me very hostile to fuck-heads with more rank than me, and Space-A a means of travel I never tried again, or ever will. Benefits maybe for Colonels but misery for troops who got their hands dirty for a living. FTA, or Fun Travel & Adventure my ass! Try Fuck The Army is what it really stood for, and during my tenure in Germany was the most common acronym found from lowly latrine stalls to truly masterful works of camouflaged art meticulously incorporated onto some huge tactical vehicles, that the brass just walked right by admiring, totally oblivious to the obvious (hidden in plain sight) insult, while Privates busted-up for reasons which they failed to comprehend! With that bad-attitude I knew me & the Army were heading for a divorce as soon as my time was up, by then less than year away and boy was I counting days and ducking duty, a real rebel @ that point! But that was my last few months in Germany and I had 'gone native', so I need to back-track 2 years to times when I just shut up and did my new job very well.

It was common knowledge that Rhineland Kasern was a Nazi base, built in 1897 it has played many roles from a garrison for troops to a hospital, an officers academy dating back to W.W.I and the Franco-Prussian wars before that. It had a (not so) secret and vast underground motor pool full of rusted Panzer tanks, and equipment above our one. Permanently sealed after prior U.S. scouting fatalities into it. Emplaced 193? by the Nazis, maintained then buried and booby-trapped by their retreating forces in 1945. It was built by local concentration camp slaves from a little known camp at Bad Herrenalb in the woods just north of Ettlingen, that the older Germans thought nothing off, as they were literally worked to death excavating it, and building what is still today a thriving trout farm just outside of the now leveled camp. Most adult ex-Nazi Germans I knew when I was there fully understood what "deportation" meant and did nothing but condone it, or even facilitate it! They were the respected senior Polezi Captains or Bankers when I hit das Fatherland. When I left in 1979, I knew that my German girlfriend's father had served in a regular Nazi artillery unit, which had sent many allied soldiers to their early graves. Do that or get deported/gassed, simple choice really! I came to like the old guy and he was a good, kind person at heart. Captured by the Americans in 1944 he swore that an American POW Camp was far superior (and safer) than normal German Army life. Most regular army troops had enough of the 1,000 year Reich by 1944. However, two trips to Dachau convinced me that Dresden is not something any German needs to complain about. My regards to the W.W. II Jewish Vets everywhere. I didn't hold my generation of German friends to any blame for atrocities committed before their births. Most knew the word genocide, and were truly ashamed of the actions of their forefathers. I have no idea what their generation-X kids thinks now, but I would bet it's anti-something. U.S.A. in 1st place, of course! In retrospect I was in Germany when their American-style hippy 60's culture was born nearly 10 years after it emerged from places like Greenwich Village and San Francisco in the States. "Das ist Groovy Man!" We also knew we were targeted by conventional (high explosive) and chemical and/or nerve-agent-tipped Soviet missiles, artillery and fighter bombers which could reach us in supersonic minutes from launchers and airfields only 50-100 kilometers away. Our only protection against a chemical attack was: "Put on your (M17A1) protective mask, wet weather pants and top, leather work-gloves, rubber boots and nylon poncho!". Any nerve-agent would have soaked right thru the gaps left unprotected or the porous fabrics we counted on to save our lives. Not a warm-fuzzy feeling, especially knowing your protective-mask and any Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) testing kits or antidotes were locked in an NBC room next to our basement armory, also locked-up tighter than any bank vault. I seriously doubt that any of us would have even made it out of our bunks, let alone made it into what primitive NBC protective gear we had if a nerve-agent tipped Scud or a dive bombing jet had hit the Zoo! The Bader Meinhoff gang often used the place for target practice and we scrambled to man our large perimeter, locked & loaded by the time they were miles away and laughing about it over beers. I didn't see a true NBC protective system/suits (the Mission-Oriented Protective Posture or MOPP suit) until I reentered service as a Medic in 1980. For anyone who has worn that thick charcoal lined suit for days at at a time in hot weather, it is without a doubt miserable, generating many heat casualties the longer you stay in them and turning all skin charcoal black. We often deployed with a full combat load including live ammo, mines and explosives. Meaning we were 'ready' to meet our (massive) Soviet counterparts in a battle we had little chance of surviving, let alone winning. Our primary targets were the bridges that crossed over the east-west bound autobahns. There were steel plates that once unlocked we placed charges into, the idea being to drop the overhead bridge onto the road below, denying the fast moving enemy armor divisions an easy rush thru, while laying booby-trapped anti-tank mines all around to destroy those tanks that tried to circumvent the barriers, or crews who dismounted to defuse them. We could hit our primary targets in about 30 minutes, with fallback or secondary target bridges stretching all the way back to France and the Rhine river, a major natural obstacle we intended to blow any bridge that spanned it, in a perfect stalling maneuver, which didn't take into account the Soviet Speznatz airborne commandos dropped behind us and attacking our rear, who would have made that one very difficult/impossible task. Another defensive move is called an Abatis. Rig each large tree along a wooded road with det-cord to cut through them, stick a chunk of C4 on the side (kicker-charge) that faced towards the enemy, and blow them in a synchronized chain-reaction, so as each tree fell it formed an impassable road block like a tangled inverted letter V pointing at the avenue of approach. Only heavy moving equipment could dismantle that mess, then string Claymore mines in the trees still standing to take out Soviet sappers who tried to breach through. I've only blown one for real, and it was an awesome sight but a REAL bitch to clear away, eagerly gobbled-up by the locals for fire wood after we had cut them into nice little logs for them. Throw in a large Soviet Air Force, rockets and artillery and our 'delaying actions' would have turned into a bloody route even if nukes, chemicals or bugs were not used. REFORGER or Return Forces to Germany was (is?) an annual exercise to see how fast U.S. forces could get back to Europe to help us. We all knew that not much could deploy from worldwide bases fast enough to prevent the Soviets from repeating what the Nazis had done in 1940. Our last fall-back was Britain, but by then it would have gone nuclear and we'd be long dead. The constant uncertainty and stress turned many of the more crazy troops into dangerous boozers and/or drug addicts. A few months prior to my arrival some crazy bastards blew up the mess hall because the food was so bad it gave half the battalion Hepatitis-A. No fatalities, just bull-dozed it flat, put up G.P. large tents for temporary mess halls and fed the troops field rations until a brand new building was erected right before I arrived, that still served shitty chow that made us sick. New arrivals were regaled with the true story about a young lieutenant who walked in on a barracks hashish party. They grabbed him and locked him in a steel wall locker, then threw him (inside it) out of a 4th floor window to his death on the cobble stone street 15 meters below. Many of my fellow Humps had been given a choice by a judge, "Go to jail, or join-up son". Many took the Army way out of doing hard time and brought their illegal habits/ways with them. Like crazy PFC Clay a black thug from Brooklyn who blew a German taxi driver's brains out with a .357 magnum "Just for the thrill of the kill man!" stoned on cocaine. He was handed over to the German Polizei and probably still rots in a German jail today. Many of the troops had personal hand-guns shipped to them from home, a perfectly legal action, and we all carried folding knives or for some, switch-blades. Finding a dead body (OD-ed on heroin or shot/knifed to death) on the grass during morning physical training was not unusual. We had rich loan-sharks with their own BIG collection goons who'd break a no-payer in 2 for non-payment. Simple pay-day loan with 50% interest per 2-week loan! Two lines formed each pay-day, one to get your dollars from Uncle Sam, and the other to pay-off the loan sharks. Pro-drug dealers, Privates richer than Corps Commanders made a fortune there moving kilos, cutting it and their mules did the distribution for some of the product for their troubles, from heroin to cocaine to hash. These were ruthless bastards I avoided but was forced to room with at times. 6-man rooms were common. Say anything about it, oh well, training accidents happened to any who did. It had similarities to any prison I guess. There were no Military Police stationed at the Zoo, they were 20 miles away, as were all our our officers and senior NCO's with their families who lived in Smiley Barracks family quarters. A recent article I read about that place tells me off base Smiley Barracks is now an al-Queda safe zone, not the Karlsruhe I remember, where German teen street-gangs were our only stalkers, and walking alone at night into the Turkish district of down-town was walking into an Islamic part of town, where a few packs of Yank smokes would get you a meal and some wine, not kid-napped and slowly beheaded for a video taping! September 2007 and the German cops busted a bunch of al-dick-heads planning hits on bases and off-duty areas frequented by our troops still serving there. Crime was rampant with all male E-4's running the show when the 'lifers' went home at night, leaving a handful of on-duty NCO's and one officer to watch 800 men as Charge of Quarters and Officer of the Day. 6 NCO's and one junior officer who were (normally) too scared to leave their posts. Our own men guarded the main gate, so that meant anything could and did pass in and out. A platoon of armed M.P.'s couldn't have stopped the criminal activities that was daily life at the Zoo. Black marketing U.S. anything from cigarettes to booze to stereos to (even) Harley Davidson motor bikes was the norm not the exception. I smoked my cigarette ration up or had them bummed from me long before I thought about selling the 4 cartons a month we could buy. There was little money to be made and much effort/risk in buying up a full monthly ration of Jack Daniels or Jim Beam to black market, so I seldom transferred any to the 'Rads', our derogatory term for all Germans, short for comrades, as in commies. Most months I didn't even buy my limit, and when I bought hard liquor I normally drank it up with my road dogs (jail talk for friends), or gave a few gallons away as gifts which ensured a good home cooked meal at a German friend's home or a perennial holiday/birthday gift to the non-American friends I had plenty of. Law abiding/rule quoting, non-partying troops stood out and didn't last long there as everyone thought they were CID (under-cover M.P. detectives) ergo narcs, and a few were. E-Z to spot because they refused to use drugs or get involved in the crazy stunts that made reputations and riche$ for some and corpses out of others. I still feel very sorry for those few young law abiding, non-drinking, non-smoking, drug free, honest guys, some religious or just brought up with morals that most of their comrades lacked, and tried SO hard to live a quiet life but ended up thrown into a room full of real bastards, then got shunned or worse for no reason at all. I hung with the 'acceptable' drinking crowd and smoked hash infrequently (a buzz I didn't even like) giving no one reason to suspect I was anything but 'normal' in a unit full of many crazies. The first time was within my very 1st week there with a loaded revolver pointed at my head in a barracks room full of users & dealers who said basically smoke this or die. Just a way to test any new face out, so unlike Bill Clinton I inhaled deeply and passed the test. I later found the guy with the the gun (alone) and broke his jaw with a simple round-house Karate kick, telling him if anyone ever pointed a gun at me again, they would not live to repeat the stunt. A big gamble that ended any more scrutiny or confrontations. Earning me a status as a tough guy who other thugs now tried to buddy up with, wankers all. One night most of our windows blew in after someone rigged our only flag-pole with C-4 and det-cord.... just for kicks! It didn't fall over, just bent in half. Limp-dick style! The next morning our furious Sergeant Major lined the whole battalion up and chewed our ass for an hour. He wasn't pissed that someone had tried to blow up the flag pole, (TREASON!) but because they'd failed! Claiming how could we take on the Russians if we couldn't even blow-up a simple fucking metal pole. Good point made to whomever tried it, perps remained unknown but to God and themselves. Many Humps took C-4 chunks back to the barracks after a demolitions exercise. Useless without blasting caps, that only the craziest would steal. Like gray putty it could be molded & stashed in any place and never found. Short of starting a (visible for miles) camp-fire in the boonies, it provided us a quick, very hot and not so visible portable heat source. Lit it burned hot like Sterno and we used it to heat our C-ration cans up in the field, long before the Army introduced MRE's, or what we named Meals Rejected by Ethiopians! Then our middle aged Sergeant Major ran us into the ground to the Rhine River 15 miles away and 15 miles back!!! Longest run of my life ever! I was one of the few who made the 30-mile all morning run in heavy black leather combat boots, the only P.T. footwear we had at that time, with few problems leaving a trail of half dead drop-outs all the way back to France! I'd been there a few months, Elvis died, so we went on full alert! No shit!!! The Vietnam legacy was still affecting soldiers who had never even served there, but spent almost entire tours deployed, every time presidents Ford then Carter got the jitters, or the Soviet Bear roared and we rolled out locked & loaded with some VERY potent stuff that blows anything to bits to a VERY uncertain fate. But that is the way of the soldier, if you were told ahead of time that none would return alive, I wonder how many would still jump onto a helicopter or truck and whiz off to destinations unknown?

Playing Poker with the Cold War U.S. Army and I ended up with:

A.C.E.'s in their (fox) Holes!

Charlie Company was the unit designated my new home and was the U.S. contribution (Combat Engineers) to the Allied Command Europe (ACE) Mobile Force. AMF was a conglomerate 'strike force' of multi-ethnic military personnel from most nations in NATO. ACE Mobile Force was (at that time) NATO's fire brigade. Mission: Put out any communist fires before they spread anywhere in NATO. Mobile and deployable anywhere fast. Also a unit designed to slow any Soviet jaunt through the Fulda-Gap, the ancient invasion route into Europe used since Atilla the Hun first used it. Joke! In reality almost none of our equipment, languages (biggy!) or personnel were compatible, and we spent much more time deployed than any of the other companies in the Battalion trying to work the bugs out, all over NATO. Memorizing each piece of friendly and hostile equipment were standard, long and repetitious garrison classes I can still recall with dread. Knowing us to be gambling freaks, the brass issued us playing cards with good-guy/bad guy equipment decks, complete with detailed descriptions of each NATO and Soviet aircraft, tank, etc., on every card's face, and psyops/trained us even on our sparse off-duty time. I hope they finally did work the bugs out. That unit was deactivated in 2002 and transformed into another air-mobile all NATO strike force, with terrorists not Soviet divisions their new targets. I even got to train back in England, but it was no vacation spent on freezing Salisbury Plains with British troops who were better Combat Engineers than we would ever be! The British, Norwegian and German AMF units were superb soldiers, in comparison to the rest. The Danish conscripts stayed stoned on hashish and were fun to be around, but soldiering was something few of them took seriously, with their hair-nets stuffed under their helmets! The Italians conscripts (not so good at soldiering) had small bottles of wine in their rations packs which we traded anything for during deployments. I have already touched on the 'quality' of the French conscripts, many were outspoken communists. Then there were the Turks who held hands with their buddies in uniform (!) as they walked together, normal for Muslim friends, but blowing our homophobic minds. We trained in Denmark, and at the end of the 4-week exercise we were given a 48-hour pass to visit Copenhagen. Great! One Danish soldier told us to head for an old W.W. II bombed-out part of the city called Chritiania, "where the party's were". So most of us lower enlisted took off there ASAP. The place was covered in wonderful murals and the garb was jeans, long skirts for the gals, ponchos, T's and long hair with every guy sporting a huge beard. A separate part of the city, no cops could enter named after Queen Christine (an ex-Danish monarch) and an independent town within a city run by hippies, from the shops where hashish was sold to anyone, hard drugs if you wanted, you name it. The crime of Germany's cities did not even exist there and no one robbed or harmed any of us. Peace & love took on a new meaning for 2 days. They ran the theater, the school, all the bars, restaurants and even a health clinic. All sitting on about 5 square miles of the dock lands, it was any hippy's dream come true. Most of our 100+ man unit got smashed there, I got way too drunk and passed out many times. 3 of our men never came back, deserted and stayed there. I wonder if that 'hippy heaven' still exists today or if 3 middle-aged ex-Yank Humps still live there selling dope or running a store. That was my favorite deployment with AMF period. This patch was the only distinguishing accouterment to our work or dress uniforms, on the left front breast pockets of our O.D. (Olive Drab) fatigues, field jackets and Class-A or dress uniforms. As did all of our NATO AMF counterparts on their uniforms. Cold War warriors. Or Word War III as those who served throughout it realize only too well.

How very close we came, and how very few even knew it.....

One of our more unusual and potentially suicidal missions was providing security , or playing infantry, scout, sniper etc., for the 12 Echo or 'Atomic Munitions Demolition Specialist'. These guys didn't even barrack with us and just showed up, with entourage from Smiley Barracks, 20 miles away and home of the 21st Support Command. Those poor radioactive saturated sods only function was to transport a back-pack sized low-yield atomic bomb to a coordinate. Live ammo was issued, use of deadly force briefs issued, then we were either driven to or brought in by a Chinook, aka 'Shit-Hook' heavy-lift helicopter. Then we began our job which we got real good at, allowing our 12-Echo to do his Top Secret work while we guarded him inside a hasty defensive perimeter and a squad dug our fallout ditches/shelter up-wind of the bomb. The kind of missions Rangers pull now. We maintained that posture until the coded radio orders came to either detonate it, or pack it up and call it a day. Some of the longest hours/days of my life. The 12 Echo was the only soldier who could set it ticking. A nice surprise (hopefully) for a big fat Soviet Army Group passing by. Meanwhile we were supposed to be 'safely' in pre-dug cammo-ed slit-trenches 1-klick or so away, like we would have survived it had we blown it. NOT! History shows we never used this weapon. Packing-up and going home was the happy end result every time we deployed with a 12E, thank God! Any (cold) war in Europe would have gone nuclear HOT very fast! The only way we knew if it was a drill was if you placed your hand against 'the bomb' and if it was cold, it was training, whew! At times that back-pack was warm and we quickly started writing those hasty last letters home. Some clown probably put a heater in there to see how we'd perform, or it may have been for real. Who knows? That 'job' has since been eliminated from the Army's inventory. The idea and the equipment are still something being sought by terrorists, who would love to get an old Soviet or U.S. version of that weapon of mass destruction I am sure went into moth-balls for a bad day in somewhere, not melted down and destroyed. Brrrr! Just the kind of 'packet' most of U.S. would like to send strapped to a donkey inside a decoy load of food or ammo special delivery for a Mr. Bin Laden..."Sign here please sir !" Command detonated by a Predator drone with eyes on target floating high out of sight miles away.

From Combat Engineer to Combat Medic.

We were called 'Humps' by the Infantry who we called 'Grunts'. We combined their 8 weeks of basic combat training (BCT) for any soldier along with the additional 8 weeks requirements for becoming a basic Combat Engineer learning infantry & engineer skills from week one through week 16. But we never trained with them during that time. A Combat Engineer is a grunt who has more training in building and destroying stuff on the front lines, and in the rear. But make no mistake, our primary skills were Infantry pure. Keeping us apart meant less dead trainees as we hated each other's guts. The reason we were called 'Humps', a nick-name we earned was not by getting laid more often, but by humping (lifting and positioning) 600 - 1,500 pound steel components of the W.W.II (British designed) Bailey Bridge into a solid robust structure. I learnt to hate that bloody thing! The constant bridge drills got old, dangerous (crushed or drowned friends) and repetitious REAL fast. Throwing one across the mile-wide Rhine river was some tough duty which was an annual exercise (BRIDGE-EX) in physical and mental endurance and always done in mid winter and in the dark! Back then Uncle Sam paid $10-million a day to our allies to close Germany's main river outlet to the sea and trade, so we had to span it quickly and get it packed-up even faster. Any delays cost Company Commanders their jobs and some Humps their lives. Although most volunteered for any DEMEX, or demolitions, mines and booby-trap exercises. Big kids all. At times we actually did helpful selfless acts for the town of Ettlingen. One winter we had a 100-year flood that sent huge whole big-ass trees, V.W. Bugs, dead animals and a few bloated human bodies crashing down the river that flowed through town, smashing ancient stone bridges into rubble. The Germans freaked as the water level rose and flooded streets and cellars. We mobilized and in 3 days filled 1.5 million (!) sand bags, building a levee which prevented disaster. We even threw a Bailey Bridge across their river and left it there. It still is there today and for a week no Hump could buy a meal or a beer in a VERY thankful town we saved, who gave us all we wanted for free, well almost everything! Great time for one night stands! The sheer effort required to emplace a mile of sand bags on both sides of the river was a challenge compounded by torrents of unending rain, cold and gale force winds, shared by G.I. & German alike. In November '79 I got out or ETS-ed as an E-4 or Specialist 4th Class. I had grown way disenchanted with the job, my Yank peers, the omnipresent crime/drugs and a life spent mostly in the field doing the same things over and over again. When lakes in France start looking like ones in Holland and England, mountains are just obstacles not stark beauty and all trees blend into green, from endless patrols & road-marches to trucks to hover-craft, boats to ships add helicopters to jets I covered tens of thousands of miles in just 3 short years, just a taste of what the next 17 would be like. Then you have seen enough that even the most magnificent nature can throw at you pales into setting up tents, fixing your gear and shitting in the bushes, hot or freezing cold. Deployments equated to prolonged sobriety as the fastest way to lose a stripe (or your life) was being drunk (or stoned) and trying to build a bridge or blow-up old deserted buildings, which the Germans no longer needed. Blowing up an entire German ghost town was a fantastic rush, but we had to haul away what we destroyed using shovels, picks, manual labor, bull-dozers, back-hoe's and 5-ton dump trucks, the less glamorous part of the op. We trained, they gained in slum removal for free, making room for new German urban developments. I do not even count those few initial years as anything that had words like responsibility, duty, loyalty, honor or commitment connected with them. Survival maybe, amid dangerous fellow soldiers, often hostile German street gangs and huge Warsaw Pact opponents waiting to strike. I was just one tough worker-bee in a job I grew to hate. I knew 40 year-old E4/Specialists in trades like carpentry, or plumbing who had served almost 20 years doing the same job they'd done from day 1 in uniform. In those days a Specialist-4, 5, 6 or even 7 was a non-leadership job that many soldiers who had no desires to lead troops, but had unique skills/trades stayed put at that pay-grade and retired happy as lower to mid level enlisted workers/techs. Up or out came into Army doctrine around 1980. I may have worn a soldier's uniform but it held no pride for me. In retrospect I was no mentor or a leader, I had regressed not advanced, and my Chain of Command wrote me off as a rebel biding his time to get out, especially after the Space-A SNAFU when I tried to avail myself of a benefit the Army promised all it's troops, but in reality was only the domain of the brass. I managed to make 20 years without a single reprimand, or run-in with an Article-15 or Courts Martial punishment that awaited those who screwed-up bad, lost stripes, pay and their freedom for. At times I came close when I lost my military composure and shot back with insubordination, but I knew who to pick my fights with, and when to shut my mouth even as a senior NCO nearing retirement. When it came time to leave Germany, I had second thoughts about it and actually thought about staying put as a civilian. But I had a Mother in America who I had to return to after a 2.5 year absence. I had learnt not only the language fluently which seemed to come naturally to me the more I heard it spoken over the years. I watched ZDF T.V., or read Der Spiegel newspaper not the Starts & Stripes G.I. Joe newspaper, and I also had fallen in love with the place. I spent more of my off-duty time with Germans than with the Yanks the longer I stayed in-country. I have many pictures of those days. I had forgotten about pocked-marked London and anti-German sentiments.   I ate German food, drank their beer and schnapps, and by 1979 I had more German and a few British (migrant worker) friends than I did Yanks/G.I.'s. Life was safer that way! We called it: "Gone Native". Some G.I.'s did exactly that and stayed there as civilian ex-patriots. Especially the got rich drug dealers and black marketeers. One guy we called 'Uncle Harold' (the richest loan shark we had) had so much cash he bought a German disco in Karsruhe and made a mint legally but was still loan-sharking on the side when he got out. This fella never deployed, he paid off medics (for non-deployment, non-existent medical conditions) to corrupt company commanders (short on change) to pull permanent rear duty, and his room/loan office in the barracks was palatial complete with total room service and 24/7 body guards the size of pro body-builders, with the morality of well-paid assassins.

Returning to my Mother's new modular home in Santa Rosa, California, and the family I had in Petaluma, it didn't take me long to discover that there weren't any job opportunities for guys who blow stuff up for a living in the civilian community.  12B10 converts to civilian laborer. Sod that! The local Mafia didn't have any openings at that time for demolitions jobs (joke!), so six months later I reentered service; this time as a Medical Specialist (91 Bravo).  My recruiter filled my head with dreams of pretty nurses in nice warm hospitals. I could retain my rank (E4) and not have to revisit Basic Training.  PERFECT! NOT!!! I did my medical training at Ft. Sam Houston, TX, and was promptly flown to the (now deactivated) 9th Infantry Division (Motorized), in Bravo Company, 9th Medical Battalion, Fort Lewis, Washington State. The first place in America I had the chance to actually work in, almost 4 years after emigrating! I was still a British citizen and remained so until ex-president Gerald Ford swore me and about 400 other legal aliens into American citizenship in Denver, Colorado, summer 1991. He was my Commander in Chief and the President when I first entered service. So for 14 years of my Army career I was a Limey serving in the YANK's Army. I wonder if that made me a mercenary? I still wear the ring with the winged sword on my middle finger to remind me that I was classified as a merc by the Brit government long before I became a U.S. citizen and I wear it with pride. Who cares! I was on the same 'side' I guess. I was earning my own keep at last and sending my hard working Mother what I could, until my bills out-did hers, very soon after I married a fellow military woman/medical NCO, who spent her pay and mine before I knew it was even gone. Rambo I wasn't, just doing a job that many folks born American avoided like the plague. If I could not have emigrated to the U.S., I would have joined (almost) anyone's army to escape London; British, Canadian, Israeli, Aussie, Kiwi or South African. I always knew I'd be a soldier and I was right. As a brand new medic (1980) I soon found that there were no pretty nurses or warm hospitals for me, just back to back field training exercises with tough infantry, armor or artillery units. Not much of a change from being a Hump! We also medically supported the crazy 2nd Battalion/75th Ranger Regiment at Ft. Lewis.  One of my regular missions was ambulance coverage for the drop zone in 'Ranger Country'. One lazy afternoon I was the driver with a female medic on-board in a 'Cracker-Box' field ambulance, as the C130 aircraft came in for a routine training drop. Two shoots streamered or tangled, and sent their human cargo plummeting to their instant deaths. Tag and bag the splattered remains. The female medic threw her guts up and was useless screaming in shock and shaking like a leaf. I got better & faster help from the (non-medical) Rangers who converged on me ASAP. I then reevaluated my idea to reapply for Jump School and discovered I didn't like mixed or male and female field units. With very few notable exceptions, the hardest labor was always the male medic's job. Setting up a large tent-city field hospital or clearing station was more like Combat Engineer work, and I knew that very well. Same pay but most of the fairer sex got over as much as they could. "It's too heavy!" became an excuse I got fucking sick of hearing. Shower runs for women who stayed on their periods for 30 days (!!!), depriving male medics any showers for 30-day durations and forcing us to stay funky, washing ourselves out of our steel helmets flipped up-side-down and filled with cold water, a 'whore's bath' was the common name given to that 'hygiene'. Dual standards always disgusted me. Especially when a female medical service corps officer or (worse) a senior female NCO was calling the shots for her gals! Or the pre-deployment pregnancies that always preceded any major training exercise, and were nearly always aborted the moment the last troops drove out the gate, were moral busting slaps in the face for those who did deploy. All male Infantry units were tough and (Thank God) not complicated by most female's limitations, excuses or lures. Totally different opinion of female medics in hospital 911 ambulance & E.R.'s. Many knew more medicine than some (commissioned) nurses and taught me much about my trade. My attitude about the Army had changed drastically, and I knew I planned on making it a career, instead of just another adventure. Good timing as the entire U.S. military had just introduced a urinalysis for all drugs. That alone weeded out (no pun meant) the 'Nam-era dopers, changing many into boozers, an acceptable addiction if you stayed sober on duty. The days of the '2 beer lunch' (more like a 6-pack!) were abolished. I complied with the rules and went for a career. I could run like a gazelle and was in my best physical condition of my life. It was at this time that I became the adrenaline 'junkie' that goes with being the first person on the scene of some poor soul who had been injured or killed, and everyone (still alive) now looked to me for help.   No longer as a Combat Engineer bystander. Suicides were frequent throughout my career (I'd seen many staring in basic training to Germany and in every unit I served in) from start to finish of my 20 years. My first real hands-on casualty was at Ft. Lewis, WA in 1980 a few months after I arrived as a brand new medic/E4, ex-combat engineer field trooper. The victim was a young way-depressed Hispanic Medic who'd taken a loaded M-16 to his barracks room after a night firing exercise, unbeknownst to anyone. Sticking his mouth over the barrel, he literally blew the top of his head off when he pulled the trigger. Needless to say he was very-dead before I even arrived, hearing the shot in the quiet of the barracks night while on duty as Charge of Quarters, or CQ. The place was suddenly crawling with everyone from Military Police to our Commanding General. Very bad P.R. We were ordered to clean his room afterwards, and that was worse than any cleaning job I had yet encountered. What a bloody mess that I became used to as the years rushed by. This began a stigma which was to follow me through the next 17 years.  I detested and barely tolerated hospitals, except when operating out of Ambulance Sections or Emergency Rooms/Departments.   That was where the life and death 'action' I craved existed.  And for my sins, they managed to slot me right where I belonged. Whether operating out of an M5 (30lb) aid bag, a G.P. Small tent (Battalion Aid Station), a M577 Mech Aid Station on tracks, a tent-city field hospital ala MASH, or fixed modern military hospitals over the next 17 years, saving lives became my passion.  I made E-5/Sergeant my first year back in uniform. I can honestly say that over the next 17 years I saw almost every possible way that a human can die (something that still haunts my dreams) as I progressed through the ranks and became intimate with emergency medicine.  I had found my true calling in life and it was more demanding than any Combat Engineer mission where physical agony was now compounded with emotional trauma. Easy to deal with, pop a beer (or 6) and try to forget about the ones who died on your watch that day. And boy did I ever see some badly messed-up patients over the years on a very regular basis.

Reality Check!

Few civilians realize that continuous real-world military medical missions or intense training, generates as many casualties as some quick and famous conflicts like Grenada or Panama did. The Pentagon just released a medal that few young military members will ever get to wear. The Cold War Medal. Some have called it the not so cold World War III, and it produced a LOT of dead, from Korea, to Vietnam to the thousands pushed beyond their limits, where the cost of fielding a new weapons system was bought with much blood. The coldest day of my life (emotionally not weather) was looking across the DMZ at the check-point @ Panmunjong, while North Korean soldiers stared back across barbed/razor wire, mine fields and guard-towers, knowing I was meters away from certain death. None of the units I was in when major combat went down participated. No longer a member of an elite 'mobile strike force', if your highly effective unit (e.g. the urban light fighters of 25th I.D.L.) were not called upon to engage the enemy when a closer unit could and did, we didn't. We trained to fight future wars, where I have seen a many of my old unit's patches on T.V. war coverage from Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile although Emergency Rooms and 911 runs were as exciting as hell, few deployed from MEDDAC's in the pre 9/11 dayz. The Army didn't just shut down a major military hospital when whole divisions were going off to war, especially one that's receiving plenty of inbound casualties! Many of my peers and supervisors thought I was nuts for volunteering for any and all combat duty wherever it happened. "Death-Wish Murph" became my nick-name. I tried desperately to get some of Desert Storm. Constant calls to the Division Surgeons Office got me nowhere, and only a handful of my junior medics, Privates all, went as last-minute replacements. One young and talented African American medic, Private First Class (E3) Clark returned to us with a Silver Star. He'd crawled out through an enemy mine-field in the dark to retrieve a wounded U.S. soldier under constant Iraqi fire, and dragged him back under more enemy fire saving his life. I lost him real fast upon his return, promoted to Corporal overnight, he became the Commanding General's driver, 24/7 on call. The conditions were he had to wear his dress uniforms with that Silver Star as his highest award (and all the other Desert Storm medals/ribbons that came with the conflict to include the coveted Combat Medic badge he certainly earned) everywhere he went with our CG, even into field environments where no one would even dream of messing-up a set of ($400) Dress Blues or even Class-A green formal uniforms, so our CG could show off the only 4th Infantry Division soldier who went to Desert Storm to be awarded a Silver Star from a division that did not even deploy. He hated that job and a beeper that he had to carry at all times, but enjoyed the comforts afforded any 2-star General tag-along. I asked for my medic back and ended up having most of my ass ripped off by everyone in my chain of command. Seems they had no need of another Medical Platoon Sergeant in Iraq, and in 100 hours it had ended! The 4th Infantry Division (Mech) I was in was 'out of action' for upgrades to newer (Abrams) main battle tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Any of this information is available all over the Internet, so I am divulging no secrets! Hint, look up Battle Streamers for the 4th I.D.(M) and realize my situation. Desert Storm/Shield is not one of them. By the time we'd made the long transition and the troops had learnt to use their new equipment (11B to 11M), Desert Storm was one year-old history. The 4th I.D. (M) is now one of our finest armored/infantry units with a LOT of experience in Iraq. Ironic that 1st or 'Raider Brigade', my old unit in the 4th Infantry Division, were the guys who dug Saddam (now worm-food) out of his hole some years after I left them. Nice catch! A peacetime Army trains in conditions which are often as dangerous as most combat! Gung-Ho Hot-Shot Generals ensure that. Whether I was taking fire from hostiles during drug eradication operations or illegal alien interdiction ops, reacting to training gone badly wrong, generating hundreds of real-world mass-casualty (MASCAL) patients, rushing into burning buildings or vehicles with ammo and/or gasoline cooking off to save lives, pulling casualties and bodies from a frozen Korean reservoir after half the unit skidded off an icy mountain road 1 K above. Triaging & treating casualties from military and civilian vehicle or aviation disasters like the Aloha Airlines 'T-Top' when it landed at Honolulu International minus it's forward roof section (and some passengers) which peeled off after it left Hilo (April 28, 1988), or going down hard in an auto-gyrating Chinook helicopter that lost power to it's huge front rotor on a MEDEVAC mission. I'll bore you no more with the many way-dangerous situations (war stories) I've found myself confronted with over the years. In my humble opinion I did my job well as others now do theirs in a very public war on terrorism. I should have been killed for some of the stunts I pulled, but survived when those around me died or got mangled. Most of our military now ply their skills under much harder and more frequent hostile situations than I ever faced. Watch your six and trust the good NCO's! This IS prolonged war, and we have not lost this many troops to combat since Vietnam. Hello! Read the fine print! I did, and understood the consequences involved in our profession peering through binos at our Soviet or North Korean 'friends'. If you get bored run a search on training fatalities/accidents, suicides, homicides, etc, ('80-'97) then add 6 years of U.S. Army (MEDDAC) hospital ER /ambulance duty, with patient loads of thousands per month, and get back with me. I was at many of the real bad ones. The U.S. Army had 20 years to send me off to war and didn't, even when I asked/begged to go, so I have no medals or honors that decorate those who were chosen to go. My mind and body had gone through countless battles, saving lives on a VERY regular basis. I have done enough way-hairy things that almost got me killed many times, injured me often, in places which made few headlines, produced no awards for heroism, yet generated many real casualties, or fatalities! All combat or accidents result in the Medic being called on first to salvage whatever is left. Big myth: you have to go to war to be shot at, not so! I spent many a 911 ambulance call responding to a 'man-down' situation in very bad places where the locals took pop-shots at us with fully-auto weapons/gang wars, or flying in to clear pot growing operations located a drug farm hidden on federal land guarded 24/7 by armed men who used our helicopters as targets, booby-traps all over the brush, I have taken a lot of hot lead that God only knows why didn't kill me but took out the troop only 10 feet away, or even 10-inches! I have saved thousands, but lost many over my medical career who no medical care could save.   No matter how many times you see death (morticians excepted I guess), it is impossible to become immune to it's impact. Medics who treated death and suffering with flippant attitudes I made a personal point of removing them from their responsibilities. Injured, sick, dying or sexually molested children left the deepest scars on my psyche. On the flip-side probably the most rewarding experience ANY pre-hospital/EMT medic can perform is bringing life into this world. Something I've done so many times at homes, offices, in the back of speeding ambulances or MEDEVAC helicopters. The care I gave both mom and baby has at least two kids (I know of) named 'Sean' after the happy event. Poor sods! Thank God for umbilical cords, the only thing that held Mom to her new-born baby when my over-zealous drivers/helo-pilots took those 4-G turns! Those who say you get used to daily gruesome trauma, IMHO, lie! The burn-out rate for even civilian EMS jockeys is amongst the highest of any job a person can choose, and hope to retire from happily married, sober, sane, or even alive! Nancy Cody (RN), Major, ANC you showed me how to endure when the horrific unfolded and we were left to deal with it as a team of two, even after seasoned first responders were losing their composure (and lunches) with sights so graphic and gory that they fled, but you kept me focused and guided me through situations no human should see or (God forbid) even remember. If there is a heaven, I know you have a first-class seat in the front row waiting for you. Your courage was only equaled by your skills and Texas tenacity. I count you as my finest medical mentor period! May you read these words one day. The picture that follows shows me wearing a MEDCOM patch on my left arm. I was still running the Emergency Room and 911/Ambulance Section for Schofield Barracks on Oahu, Hawaii when this was taken, and Major Nancy Cody was still my boss/Head Nurse.

Around 1/2 way through a 20 year military career if you start in your late teens, and you completely understand the military is not a normal job that you can quit when the going gets tough, and it does starting around day 1 in boot-camp, but a calling only few civilians choose, that requires you take it very seriously striving to be the very best you can be in so many skills and positions, you reach a point where mentally & physically you are peaking, or you have already been booted out for any number of reasons, or quit after your 1st, 2nd or 3rd enlistment, wounded and discharged, or killed/missing in action or so many accidents, and some opted for a suicide as the only way out of whatever demons consumed them, which I have seen way too many from the start to the end of my career to list even the more creative ones. Sure there is always more to learn, more responsibility to grab, but when you can run 5 miles every morning in 45 minutes and not break a sweat, max your P.T. score, hump forced marches for 20 kilometers daily for a week with maybe 4 hours sleep per night, with a 70lb Alice ruck-sack on your back and a 30lb M-3 aid-bag strapped to your chest to balance out the load, add your weapon, web-gear and other kit like canteens of water and pouches of ammo, (100lbs of extra/vital kit strapped to my 160lb lean body) push yourself and those you lead further, faster and better than your peers, help the injured as they dropped, then catch up with your unit after calling in a MEDEVAC helicopter dust-off. Be it day, night, baking hot, freezing cold, dry or wet then you are ready for anything, and this was me a 29 y/o young (Staff-Sergeant) platoon sergeant with 30-40 medics I was charged with leading, training and molding into great medics, rewarding/promoting the good and getting rid of the slackers. Some we called ROAD which means Retired On Active Duty, if you were known as road then the Army lets no soldier reach 20 years as a private (E-1) or a 2nd lieutenant (O-1)! Move up in rank or move out of the way and get a civilian job which many did. You get nowhere fast if you don't volunteer for the toughest missions that so often ended up in my lap, and lead from the front, or ahead of it in a Bell Huey Iroquois UH-1D helicopter (nice picture of the MEDEVAC models I flew in below) if I needed to get in fast ahead of ground-bound on foot or motorized/mechanized medics to set up a CCP or casualty collection point and begin triage, sorting the sick or wounded into 4 groups with priority given to saving those who needed a simple procedure like a chest-tube to save their lives. On the other end were expectant, those you ministered to last as they were normally too close to death and too far from anywhere that could have saved them. With 3-years behind me as a Combat Engineer I knew so many non-medical tactical skills that amazed the Infantry I was integrated with, add 7 more years as an Emergency Medical Technician 91-B Medic, maxing every medical/tactical or administrative skill in the field, or in a fixed hospital Emergency Room/911 Ambulance Sections, to mechanized or motorized aid-stations, field evacuation hospitals/clearing stations, and cross-training in skills from communications to helicopter operations and able to drive (and maintain) any wheeled or tracked military or civilian made to tactical ambulance or cargo hauling vehicle, then pass those skills onto my men. I had been trained in weapons and tactics few medics ever encounter, and in the shot above I am setting another record that lasted for a few years: Task: Disassemble, then reassemble, then perform a functions check on the M16-A1 rifle in under 2 minutes. I did it in 58-seconds, to the amazement of those who made me repeat this with the basic tool of my trade, so someone took this picture, few knew I had trained blind-folded many times to make this weapon just an extension of my mind and body, for me it was easy, for others I was becoming a best-by-test celebrity model medic/soldier and raising eye-brows at high levels. That record stood for a few years until some young super-infantry/airborne Ranger @ Ft. Benning (home of the Infantry) beat my time by 3 seconds. I was making rank before my peers, breaking records, inventing rules or procedures in their absence (like the Combat Lifesaver program), that later became U.S. Army doctrine now trained to all medics & many non-medical soldiers, rising fast through positions I soon mastered as a hard charging soldier/medic which was not lost on those who placed me into ever tougher positions of authority, only to find out that in 6 months I had skipped a step, or 3, and now was working for the Division Surgeon, or one of the major area Medical Commands (MEDCOM) in charge of the peace-time and war-time medical operations for units of 20-30K soldiers and maybe 10K DOD civilians. I kept getting offers to be some tag-along to a senior non-com or officer, as their aide, I ducked each one, leading troops is what I did best, not being a 24/7 on-call valet, driver or 'go-for' for a 2-star general, although that would have been a comfortable way to cruise through my career & get a medal for kissing-butt and having a sharp uniform. No sir! My awards were earned not given as tokens. Mass-casualty exercises, evacuation missions, drug interdiction, humanitarian-operations, peace-keeping ops, medical plans, operations and training became my forte and the (Cold-War) world where many nations were communist ones was where I was forged. You may think I am bragging, I don't brag, but to rise so fast and walk away alive from so many real life disasters when others who I knew and called them my friends didn't, and I buried them took it's toll in many ways. Never happy at home, married more to the Army than my wife and relaxing for me was reading a Field Manual then teaching it to my troops. Those who chose an easier path through their careers seldom made it to retirement, or were never trusted far from a nice warm office or motor-pool, always wondering why they supervised no one, had 1 or 2 medals and 10 years in were told "Don't bother to enlist for another 3 years, it will be denied." Only 15 out of 100 who start as PVT/E1 make it to a 20-year retirement at a much higher rank, and when you are getting close to 40 you maybe glance at a chest full of ribbons & badges putting on your dress uniforms and know why that you did take a hard road and left your name in every post you served at. The privates you trained are now fine senior NCO's or even officers with their own units & troops to lead & train as you taught them by example not by delegation. But your body tells you that you pushed it very hard with every joint that pops or back pain that lingers all day reminds you that you have past your physical prime/peaked even if your mind is still learning. To make it both your mind and body have to keep pace or if one folds so do you as a soldier. Or you take an easier path and are forgotten; just did enough to get by probably never hitting a retirement ceremony. Now it matters little, as a Veteran time served equates to nothing except a pay-check which is not a whole lot of cash unless you made a lot of rank and have a good civilian job waiting on the other side of that military retirement, or some V.A. disability pay to off-set food-stamps and a very meager/frugal existence. If you end up minus your legs or eyesight 6 months into your 1st tour of duty you are out, young & disabled, or denied that last 3 or 4 year enlistment that would have got you to a 20-year retirement for a mistake or a single bad evaluation report is all it takes when you wear those stripes, bars or eagles, have a ton of responsibility and carry so much riding on every move you make, all eyes watch you and plenty of hard-charging studs are just waiting to take your job if you falter. So I do take the constant discomfort, the V.A. disability checks, my retirement pay, and thank my Lord that I walked off that final parade field on my own 2 legs with a tear in my eye for those who should have too, but didn't for so many reasons.

Married Life & Other Relationships.

The 9th Medical Bn., was where I first met my wife to be. Her name is Ilia. She was my Training NCO. I got GREAT training!!!  Panamanian by birth, also a medic and cute with one more stripe than I had.  My senior by 7 years and with 3 kids from a failed marriage, GOD what was I thinking? Even she warned me that I was about to get a lot more than great steak dinners, but what did I care? We were married in Madigan Army Medical Center Chapel on 16 January 1982. Me at the age of 24 and her aged 31. I loved (or was it lusted?) after her? She'd come down on orders for Hawaii. My only way to follow her as her was as her husband, and leave a unit I was moving up in (fast) and starting to like. I chose Ilia, seven years older than me and her three young children (18 months, 2 1/2 and 7 years old) from a previous failed marriage to a Mexican American fella who bailed on her. All of my friends told me I was a fool, but love/lust is oft blind to common sense and major family warnings. To cut out all the fun and games of many more years of married Army life, monumental arguments, moving every few years, with it's (few) ups and (many) downs, a book in itself, we move on to less happy times. After 15 years of a stormy marriage, and helping raise Ilia's children (all boys), it went sour and I left her in October '97, to finally divorce her 2 1/2 years later, 6 June 2000. By October '97 all our 'family relationships' were on the rocks, we were in deep financial trouble and the confrontations became more aggressive. It takes two to tango and I had my faults too, my continued and increasing alcoholism did nothing to help matters. But fate had other plans for me. Leaving almost everything I owned I returned to my family in California in my old Jeep Wrangler driven/rescued by my cousin Cathy, who my Mother had flown in to take me home. I was too trashed-up to even walk let alone drive and blacked-out numerous times from concussion and blood loss all those 1,500+ miles home. A real thank you double-teaming cowardly 2 on 1 assault I received (and lost) from two of Ilia's (then) well built and methed-out teenage sons when we moved to Portland, Oregon. My crime? Asking the eldest to stop making long distance calls to his girlfriend in Arizona, which we could no longer afford to pay for. A good reason I guess for him to try to kill me and his brother to help him out. Portland, Oregon was a place that was supposed to be our 'New Start' and almost ended in my death by their hands per the police report I still have on file stating: 'Attempted Murder', 'Assault with deadly weapons' and my blood used to scrawl hate-filled words upon the walls, ala Manson, which even made the police who found me unconscious on the floor in a pool of my own blood, a shocker for them! My wife bailed them out and they walked but hid out. Phone calls from Latinos I did not know started : 'Stick around to testify against our homies you Anglo mother-fucker , and you'll end up dead real soon!" Not idle threats coming from the armed gangsters they hung with. So I fled. Get over it and move on, learning from it. Suffice to say we did not part on friendly terms, and it took years to mend what I could, starting with my credit in ruins. Out of her brood IMHO only Joshua E., turned out O.K. He is building an honest life for himself and his family and calls me at times. God only knows I have tried to reestablish something close to a normal friendship with Ilia, my ex-wife who I last saw in person in 1998. Returning home presented me with my Mother dying of a terminal illness she had hidden from me until the last 6 months of her life. She had become a shadow of the woman I left 20 years before and I felt truly helpless to do anything for the first time in my complex life. Helping to raise a dead-beat father's 3 kids is an expensive, frustrating and often (new) marriage ending exercise I would not repeat. The term: "You ain't my dad" cuts right to the bone when used to correct misbehavior. Doubly compounded when their bio-Mom (or Dad) agrees with their delinquent offspring! No wonder I spent more time at work than most and had months of accumulated (unused) leave by the time retirement came, putting me out of service and on terminal leave 3 months prior to my actual retirement date. At that point I was no longer needed in the equation. Something I was reminded about every day I stuck around. Ironic that my marriage lasted less than 100 days after the active duty checks stopped rolling in and were replaced by 1/2 that amount for a normal 20-year retirement salary for an E7. I'd out-lived my financial usefulness, and was relegated to constant threat, fights and sleeping on the floor in a spare room on a mattress during my final weeks of their hospitality. I can forgive but I still dream of those days as nightmares. Recently a much more understanding living in the present, not the past Ilia calls me for holidays, birthdays or just out of the blue, and we actually have fun calls now we don't go back down 'Memory Lane', a stormy path best left buried deep. I hope that marks a new start to a friendship which will never move back into the days best left forgiven and forgotten. Right now she is living in Virginia, and playing a middle-aged hippy/U.S. Army Veteran. She recently wrote and sent me some very profound poems she may get published. I wish her happy trails. Her youngest son Joshua often contacts me, out of 3, at least one now knows I played a big part in trying to raise him well, and he turned out to be a good honest hard working father and devoted husband.

Personal Tragedy!

Six months after I arrived back in California (23 October '97), my Mother died a slow and very painful death from Lupus at the age of 69 on 3 April 1998. Ironically my ex wife's birthday! Upon hearing of my Mother's untimely death, her first words were: "She did that purposely to ruin MY birthday!". Those kind words of condolence echo in many ears to this very day and echo down the years. Totally devastated, I lived alone in the mobile home she left me, and felt cheated by the loss of the only person I had ever truly loved in my life. My beloved Mother who had sacrificed SO much to raise me well and provided me the means to escape from England and a 'father' who I would have probably killed if he ever touched my Mother in anger again. I was depressed, becoming lonely and bitter. The regret I felt at not having spent more time visiting her throughout my Army career is a painful place for me to go. Fact is, the day I put a ring on Ilia's finger ended any hopes for grandchildren, that Monica Murphy would have loved and spoilt rotten. I was confused and compensating badly for an event that shook my world like nothing else ever had. A state that existed for the next four strange and complicated years of my life. Much clearer when 11 months after her passing I finally sobered-up and started grieving properly. Leading up to that I had lost the will to live as problems like her death, creditors who hounded me daily for money I did not have, a foreclosed V.A. home I found out about after I could do nothing to quit the lease, an unexpected diagnosis of Hepatitis-C and constant alcoholic withdrawal seizures racked my life. It took a failed suicide attempt to bring me to my senses. Hauled away by the police, dried up for 2 days, I awoke in a padded room laying on an exam table and I cried out to God to help me, as I could not help myself. I had hit my bottom and He answered my plea at last. I returned home and chucked every ounce of alcohol away, had my last booze withdrawal seizure and so began my new sober life. I spent a lot of newly sober time feeding ducks and geese, contemplating life up at Spring Lake, CA. One of the most peaceful places in my travels. That's where I finally came to terms with the loss of my Mother, although the pain never really ever left me, even to this day. I just wish she had lived long enough to have seen me sober. I can honestly say few days go by without my mind wandering back to my Mum, and many others who I knew, loved and lost. Doting on the past is something I now try to avoid. Holidays and anniversaries are still very hard on me emotionally. Even if a lot of my negativity is on this web-page, this is my life story not a 'woe is me' deal. At times married life was GREAT, as was motivating troops to excel where other failed. Being the best God-damn medic in any unit I ever served in are not regrettable facts. It is an incredible feeling to save someone's life, to do so on a regular basis is almost Godlike snatching the patient back from untimely death. More addictive than any drug! I know I left my mark all over this world, and so many people are alive today only because they met me when their lives/health went way-wrong. These things drove my engine on legal off-duty boozing. Other times it turned deadly. I had a very complex and demanding married life coupled with the demands of constant military missions which became more important than my disasters @ home. Live hard, it takes a toll. Choose a safe profession and I hope you: "Live long and prosper". Now my life is a lot more simple and my responsibilities don't extend very far beyond keeping myself tracking and being a good friend to the few in my life who repay that in kind.

Changes.

So back to Santa-bloody-Rosa: I was going nowhere living in a rapidly deteriorating Mobile Home park, where Spanish was the common lingo and becoming more dependent on alcohol. It was time for me to move on. On 4 March 1999 I finally pulled my head out of the bottle and sought treatment with the V.A. I have remained totally sober ever since. Only member of my family on either side who ever beat what still consumes many of my kin. I have no desires to ever touch that poison again while I live. I then entered Sonoma County search & rescue, an all volunteer on-call service that put a LOT of demands on my free time, learning skills from folks 1/2 my age I had already perfected in the Army, after a year of beating the brush for lost kids or hikers and rarely finding any with mandatory all Saturday training sessions I could have taught much better myself, I knew I was spinning my wheels and saving lives was normally finding nothing or maybe 10% of the time their remains after days of humping hills all over the back-country in blazing hot weather or pouring rain. Sure it's a good service to offer to your community, but after 20 years of saving thousands in much more dangerous situations this was lo-speed do-gooder hard basic work best performed by folks 1/2 my age by then. Then I got involved in wild bird rescue, another volunteer job that taught me much about so many types of avian care but again was 12-18 hour days on-call 6 days a week job with no pay but costing me a packet in gas for my Jeep-Wrangler and buying my own meals just to get up at 5am, drive 20 miles there and 20 back to get to and from their facility out in the middle of nowhere, spent mostly feeding chicks, 60% of them died anyway, and filling grain containers or mopping floors or taking out the trash, taking orders from teens (veterinary students) who barked them out, made me feel like a janitor not a useful member or even a medical asset so after a year of that I told them I was not helping, not happy just doing routine boring manual labor tasks and being a go-4 for vets to be I split. Pity as I wanted to work with the raptors like eagles, hawks, giant condors and owls, big carnivorous birds injured, often by reckless punks with shotguns (a major felony) that were kept in huge cages and wearing protective head to toe clothing feeding them diced rabbit or live rodents was a 2 year training course I would have had to pay for myself at our local junior college just to get into the cage with one, that was too much study time for a guy who had spent a career saving humans not birds. I tried some gold panning around old abandoned played-out gold mines, found a few small grains and lost interest in the hobby, one that had brought me large gold nugget finds panning the White Mountains of eastern Arizona when I was living in AZ, and before that some very nice finds in the (blood red colored) Sangria De-Christo mountain streams, part of the Rockies of central Colorado when that state was home. I never sold what I found, just kept it for show & tell stories never telling curious minds where I had hit pay-dirt, and when I moved from AZ to OR after retirement I could never find those few grams and no one ever told me what happened to them, but I can guess they probably ended up cashed-out in an assayers office somewhere in Portland, OR, or a hock-shop God knows where. Those were good times, alone out in places so desolate and living out of my Jeep and off the land for days at a time totally in tune with nature and the wildlife that populated those regions from rattle-snakes galore to (once in a while) a few bears or cougars who left me alone if I did the same with them, and I sure gave them space, feeding them was not smart or safe. God I saw some incredible things out there during the daylight and every night set up my large telescope to watch the pollution free night skies, my kind of R & R out in the wildest least visited parts of this wonderful nation. In May 2001 my closest friend in California (Vince Esleeck) a happy drunk even when lit-up, died of a sudden & unexpected heart attack, a year older than me when it hit and killed him with no warning. We had gone through 12 Bravo Basic Training together in 1977 and gone our separate ways after. He got out after three-year tour, I came back in to make mine a career and only chance brought us back into friendship 19 years later as he lived where I had moved to and was running his own yard and landscape upkeep business doing well for himself, but carrying about 80lbs more than he needed in body-fat and sucking down 2 packs of smokes a day did not help. At his funeral taps was played, he was a veteran and I broke down into tears it was the last straw holding me to California. Now feeling truly alone, I decided that there was nothing left for me in California but bad memories. I began to pack-up my home and that cool north wind was calling me back to where I started life in the states for 2 years at Ft. Lewis my 1st duty station as a medic and a place I liked better than California. Washington state was calling me back, with a first choice of Port Angeles, a place I had visited and liked plus had a friend there who did 3 years with me in Germany as a Combat Engineer then got out and moved back there, Jeff, the first trip I took back to WA after I got out of service in 1980 spending 2 weeks living with him in his nice ocean side home. I could not track him down in 1999, but Pat and Donna were in Washington, we had stayed in contact and so I set my sights on them and Spokane. Both came down to visit with me for a week each and plans were made for the next phase of my life. So in July 2001 I came to Spokane, as mentioned earlier, or the "Lilac City" for the show nature puts on every spring. Spokane also means 'Children of the Sun' in the local native American language. It is also the tribal name of the Native Americans who do well here. Fighting fires in summer and clearing snow in winter. They also do well in the casino business. I also did a cyber-recon of Spokane and based upon their feed back to help me choose where I now live, I flew in here on 17 July 2001, never having seen Spokane except on a computer screen in California.

I returned to in Washington State, U.S.A. on 17 July 2001, which was my 1st U.S. duty-station after 2.5 years spent as a U.S. Army Combat Engineer (12B10) in West Germany. I was retrained as a medical-specialist (91B10) and flown to the 9th Infantry Division, Fort Lewis, Tacoma, WA that lasted two tough years before I was transferred to Hawaii and did not see Washington state again until I moved up here 4 years after Army retirement from my California home to retire in a place I loved when I was here the 1st time round (1980-2). Just as I was getting settled-in and meeting new folks, 56 days later.... the world changed as the twin towers fell. 8+ years later I remember that morning in every vivid detail as the phone rang off the hook, and CNN kept replaying it, with close-ups of innocents diving to their death from upper level windows to escape the flames. I had a cousin (Dave) stationed in the Pentagon, and for a whole day I did not even know what his status was, he survived unharmed but shaken. That cowardly barbaric act of utterly evil inhuman monsters filled me with so much rage. I knew we would fight radicals in Islam when the hostages were taken in Iran when I was completing my 1st 3-years in uniform, 1979, and I did think that America had grown way too complacent thinking the Atlantic could prevent the terror I grew up with in London only a decade before from striking homeland USA, but even after the 1st attempt to bring down the WTC failed by a radical Islamic nut-job, we still did little to tighten-up security. You will catch some of that 'dislike' near the bottom of this page.

©

Only in America; this one picture taken of the real heroes of 9/11 show 3 Caucasian male fire-fighters raising our flag amidst the ruins of the WTC. It was not 'staged' but captures the real event as it happened. Plans are in the works to turn this into a huge statue of a Hispanic, an African American and a Caucasian doing the same deal for all to see for all time. In 20 years a child will look at that statue and think it is factual. We may as well throw in a percentage of color into the famous picture of the United States Marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima to make it 'culturally correct'.

I had had it with buying or renting 5 homes over 2 decades with a family to raise that was no longer part of my life. Large houses in nice parts of any city or town that needed constant upkeep and I was single with enough goods to fill a large 2-bedroom apartment, so I set my sights on communal living where owning was not a big deal and all the upkeep (inside and out) was not mine to stress, just part of the rent. I could not have asked for a better apartment (location and interior) and I think fate did me well on that part of my journey through life. It was a wise move for many reasons. I needed a moderately sized town (population around 200,000) in the middle of a pristine wilderness to relax and enjoy the luxury of my close proximity to a large military base (Fairchild Air Force Base), a close excellent Veterans Administration Medical Center to treat the Hepatitis-C I had contracted due to multiple dirty needle-sticks and exposure to my patient's blood over the years, amongst many other problems 20 years in the Army had left me with. Spokane's (newly expanded) V.A. MedCen is one of the best Veterans facilities in the U.S. In comparison to the closest V.A. MedCen to Santa Rosa, 60 miles away in San Francisco, which was (in my opinion) a non-professional mess, aka Dachau II, this place is a 4-star facility that out-classes most active duty Military Medical Centers I ever worked in, or have been a patient in. However many medical procedures are only available 270 miles away in the V. A. Medical Center in Seattle. Instead of 'out-sourcing' care into the private sector in Spokane, the V.A. wastes a lot of cash sending their sickest on expensive & long trips to far off, over worked, under-staffed V.A. facilities, when they could save a bunch sending that patient down town to 3 large hospitals and numerous clinics which cover all facets of medicine. My disability settlements consist of a 20-year Army pension, some V.A. disability and Social Security disability benefits, making me retired/unemployable by age 44, that was a ruling made in 2000, with the body of a man who burned out on a fast-paced life. Spokane is the type of community that only exists when you escape the ever growing urban sprawl that rings our coastlines and major inland cities. Yet every year it seems to grow larger. It has attributes that were not close or even available in Santa Rosa, California. Downtown is Bohemian in many ways. The local casino offers the best buffet in town for only $15 for all U can eat, and famous bands play there often. It's homes are both new and Victorian. $150K may get you a small old fix-er-upper 1900's house, or a nice new trailer in a park, but nice newer models in better parts of town start at $200K! The wildlife here is varied and available right outside the back door patio of my (1,100+ sq. ft., carpeted & tiled, ground-floor/walk-out, 2 bed, 2 bath, walk-in closets, large living room with a fireplace and air-conditioner, dining room, both with great views, a fully equipped modern kitchen with loads of cupboards and counter space, all appliances in perfect working condition with a breakfast bar, an enclosed washer/dryer area, loads of storage space in every room and a fully enclosed large garage right up front) built in 1988 apartment. Unlike a high rise beast, they are more like rows of country cottages, and the place is maintained year round. I have a forest full of wildlife only 10 feet out back teaming with wildlife. I have numerous passive and active intrusion detection systems running 24/7 for anyone foolish enough to visit me uninvited. This apartment worked just fine for my humble needs. It's a middle class-ish environment for families, military, students, professionals, retirees and folks who no longer can (or want to) maintain large homes with huge yards or land. The other draw-back is 80% of my neighbors move in (or out) annually, yet about 20% are long-termers like me. My building used to be more the domain of the more stable, longer-term tenants than the others, which suited me just fine. Now a unit is seldom rented by one person/family more than a year and then they are gone, oh well! Things worked a whole lot better here when a letter of good tenancy was a requirement from the place you left before you even rented here, even from a snobby covenant board of neighborhood associations for single home owners, to a letter from a trailer park manager worked, now a credit & criminal back-ground check is all required and richer parents signing for their frat-house kids does not make them model citizens although many are cool others can be a pain, just as I was petty wild in my teens, add large pets and things sure have changed. The Cottonwood experience. I have looked at other apartments in town and have yet to find all of what this place offers me so I have no plans on moving onto newer just as costly Spartan rows of stacked boxy homes all looking exactly like the ones surrounding it. This place does allow for a liberal level of individual expression in how you set up your front and back entry areas/plants and trappings which shows who take a little pride in living here, and distinguishes those who take living here for granted. It's a decent E7 Senior Enlisted Bachelor Enlisted Quarters (S-BEQ) off-post set-up, with a wonderful view. I don't want or need to live in anything larger and I have enough 'stuff' that anything smaller would mean ditching some items I do not want to part with, I have nice items throughout the place I live and it is full but not cluttered. The constant new faces is like most Army units I ever served in. It makes for (some) short-term but good friendships, but many folks I never even speak to or even know as familiar faces which suits me just fine. Then there's a few retired folks or civilians and (transient) military who call this place a home too. Another reason this also works for me is all the interior and exterior maintenance are part of my lease, as is unlimited fresh water, sewerage, garbage removal for a minimal utility fee per month, and of course I pay for my phones, Internet, cable T.V., electrical usage, and any other creature comfort services I add to keep me in touch with the world or entertain me and my few guests. Having owned many homes over my 20 years of military life fixing them up and selling them off every time the Army moved me and even after retirement, I know that few places offer free everything. But that is what most home owners pay for on top their mortgages, insurance and taxes, did I mention neighborhood covenants or zoning regulations that can get brutal? If an appliance breaks down inside here, it's fixed for free or replaced at no charge. Owning equates to buying a new replacement which I don't have to worry about. Carpets are cleaned for free for all if they want and complete interior repainting is by request, although I pay for that service when I want it done not when I am told it will be done at someone else's time and conditions. What I pay for gets a much better job done than what the management offer as normal rugs and upkeep cleans. We have a full club-house, swimming pool, gym, sauna, full-sized pool table and communal center all rolled into one on site benefit, with a roaring fire kept lit in the long cold months. The rules of the lease keep this place to a good standard of communal harmony, and the few rowdy or troublesome folks that move in and start making their neighbors lives hell don't get to stick around long, living in any place with no rules is a problem waiting to happen and I would never move into any place where anything goes and often does from fights to drugs to shootings to crooks and dead-beats as permanent pests to good quiet living. Rising from the gutter, in the slums of London, I have no intention of returning to it paying what I do per month for a respectable place to park myself here. Unlike owning where you are stuck with a potential dick for a neighbor (been there once for 7+ years straight in Hawaii, with a Japanese/American next-door neighbor who hated me and my family or anyone visiting us from day one and made a loud issue about anything we did or failed to and it sucked) for the duration of ownership, or you get lucky and ALL your neighbors turn out fine. I haven't lived anywhere like that ever! But this place is better than most I've lived in since I retired in 1997. In 2005 I bought (online) over $600 in medical equipment to finally reconstruct the best possible basic 1st-aid emergency aid bag any first aid responder could dream of owning. I no longer have the right licenses to do the invasive/medications/defibrillation kind of Paramedical procedures I took for granted as an Army EMT-P, so the entire 40-pound jump-bag is geared for procedures I am allowed to do from splinting to CPR to basic emergency wound care. These are all covered under the Good Samaritan Statutes of Washington State (RCW 4.24.300 Immunity from liability for certain types of medical care) that allows me to help out without fear of prosecution as long as I keep it simple and I do not get too EMT on someone in need of medical help fast to save life, limb or eye-sight. I am now the non-official 2nd responder to the 102 units in our complex. 911 will get an ambulance in 10-20 minutes depending upon the weather, but I can be at any neighbors front door in 2 minutes, and those are often the critical seconds that mean the difference between life or death. This is something I volunteered for and expect no reward other than a "Thanks!" and even that is not required! In fact the Good Samaritan shield only covers me if I don't charge for any services I render, and what I expend in equipment I must replace at my own cost which is no big deal, and has made me a real medical asset for my neighbors many times, which they didn't have before I showed up. Hopefully all my aid bag does is gather dust, but I have a feeling it won't be long before my phone rings, or someone comes pounding on my front door and I do what I do best, call 911, grab my gear and dash hopefully for a minor incident, but more often it's a call to save lives that can be saved or treat real medical emergencies, as I have done here many times so far since I moved in. My journey continues and I don't think it is finished yet, at least as an on-site care-giver. I carry a smaller fully stocked aid bag in my car, and I have had plenty of chances to stop and render aid on the roads I travel in my mini geared-down ambulance/rescue SUV.

Learning to cope with disabilities I never thought I would end up living with.

Life here continues to heal me and help me grow in so many ways, and other times slams me hard. On 16 June 2005 I was diagnosed with glaucoma, very atypical for someone my age and not a disease found in either side of my family tree, which leads me to believe that something, maybe ionizing radiation exposure, which was the norm in clearing any patient through an Emergency Room with an in-tact spine gave me years of unprotected exposure to X-Rays with every patient who me and another medic had to hold in place while multiple gamma-rays were shot through their necks, and us unshielded fools holding head and feet taught for a good clear C-spine shot, sometimes that meant 15 tries before a young intern would or could see no cervical spine fractures so we could treat their other injuries without breaking their neck moving them. This or maybe many of the gasses I encountered in 20 years of everything from tear-gas to burning petro-chemicals on site as 1st responders with no face masks or breathing barriers, or time to wear them even if they were issued which they never were to us 911 jockeys and get the casualty out of whatever gassy messes we found them laying unconscious in. Now for the meds used to treat me: Travatan eye-drops for the duration finally had the desired effect by November 2005. Relieved I thought this was one less medical problem for me to stress, just keep taking the eye drops until I croaked. On 21 September 2007 I was given my first ever ultra-sound of my optic nerves to a depth of 3.5cm's, a new imaging device which shows what no other form of imaging can. It showed normal optic nerves, so my optician took me off all eye-drops. I was retested in December 2007 and even though there is still mild elevation in the pressures of both eyes (16 left & 15 right with 10 in both being the upper normal range), it was thankfully decided to leave me off any eye-drops. In 2009 I did not even bother to see the eye clinic, my graduated bifocal glasses work fine and 30 mins in the chair will only show slightly elevated inter-ocular pressures, which I have had for 2 decades. On 26 June 2008 I visited the V.A. for two reasons, another ultra-sound of my liver, which showed some damage from the years of Hepatitis-C it has endured, but was in much better shape than I had feared it could be. Kidneys and spleen were normal. I also hit optometry and the intra-ocular pressure in both eyes had dropped to a 13 & 13. No more eyedroppers and follow-up in 1 year 2010 maybe! Good news from both departments, but my high viral load still saps the energy I have badly some days then teasing me with a few days of almost normal levels of endurance, meaning I can get in my car, drive and visit or go somewhere with enough energy left to make it home. Washington state will have it's 1st Veterans only graveyard opening on Memorial Day, 31 May 2010. It's only 15 miles from my home, it is in my Last Will that when my time comes I will be cremated and buried there with a proper V.A. marker free of charge, I need nothing fancy. That is where I want to be interred with my fellow Vets only as eternal 'Brothers in Arms' company. It's in a very nice area called Medical Lake, and not far for those I know who may outlive me to maybe stop by and visit.

My genotype or 'flavor' of Hepatitis-C is 3A, the easiest to treat with a 75% 'success rate' after 24 weeks of Chemo, (if the infection is new to a younger body than mine is) and at my stage of this disease I doubt any radical chemo would even clear it. It is NOT something I am willing to endure due to the very negative side effects I know await any patient on that poison. Most of those I know with it tried and failed Chemo, some so depressed already they failed Chemo by blowing a hole in their skulls, something my V.A. shrinks fear I may terminate treatment with, so the will block all V.A. avenues to Chemo even if I wanted it, yes I have come to very real terms with my own mortality. I have dealt with hundreds of Chemo patients over the years and many asked me to end their suffering. I never did, but wish I could have on late stage wrecks who suffered in utter agony until they passed. In reality most Hep-C patients go through the treatment, some clear the virus and a few years later it returns. The longest anyone has survived virus-free post-treatment is only 10 years as of this date. The easiest way to describe Hep-C is imagine waking up every day with a very bad case of the flu, and it never going away, some days I don't have the energy to do anything but stay home, sometimes those days run into months, and at other times I seem to have periods where it effects me only slightly, a brief pause of normality then another dive into a relapse again, that has been how my last decade of life has played out. Newer and less radical cures (protease or polymerase inhibitors) are being developed and in testing with the Food and Drug Administration. Problem being is it takes normally 10 years before a drug is invented, kills off 1/4 million test animals and passes the rigors of safe to use on humans or FDA approved available to Joe-Public thru a doctor Rx! They act by sterilizing the virus with a designed DNA injection or pill, preventing it from duplicating itself. Vertex is getting real close with it's trails. When this treatment hits the V.A. system I will be amongst the first to go for it. Projections for introduction are 2010. If it becomes available in another country first, that's where I'll go for 2-weeks of treatment and come back cured. Thanks to my years of sobriety, my genotype and a moderate level of hepatic scarring to date, I may still have the latitude to wait for something which will soon become the only way to treat all genotypes of a disease that affects over 4 million Americans and more have Hep-C than AIDS, where the drug companies make a mint. Veterans are a large demographic group of Hep-C infected people. Our use of pneumatic 'shot-guns' to immunize our soldiers in-masse in the 70's & early 80's was a prime vector in the transmission of Hep-C and HIV to many Vets who were ever inoculated using that abomination. We infected our own!!! It took decades for the U.S. Army to admit that terrible mistake and they stopped using it when HIV became the big scare, circa mid-'80's. A mistake we had warned our superiors about so many times, and fell on deaf ears until then. My face still bears the light-colored scars of multiple staph infections I picked-up with every tour in disease infested Emergency Rooms, like badges of my old trade, I would miss them if they were gone. I signed on the line and like so many others, and my ass belonged to the Army. I try to lead a normal life but it's hard to do when my mind tells my body to act like it is still fit and normal, when in fact I am rated 100% disabled by both the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration for a laundry list of debilitating conditions which both re-looked in 2004 and left me still rated at 100% disabled. Next relook won't show improvement in any area unless a new drug fully clears the Hep-C I have had for God only knows how long. I am dealing with worsening back problems, my Hep-C is now symptomatic with fatigue that for many days or weeks kicks my ass. In 7 years I have lost 4 inches (!) in height, my spine is shot and looks like the letter 'S' viewed from behind. It is basically collapsing down upon itself, and the pain is something else at times. A bone-scan I had done on 1 May 2006 shows a hip fracture waiting to happen. I love good news like that :-) The bone scan showed no sign of the multiple fractures that the V.A. had documented from 1998 through my most recent exams with both X-rays and Cat-Scans, but the level of scanning I had done looks for bone density only, not fractures, old or new. Although my spine is still twisted, causes me grinding pain, the bone scan shows no osteoporosis in my spine but in my pelvis. My left knee is blown with very little joint left and I use a walking cane much more than I care to. It sure feels like I can't do a fraction of what once came with little or no effort. Ever debilitating Hep-C fatigue, a deformed spine, little of a normal joint left in my knee make ambulating a constant battle with pain management, frustration and exhaustion making life so much fun at times..... I just stay in bed. Tinnitus, or a crippling ringing in my left ear often induces incapacitating headaches that grind me to a 2-hour halt, often following a loud noise like a sonic boom, a child's scream or a car-back-fire. Add the 3-D Technicolor dreams of horror my mind conjurers up for me most nights from the emergency medical world I thrived off for 17 years, and my quality of life is restrictive to put it mildly. One trial (February '06) of a drug called Ambien the V.A. prescribed for my midnight screamers almost killed me with just one tablet, so I'll deal with my nightmares and never touch that poison again. My liver enzymes have dropped from an ALT high of 340 in Jan 2005 to 195 as of May 2007 and 65 as of 12 December 2007. On 7 July 2006 I had my first ever Hep-C viral load drawn which showed I had 4,960,000 (IU or International Units per milliliter) of Hep-C infection. As of 7 September 2007 it now stands at 10 million, as mentioned earlier probably related to my immune system fighting off an infected ankle and not working full time on my liver. A high number (high is 5-25 million) but on the low end of counts that can rise into hundreds of millions with gross infections, and End Stage Liver Disease (ESLD) that kicks-in at 25 million IU's, (Very High) and often goes higher the more the disease takes over. It was what I expected. Since February when I ended-up in hospital I have lost 30lbs, WOW! I have a Hep-C infection all right, but my body will not allow it to overpower my natural immune responses, yet. For that I am blessed. This puts me still 'High' but nowhere near where I was in spring 2002 when the V.A. had me taking some (over the counter) arthritis meds that were screwing up my liver fast! My ALT dipped down fast when I refused to take them! A flare up common with Hep-C. My once photographic memory has given way to scribbled notes and post-it stickers. But when I look at a Veteran with legs missing or blind, I do count my blessings that it could be a whole lot worse, so I try not to bitch, just document my health status here for any who care to know. I can only imagine with dread what the next generation of Veterans will suffer. Christ! In February 2007 I developed pain in my left ankle, thinking I had sprained it, but not knowing how or when I used ice packs and elevation, but it was the start of the venous-stasis ulcer that made living hell. The varicose veins that plagued my lower left leg for my last 3 years in the Army and ended up with a limiting permanent physical profile, meaning granny hose, no more running, and for my semi annual physical fitness test I had to speed walk 3 miles in under 30 minutes, versus running 2 miles in 16 minutes. The Army did not help with my varicose veins and started messing up my lower legs early in my career for years of morning P.T. running many miles each morning in leather combat boots (looks Macho) BUT will do a # on your lower extremities, a concept lost on the new Army with their Nikes or New-Balance proper running foot-wear they get to use now. Lucky sods :-) Humping 500lb steel bridge parts and later some patients just as heavy also took it's toll on my lower leg circulation. Now I have a resolved ankle ulcer directly linked to that stupidity. But I dare not throw that at a V.A. comp & pension board as I may come back with less disability rating than I already have with a back-log of fresh severely injured Vets returning from our wars in much worse shape, so I sit it out. I wonder just how many other Vet's suffer the same, if they served in the Army prior to the change to healthy running shoes, I'd guess millions! Wonder how many get any disability for it? Maybe 100 if they lost both legs to the same thing that attacked my left ankle, or so the V.A. ratings per condition mandates, no legs, service connected up it from a 0% to 20% and buy a wheel-chair. Thanks again! During a meeting with my assigned V.A. shrink on 22 May 2009 I asked her to remove the every 3 months one hour long psychotherapy sessions I have been making with a shrink who works with Vets who have problems coping. Found out he was booked solid thru August (3 months out!!!) and his case load was mostly very new to civilian life and very PTSD-ed out much younger Vets than me. I was no longer getting anything positive or helpful complaining about the weather or the price of cable T.V. all minor concerns that compared to the Vet who 6 months ago was watching their buddies getting blown to bits, or blowing the heads off 13 year old terrorists with AK-47's pointed at them, no other option or their trip home is in a bag, and struggling to even survive that kind of guilt or self doubting that is a natural reaction to the situations our military are faced with every day they are in combat or even close to it, and with suicide bombers there are no real safe 'in the rear with gear' areas where they can let down their guard even for a minute. They are losing battles to do basic non-violent tasks like finding or keeping a job, trying to pick up a relationship with a loved one who has no idea of what they endured and the Vet no way of making them see or feel even close to the boiling rage that consumes them, or even get acceptance back into society or even their own families who see they have changed and don't know how to cope with what came back from the loving good son/daughter who left to go to war full of good intentions and came home changed beyond anyone they can relate to. In comparison my gripes were and are petty and she agreed, so I now no longer have to waste an invaluable hour that can be used by some poor WAY messed up Vet who needs their time and skills much more than I do. I told her should a crisis develop in my life that requires I need some feed-back very fast I will make a B-line for their Urgent Care Clinic or Emergency Room (24/7/365) and seek that help. There were times early in my sobriety and not long after I had become a civilian again, something I don't think I will ever completely transition back to being even if I wear their clothes and act like a normal person in the company of all I interact with, that 1 + 1 was always making 3. Now over a decade later I have moved beyond that level of crisis, I still get angry at silly petty things then I reach down and self-analyze my own reactions or seek feedback from those I trust. I get common sense no nonsense genuine caring alternatives to problems I was wrestling with and getting nowhere. Thank God none of them gives me pity or condones 'stinking thinking' as that is not a way to help me in any form. But not even these friends can take away the faces of the thousands of dead, dying or mangled patients from a life time of treating them and constant exposure to the very worse things that can happen to humans when things go very wrong. I still see, hear and smell and at time interact with them as if they were still alive and sitting on my bed asking me why I could not save them, phantoms but very real ones that make sleep tormented in my dreams many nights, or the hermit like life I can very comfortably crawl back into watching back to back reruns of every gory war movie until I know the scripts by rote. I still (and probably always will) sleep with a loaded pistol hanging off my bed post and I never leave home without a layered level of defensive articles that I may use if I see a turban wearing bearded terrorist aiming a rocket grenade at my local Wal-Mart! These pivotal people in my life to include my trusted friend Andrew have provided me a life-line of supportive or corrective solutions I accept from them as they know me better than any V.A. shrink who sees me for 1-hour every 3 months, sits there quietly and asks me the standard leading questions taking notes and nodding his head every few moments to show he is not sitting there day-dreaming: "So how did that make you feel?" or "Is there a way around this problem that does not mean rushing into it full speed without thinking about all the consequences or who may get hurt other than you emotionally?" and 99% of the time these folks I know and trust who are not V.A. staff have given me exactly the right coping skills to get me thru my minor storms in tea-cups, and I still see the chief of Behavioral Health Services every 6-months so she can do face time with me to make sure I am tracking, not a threat to myself or others and refill my meds that do help keep me level headed and rational thinking even when some of the obstacles I face seem insurmountable. That is the only recent change to that treatment-plan worthy of noting here. PTSD does not go away or get better, like any disease you live with it and compensate, or you end up in a world of legal hurt very quick if you don't. I have too much to live for to ruin it all with one episode of a melt-down & the common sense to see it coming and back off, seek help and if need be call in the pros to take me somewhere very safe. PTSD flares up when the world situation gets close to out-right global war, or when too many set-backs hit too close to my home/life and I have to see the knee-jerk reactive me emerging & stop him in his tracks or it breaks out and I may spend a day locked inside my home all kitted out for urban combat & cleaning my kit, as long as I keep it safe at home it is a healthy outlet & keeps me ready for a bug-out situation. Pity that 30-50 Vets of every war since W.W.II who suffer from varying degrees of PTSD linked with drug or alcohol abuse and compounded by even worse service-connected or just aging severe medical problems who kill themselves or others every single day in some place in these United States because they have run out of any other option but a dangerous and terminal one, when just maybe the hour I gave back to the V.A. could have turned that all around for just 1 or 2 of them. Blame the V.A.? Sometimes that is the barrier a Vet runs into that can not help them, but for most Vets who choose to end their own lives all the therapy or meds in the V.A. can not stop a determined Vet from ending their own lives when they lose the will to live, or can not stand the physical/emotional hell that there is no magic cure for. I crawled out of that trap in 1999, and it is hard some days to see any bright future ahead, but all I have to do is drive over to the local V.A. hospital, look around and see Vets in so much worse shape than I am to convince me that if they are trying their very hardest to live, then realize my burdens are not terminal [yet] and I return home shamed that I fell into the self-pity pot and even thought about an end-game easy way out a not so bad life, nowhere as bad off as theirs so obviously is.

NOT MUCH BEATS A WELL MAINTAINED SHARP RIDE!

For the first time in 2 decades (!) I treated myself to a new car on 10 August 2006, trading in my 1996 Suzuki Samurai Sport JLX (sigh!) with 73K on the clock and a transmission ready to quit on me. Spokane winters are not kind on sub-compact sedans, and I have seen SO many Honda Civics or V.W. Bugs totaled by sheet-ice, with 2 feet of snow on top, and inexperienced drivers or old age plodders pushing them like snow-cats to their final resting place, or crashing into other drivers who DO know how to drive in weather where snow chains are sometimes the only way to cross a mountain pass, or U-turn and head home Jack! Not required with the all weather/all terrain tires on this stud-mobile! The 2006 Grand Vitara Premium (4WD) is loaded with all the power I need, a V6 engine built around one of Japan's best made and safest SUV's that allows the driver to drive, not a 'smart gizmo that drives the vehicle the way 'it thinks' it should be driven. Auto drives and me don't get on well @ all! I have a VERY bad ingrained habit from many years of driving stick-shifts of clutching in on an auto drive break pedal fast to download gears, not comprehending in that split second that autos don't have clutch pedals to slam to the floor! Only to find I just slammed my left foot hard and fast down onto the brake @ 65 mph (!!!) and spin the bugga almost into a flip. IMHO auto-drives are for kids who never learnt how to drive a stick-shift, and more power to them if it works for them, or drivers my age or older who like the idea of only 2 pedals to mess with. With a killer 6-CD changer in-dash stereo & 6 hi-end speakers, A/C, cruise control, room for 5 and lots of cargo in the back, air-bags all around front & back, security features from an alarm to VIN # etched windows don't make this an E-Z vehicle to jack. It has most vital controls laid out in a sensible (keeps your eyes on the road not the stereo!) steering wheel button(s) and dash board array, that has nice touches like power everything, and even internal and external temperature LED displays, a 100K full everything warranty and fast road-side assistance for 6 more years with just one call. I have found the best SUV for my needs and at a $21K price that can't be beat by anything built in America. Sorry the truth hurts, but our $35-50K Jeeps or Fords don't impress me. Behold a beautiful work of art in automotive evolution, the 2006 Grand Vitara Premium: 1/2 SUV, 1/2 computer! The V6, 185 horses under the hood, All Wheel Drive, poetry in motion, on or off road, in all weather. Her name is Serenity.  She only has 3,000 miles on the clock since I bought her new, making me probably the least frequent driver in Spokane. I got her checked at 1K miles and she passed with flying colors. I needed a rig like this in my working days not my retirement days when a long trip is 7 miles (and back) to visit Donna, or a 2 mile round-trip trip to the local supermarket.  Trips to and from the V.A. hospital are what puts any 'real' miles on her, on the other side of town. I have high hopes this dude & car love affair will be a long one. And if I ever upgrade it will be to another Suzuki Grand Vitara model. Three years after I drove her off the lot and with only 3K on the clock she continues to be one hell of a nice ride in all weather or surfaces. Or I could have got a Honda and still be wondering why the gas-pedal sticks to the floor as I am passing Boeing 737's on their take off/landing at the local airport! Japanese model cars normally have a lot going for them since they out-performed U.S. made MPG rating vehicles during the gas-crisis of the early 1970's, and have been getting better every year while still providing a car/truck or SUV at a 20-30% savings over their U.S. counterparts. IMHO most exceed the NTSB standards for safety, fuel-economy, price and their SUV lines almost got me into a Jeep Patriot, the 2006 models my friends bought have all had to have major work done inside or with the wiring, but they look cool man! The Japanese-made SUV's had plusses and not-so-must-haves, like all of that model of the Nissan came in auto-transmission. It was the Suzuki that had everything I wanted and almost nothing I didn't. I traded in a 1996 Suzuki-Samurai for the Vitara-Premium. A dash-controlled roll-down rear window would have been nice for hauling long lengths of lumber, or longs loads of anything that extend beyond the interior dimensions I have, which are bigger than any sedan or sports car, but if I need a stack of 20-foot long 2" x 4" pinewood posts, not likely in an apartment, I will have them delivered, unloaded and stacked by a crew and their truck.

Cyber-Me.

Computers started off as a past-time in 1983 with my 1st home Apple IIE, not doing much but swapping text messages and photos, or playing Pac-Man or Pong with others on Bullet-In Board Services at 9,000 bps, or baud. Over the years I kept up with the technology moving through the early Windows, to 95, 98 then XP in 2007. I am self taught, but I consider myself an advanced user, now with over $8K in high-end computers. I have 2 computers I had custom-built by the manufacturers and delivered to my home. My tower is a Hewlett Packard Pavilion and a lap-top Dell Inspiron that I had built around powerful/fast dual Intel © Pentium Core-Duo processors, giving me 4GB of RAM and processing data at 3GhZ each, all through a DSL cable hub. I have back-up 100GB hard drives for both, a 1TB extra back up for my H.P. and all the peripherals I need from a H.P. 4 in 1 Office-Jet that prints, scans faxes and copies, to flash-sticks galore and plenty of software. I have web-cams on both computers and send audio visual files to friends who can suck up 50-100MB A/V files in a few seconds, a much faster and much more personal way to stay in touch. I still work with text e-mails & JPG (picture) attachments for those who lack the speed or computer savvy to understand that it does not take an IT engineer to learn how easy it is to swap audio-visual files, that their kids are doing it daily. I send files using both video and still camera files which link into my computers thru USB-2 hubs from a Canon Elura video-camera to a simple Nikon Coolpix point & shoot pocket camera. Long text files are time consuming for a guy who does not touch type and I try to keep my contacts happy with whatever medium they are from novice to pro users. As early as computers were becoming common at home they were also an integral part of my military/medic life, working with closed secure systems inputting and retrieving patient data had to be fast and known to all my staff new or civilians who had been on the job since type-writers were new! I was also interfacing with world-wide military networks ordering supplies, parts, equipment or even replacement medics for those I was losing. From drafting awards, evaluations, lesson-plans and creating entire training modules to export to other medical or tactical units, and planning medical support, treatment or evacuation for large troop movements in peace and war time, to include civilian disaster relief missions, and how to get them under medical control fast. Near the end of my 20 years with the U.S. Army, about 30% of my time was spent working with computers at high levels. In a year or so I will be moving to Windows 7 (when they work the bugs out!) and that means replacing most of what I have and sinking another $8-10K into everything I will need, a tower computer and a lap-top, with all the peripherals and software to make them work 12-18 hours a day as I power-use them and multi-task from designing web-pages to helping Vets in distant locations process their claims for disability with the V.A. I seldom if ever play games on my computers, I am too busy sending or receiving data, running malware scans or burning CD's and DVD's, soon to be Blue-Ray as the standard medium for the IT world. I will probably have a wi-fi set-up moving data at speeds I can't touch yet. I could but won't go on about what I have and where I am going, but suffice to say that computers and IT sciences continue to be an integral part of my life, and helping others is often frustrating if their computers scare them or they think a computer needs no upkeep, taking it to the store when broken, when if they only installed some of the great freeware progs & learned how to to use them well and maintained them regularly they would have computers that would last 10-years, not die in months after set-up for simple problems that could have been so easily avoided. I am not a mechanic and some folks can strip an engine and rebuild it in a few days, that is their forte, I have to remember that I can set-up and program an entire network of computers in 2 days, but I still have to take my car to the shop for engine problems, so I try to never insult folks about computers or compare their skills to mine, but if they won't learn how to fill up the oil on their car, just like I can, then they better learn to keep the multitude of malware, virii and bugs out of their computers or stop using them, that is why the programs that do that so well are geared for novice level users, and they work only if users scan their systems once in a while.

For you online music hounds, coming out of the United Kingdom, I present Last-FM ©. http://www.last.fm . Works in any popular browser, not a RAM hog & no bugs or malware. DSL connection 1MB/sec or better required but the faster the better. Tailor make your own list of fave bands, artists, genre, spanning 1/2-century of zounds, even older if the real classics are your thing, from Bach to Wagner it's there, sorry no videos back then. This smart BOT compiles & mixes the best of what you input and plays audio-visual no stop videos live on your screen, makes & remembers your play-lists, or hot-wire it into your Big-Screen Plasma/LCD wide screen TV & crank up the surround-sound stereo experience for a true part experience. This could put the DJ's out of business for ever! Nice E-Z 2 use GUI, that you design to suit the needs of your visual pleasure/functionality. It's all Ad-free and no-pay 4 service, playing around the clock 365. Buy the music online to include ring-tomes or take a walk on the wild/dark side and capture your faves/burn 'em to disc or send/share with M8's. Add/delete bands or artists to your playlists as you want, the LastFM remembers your input, and yes you must activate an account linked to your e-mail address or no nuthin playing! No.... $elling your stash of boot-legged CD's/DVD's is still piracy and only legal where the lawless live. If what you see/hear is not to your liking, change artists or songs or flick over to U-Tube and watch an MTV/Video-1 hi-quality show then flip right back into the Last-FM mix. No 1 time licenses to buy, no monthly download fees, no commitment whatsoever, it is a quantum leap in entertainment and it IS legal for residents of the UK, US and Germany! Set it up on all your computers, or portable devices you own, it is all linked to your log-in account wherever you take it. Music is from around the world & choose your native language tunes for local lingo fun if English is not your basics. Takes a novice level set up with 1 install file & of course firewall permission :-) Even displays a biography and discography of your favorite choices. Surf the net in another tab, while your fave music plays out thru your speakers or for privacy, use ear-buds sitting there humming & reminiscing about what you were up to when this tune was playing @ the top of the charts! Unlike many/all other online music/video feeds, this is the only one that allows you to set up all your favorite music and even your favorite songs, like creating a radio station that only plays the best of your favorite songs, then just let it play without going to the computer and switching bands, tracks or song by song choices. My selection is an ever-growing consummate walk down the very best parts of memory lane in my life. May it enrich your listening pleasure too :-)

This is a direct link into the ever-growing list of my favorite songs and music I have saved as a playlist on LastFM:

http://www.last.fm/user/Muroc_Sean/library/playlists

Critters!

My closest friend was Missey, an aging spoilt rotten calico cat who I loved dearly. At 18 she left her old age and suffering behind her in 2007 and I vowed I would never take the responsibility of getting another pet, to grow to love (I bond with my pets better than I do with most people I know) and break my heart when their time comes, or worse left to another to care for (or dispose of) if I pass before the pet does, a gamble if you have the bug I do. Found abandoned & freezing to death, hungry & malnourished as a kitten outside my front door in mid-winter Colorado Springs just before Christmas in 1990. She soon joined the two beautiful AKC championship rough collies ( Lassie look-alikes) I owned and loved then. After splitting from Ilia in 1997 that was the last time I saw them. She did not keep them, and I don't want to know about: "The good homes she found for them.", when I think a quick death was their real fate. Those were the loved ones I cried for headed south on I-5 in '97. In 1998 Ilia gave me a phone-call ultimatum, either take our cat or she would put her to sleep, so she flew down and dropped off the only pet I was able to salvage from Ilia's killing spree. From 1998 in California thru the move to Spokane in 2001 and 6 years here I became her only owner and she my best live-in friend. Missey went through the feline equivalent of a nervous breakdown while I was in hospital 14-23 March 2007. She was boarded for 8 days in a good facility, but for her aging diabetic scared of her own shadow self those 9 days in cat time must have felt like months in a small enclosure she had never been in before full of strange smells and noises and people. Upon her return to me she became a shell of a desperate and unsalvageable animal whose suffering just spiraled down into a recovery she could not hack. For 2 months she refused to leave the spare bedroom and cried all night in distress. I tried vet recommended feline anti-anxiety pills which she would neither eat nor tolerate, so on 18 May 2007 I took the only humane and ethical next-step and she was put to sleep without knowing anything as the light she was in life finally was extinguished by her vet of 4 years in my home. She passed in no pain just drifting off into a peaceful sleep after 1 shot to tranquilize her, then another she would not awake from. I know I'll ever own another pet, as I grow way too attached to them. I've owned, loved and lost too many, and it's never easy letting go. Their lives go by so fast and the emotional anguish their passing causes me is not something I want to repeat. I will still love animals, but in their environment, not cooped-up in my home. Not something new to me. I was into fish and aquatics for 20 years, but I left that hobby in Santa Rosa complete with a fully stocked 50 gallon aquarium for the person (jerk) who bought my mobile home. Since I came here my daily hobby has been watching, feeding and watering the many varieties of avian 'customers' I take care of at Murphy's Seed & Peanut Bar!" I've taken photos of every species and that's a lot of pictures. My bird feeder is an ornate hanging green metal tube. My squirrel feeder is a green painted 2" x 4" post, with a green metal feeder on top, 3 feet off the ground, complimented by an attached climbing ladder, so they don't have to play flying squirrels to get what they want. I had to remove the ladder in June 2009 though. That area has taken a beating with 2 back to back record breaking freezing winters, and the land it once stood firmly on is eroded in places up to 18"'s of land that washed off after the permafrost-frost thawed and the rains came. Andrew and his brother are going to completely rebuild that post and border it with natural river-rocks, making it look as natural as possible, sunk 2 feet into the ground, so solid and tasteful is the next step in improving an area which provides me hours of pleasure daily just watching the critters come to feed. My new larger more ornate humming-bird feeder went up on St. Patrick's Day, awaiting the hardy smaller blue species that normally show up right after the last frost moves north into Canada, then they leave following the frost line all the way up into northern Canada where they breed for the summer, raise them and head back down this way just as the fall weather gets chilly again. I will post a picture of one feeding when they show-up right here. They are very territorial and mark a feeder as their own, chasing competitors away, it is a delight to watch and hard to get a good photo except on a fast film setting as their wings beat so fast, set to normal even a god camera just shows a blur. They will be followed by the larger green species as the weather warms up, then (mid-summer hot) red varieties as the seasons warm up, they nested in the mountains of Arizona over the winter to raise their chicks and make the 3K mile trek up north every year mostly living on flower nectar and small flying bugs. Not only are they a delight to look at, but they almost eat their weight daily in mosquitos, they move so fast, just dart in and snatch them out of the air, so they help keep my back-yard a place where swatting skeeters is not a constant bothersome task. What started as a cute displaced by near-by construction distant cousin of the smaller gray and black squirrels, became a pest when these fat slow moving ground squirrels or marmots invaded my feeding area starting in the spring of 2009. First just a few, then groups of 8 to 12, older and their some with their kits were hanging out directly outside my back door and displaced every other form of animal visitors. They soon found ways to climb (not natural climbers, they can use their teeth and front claws to hoist themselves up a 4-foot high two-by-four post) with the use of the ladder and drained a whole container of (expensive) peanuts in one gorging 5-minute session, leaving nothing for any other critter to eat and making my trips out back to refill the container more times per day than my normal once in the morning and once at night. Too much of any good thing sooner or later turns bad and I could see the potential for these ever hungry and ever breeding rodents to caused me to be told to remove the squirrel feeder for good. Their larger tarry black droppings were becoming apparent upon other neighbors patios and they chased off their smaller kin turning themselves into true pests and a nuisance, that only removal of their ability to get at the food would force them to move on. I do not like withholding food but this had the potential to cause my neighbors to complain. Instead of appreciate the status-quo of what normal responsible smaller squirrel feeding nearly always brought them joy to watch or photograph. I will not have an invasion of deep-woods larger ever hungry and very prolific critters ruin what was once basic and tasteful, it did the the job. The marmots split and the smaller squirrels have little use of a ladder as they just leap right on to of the feeder from ground level. Below is a picture I took of one of the culprits:I have seen and photographed 40 bird species total (so far) in my own back yard, if you count the migratory humming birds, falcons, ducks and geese. Bats flit by at night. Eagles and hawks soar in the skies above me. Then there's the playful gray squirrels who populate my wooded back yard all year long and eat a 1/2 pound of unsalted peanuts out of the shell every day. The birds tear-up 50-pound sacks of premium bird seed, consuming around 1-3 pounds a day depending on the seasons and any other takers, like nocturnal skunks, raccoons, deer or even (once) a moose and her calf! I keep a large heated water bowl out there too, which is unplugged during the warm months, and (when plugged-in) remains unfrozen even in our coldest winters. Doubling as both a source of fresh drinking and bathing H2O all year round for them. And I thought maintaining a 100 gallon hexagonal free-standing salt water aquarium was expen$ive in Colorado! When they get too greedy, I cut back the feeding. The beauty of this hobby is if I'm not around, the outside critters will all find other sources of food & water without my help. I have created an aviary and sanctuary which entertains all who see it. My neighbors and the apartment managers love it. I keep my sanctuary well maintained and clean. A hobby that brings me joy and peace that no big-screen plasma T.V. or Enya Celtic ballad could ever deliver. Here's a young baby gray squirrel pup who is a friend of mine and loves those peanuts that he seems to be asking for more of below. Then in the avian department I am into year 4 of a peregrine falcon now all grown to 18" who lives year long in the trees just west of my feeding station. He makes one kill per day, normally the old or sick are the only food this carnivorous raptor can eat, so I just look away as he dives in at speeds of 40 mph and the victim/meal is killed by the impact of the hit long before he is carried up into the trees to be that magnificent birds only meal of the day. He could take more, but nature keeps him culling only what he needs to survive and never takes more than he needs, which BTW would also include a 6" long baby squirrel kit if he/she is not wary, and they are with senses that let them know the falcon is out and hungry. They all go diving for cover and hide in areas he'd never get at them.