Sean Murphy's Home Page

Last Updated: 24 June 2009

On 27 May 2009 I met with the apartment manageress, I signed a new 1-year lease that will run from 1 July 2009 thru 30 June 2010, so the indecisions that have bothered me about staying or leaving to try to find a better place to rent in the area I currently live in and consider it a logical mid point to all the people I interact with, the places I go to, and the things I must do to live a life where for most of the year I do everything by myself to keep my life as normal as possible and me one of their better tenants, or so my records claim I seem to be. I have now one less dilemma to worry about and a great sense of relief that it brought me making that decision, and Kathy you did help me make that move even though during your recent Easter trip you may have thought you were of no help. Your feedback on the many places we looked at together helped me in ways no other could. And Donna you were right there giving me the same help too. I thank you both. I could (but won't) go into the many reasons I know I am better off here than I am packing this whole place (my load/furnishings and trappings has indeed grown in size and weight over the years) up and starting afresh with a whole new set of folks, places, managers, neighbors/pets, facility upkeep or lack of, and familiar locations to get to know and abide by or tolerate! That is the most important task I have taken care of within the last week and come 1 July I start another year here (as one of their longest continuously present tenants in the entire complex), with rules and regulations I can abide by or I would have negotiated any impasses into a middle ground during the 1-hour we went over all the articles of a lease that looks very much like the ones I signed every few years that put me in here in July 2001. My how many familiar faces are no longer part of this community, good folks I miss at times always ready to lend a hand or help each other out. When too many tenants move in and out too fast (Motel mentality) it is rare to build those bonds of trust and friendship, here 6-months then gone, only to be replaced by a new set of faces, and hope they work out O.K. for all.

A few months ago I celebrated my 52nd birthday, 3 days prior was my 10th year of total sobriety, which gives me one chronological mile-stone that aging brings every year to those who make it that far, and a decade of self imposed sobriety which changed my life and brought an end to an addiction I had since my teens, and would have consumed/killed me had I not stopped. My most precious gift came from my lover Kathy, as did 90% the real snail mail cards I received, from dear friends in England this year, how so very special and unique...she had a star named after me in the constellation of Pisces, my birth sign. It is a small star but it is now registered in the libraries of all Messier (the universal catalog of any & all celestial object in space used by every astronomer on earth) objects forever to bear my name, now that's immortality! The magnitude of the star may need a good set of binos to see well but the significance of her selfless and caring profound actions mark me forever in the stars that shine every night and will for all time be known as 'Maurice Sean Murphy's star' in the constellation of the fishes. My God woman no one has ever endowed me with such a huge and eternal marker in my life, nor do I ever think that anyone could have given me more. Even a granite/marble grave marker lasts only so long! I will take good care of my star when/if I get there, which may take some time, but if I have myself cryo-frozen soon, who knows, in a few hundred years (or so) when space-travel can reach it I may get thawed out to go see it up close and plant my feet on a nice 'M' class planet which may be circling it as I type out these words. WOW! You go Kathy! In just over a month I will see her again for two wonderful weeks of life, living and loving together again that makes me complete and brings a sense of joy into my life that I can only fully enjoy in her company. Kathy is again dealing with a death in her life, a person taken before his time who she knew for many years. 3 years in a row 'the reaper' has visited those around or in her life, but if there is anything positive to be said of this one tragic loss, it deals with someone who did not show her the unconditional love her parents always did when his time ran out. I hope she deals with this using the coping skills she picked-up laying both her parents to rest. My condolences again go out to you and those who will mourn with you.

I miss Kathy again but as planned she again flew (the friendly skies) United Airlines all the way in on time with no hassles, spent 10 wonderful days with me and her friends here then flew home; no small feat for a 8,000+ mile (2-day) 'hop' thru Denver to London Heathrow International airport, a route that may be cut if United & their 737's do not start making money on it. Well it is just a short period apart until she returns in July for 3 weeks of fun in the Washington sun, a planned helicopter ride, this time following the Spokane river to where it meets up with the larger Columbia river and at the limit of our flight distance in a smaller helo (fuel enough to get us there and back safely) a fly-over/photo shoot of the Grand Coulee dam. Also in the planning phases is a birthday bash with as many of our mutual [U.S.] friends as possible in a nice restaurant somewhere where we can all dine well and enjoy each other's company, and maybe pick up some gifts to take or mail home too UPS or FedEx! She will already have celebrated her real birth-day in Britain which happens a few weeks prior to her departure to come back here. Two parties with 2 sets of folks who do not even know each other beats one! Right now on the small island of Molokai the elder women in the Ne-Nui clan are hand making, weaving and hand-stitching native cloth and fabrics together, they are making her a mu mu. That is the traditional long loose flowing gown worn by most Hawaiian women, when they are not in jeans, at he beach or out for a good time with friends it is the dress of choice for most Hawaiian women as popular today as it has been for thousands of years. During it's production in the old ways it is often decorated with flower or animal patterns sewn or dyed into the cloth producing the most simple yet elegant and comfortable garment which is a trade mark of Hawaii and been worn by young and old females for eons. It is a long and labor intensive selfless work of caring that will be presented to her during her birthday party here in my home, captured in video and stills it will be sent to those we care about, and travel back with her to Norfolk where she will once again have and wear something so unique that as a one of a kind item it will have nothing even similar to it in the whole of Great Britain. An honor indeed, but their way of further welcoming Kathy into the clan she became a part of when Andrew joined us in October 2008. She will look very elegant, but not over-dressed as mu mus are beautiful but far from gaudy or formal wear one piece works of beauty. In that full length multi-colored swaying in the breezes, comfortably sporting that garment when the days are warm and she is out and about showing off the very best of the culture of Hawaii, she will turn more than a few heads in admiration, and have a story to tell that you don't get these from any local supermarket or even in expensive fashion stores in the ritzy parts of inner London. This seems to be a recurring theme in this long distance love affair/union we both choose to pursue. Easter brought out Christians celebrating the ascension of Jesus, rabbits and chocolate eggs (I don't quite get the connection with that one, but I'm sure it all jives somehow!) and it also brought back into my life Kathy for 10 wonderful days of togetherness and learning more about each other. While here we shopped, drove around and looked at the competition for rental apartments in my area of Spokane, not finding one place that we thought met the basic luxuries we take for granted here in my current digs it was decided that I am better off with devils I know than ones who may be worse, and buying is still an option, but tends to leave me stuck with chores, upgrades and responsibilities plus cost$ I never really enjoyed in the many homes I did buy, then fixed-up, then sold as the Army moved me around every few years back when youth and health made that how I spent most of my few days off-duty without paying for it in pain & exhaustion, that apartment living takes the edge off. We ate out at diners from (basic American grub) Dennys to authentic Mexican food fare and culminated at a sumptuous Chinese restaurant called 'Changs' with our friends in down-town Spokane city center, probably the very best Chinese food I have yet ate/gorged in America to date! It was a very nice afternoon spent with Donna and her son who just celebrated his 18th birthday and it was our way of marking that passage into manhood in an elegant event in a upbeat/classy restaurant with a wonderful oriental atmosphere, plus 5-star food and stellar service. We also entertained here in my apartment with an authentic Polynesian dinner we ate here while watching a DVD of the Merry Monarch hula festival in Hawaii (and other islands in the chain) with the man who joined us as mates for life back in October 2008; Andrew. We call that a Lu-Au with food not found outside the islands, or cooked in ways that make it a real unique banquet. Six months of Spokane winter was a long time to be apart, but Kathy did not miss much with our record breaking snowfall and freezing weather. After a week of autumn togetherness, culminating in a Polynesian joining ritual on the evening of 29 October 2008 we were joined, or as close to a traditional marriage as anyone can get, we were married (if that word can be used to mean we became as one) by my friend, my teacher and a master of the martial and cultural arts of the many peoples who call themselves Hawaiians, Tahitians, Samoans and many more of the smaller islands that dot the Pacific paradise I came to love, in a wonderful ceremony adorned in traditional flowing robes and exchanging handmade in Molokai, Hawaii tokens that symbolize so much that the sight and sounds of it make a church wedding seem like formal and rigid event. Donna and Fatimah my friends here were an integral part of the ceremony and were brides maids for Kathy, both ladies adorned in traditional and beautiful Hawaiian hand made garb. Kathy went home early morning on 31 October, my anniversary of the 32nd year I moved from England to America to begin a new life here, a much younger man, and without my teenage lover Kathy, who I left behind me. In a few more months we will again spend quality time together during her Easter break from teaching school children in Norfolk, England which is her calling in life. Kathy stayed for 3 weeks in the summer, her longest stay in the U.S. ever, and her 3rd in a year, this was her 4th 'hop over the pond' to visit me and it flew by like rose petals blown in the wind, so magic and so very us. Where to begin? Well if there were any lingering doubts in either of us that this union would work out and improve over time, turning into the perfect relationship that we both need, then in late October 2008 Kathy returned for a 6-day hop-over, prior to that 3 weeks got us both plenty spoilt but I could easily turn that into 3 months or 3 decades, our caring for each other grows stronger with every visit. She has began learning how to drive on our side of the road, at her pace, with 40 miles on the clock so far she shows confidence and the promise that by this time next year (maybe) I can toss her the keys and off she safely goes with no worrying about her driving skills. I sat next to her every moment coaching her every move less and less as she mastered the skills of driving on a side of the road opposite to that of Great Britain. She even managed parking and reversing out of my (very tight fit) garage with little problems at a whooping 1 mph and no body-work needed or collapsed garage frames, luck, skill or Divine Intervention not with-standing! I'd say her driving stills are coming along nicely. The helicopter flight on 9 August was the best adventure we did of the summer, taking off at 10am from Spokane's 1st airport, now a private small air-field, a much smaller 1-tower set of landing strips, Donna (my friend in town who I have known since 1980) was up front, slight inconvenience was the removal of the door on her side which made for a very windy ride up front, maybe a tad scary too, even safely buckled in with seat belts, it was her first flight ever in a rotary wing aircraft or helicopter. In the back 2 seats were me and Kathy in a Raven R-44 helicopter.

The Raven-44 Helicopter

We took a 1.5 hour trip east over Post Falls, Coeur 'd Alene (Pro: Core de lane), a long leisurely loop-de-loop around massive Mount Spokane, we flew deeper into N. Idaho, and we could see the Rockies in N. Montana off to the east. A beautiful day in the 70's when we took off and the 80's when we landed and had lunch with the pilot, a young guy who knew his skills as well as any military pilot I've flown with. In fact this was a 1st for me, the 1st time in thousands of hours in almost every military (U.S. or NATO) helo going, it was the 1st time I didn't have a gun (M16 or side-arm) was not on a mission to save lives or deploy to a training area and I was certainly not wearing a Battle Dress Uniform! We followed the Spokane River back passing marinas and dams, boats and tiny homes, that were actually huge mansions but at 1K ft hovering above them, everything kind of shrinks. The magic of being inside a rotary wing aircraft flying at around 120mph is you do get TIME to enjoy stuff that just whizzes by in most fixed-wings from a Jumbo-Jet at 15K feet moving at speeds over 500mph to slower moving, ground hugging crop dusters still moving around 200mph. I wish to thank those who know me and come here for updates on my life. Thanks from both me and Kathy for giving me very little e-mail to reply to during the 3 weeks Kathy was my guest. She managed to make friends wherever we went, and we seemed to go out to do something different almost every day, even on the few we had some snow flurries on. On Friday 15 August Donna took Kathy out and I stayed home, they had a good time and ate in one of our best restaurants (The Steam-Pipe) with a distinctive art-deco/Victorian theme. Kathy met and interacted with new and genuine friends who could see the person in her they liked, not just the pretty visage and trim sun-tanned woman who turned plenty of heads and is a very beautiful woman, but more importantly the spark of vitality and inquisitive charisma that is a magnet for folks (both male and female) looking for friends without attitudes, prejudices or snobby ways. None of those come close to the genuine warmth and caring person they found alive and well inside the woman I love without reservations of any kind. It was a vacation where the August heat held off until the last few days reaching 100F and with 2 hours per day swimming or sun-bathing by our private and quiet pool she managed to look like a bronzed beauty. But it was the simple chores like eating when we felt the need to munch not when the clock chimed DINNER! Doing laundry together we got down to a fine art, and shopping was a constant exposure of Kathy to my everyday life of normal chores and the folks I share this town with, most very polite and always willing to chit-chat or lend a hand. That type of freedom with no rigid schedule made for a very kick back do as we pleased type of vacation. Except for a certificate, a ring, a name change and all the trappings we have both decided we are already as married and in love as those who cohabit in perfect relationships and it is better for now to keep us in a ongoing honey-moon (of sorts) which may last a decade or 2 before we need the trinkets and ceremonies to do what? Make us love each other more? We manage that all by ourselves with every trip Kathy makes to spend time with me here in her 2nd home, which is NOT a "Me casa su casa" deal, I put her on my lease so she is a legal resident of this apartment complex just as I am with one slight difference, I pay for the upkeep of our home whether Kathy is living here or back in England, which I think is only fair having her own very nice home ready for any visit I may choose to make there, I seriously doubt I would get charged rent by the week! Kathy now has all the rights and all the privileges of any other tenant of this place to not be a visitor (14 days then move on) or trespassing if we take an evening walk together or take my mobile radio controlled [rocket firing] hi-powered model hot-rod/tank ATV BUGGY and race it all around the complex, which we did and she shot me with 3 big-ass plastic missiles, yeah we had a lot of fun, didn't have to get all dressed-up even once and blended in a treat with the population of this small city out west in the vastness of Washington state. Most importantly as far as we are both concerned is over a prolonged lo-key plenty of down time vacation, we have learned much more about each other than we ever did in our E-17 London teenage days that seem so long ago but we still act like love-struck teens when we are alone so at least that part of our maturity and respectability is flexible. We have the ability to morph into in a second if the need arises. Kathy can understand and speak albeit strained and alien to her the pidgin English taught to me by my Mother who learnt it from her Mother, my Nan, and probably has been in that clan since Medieval times allowing us to talk freely about anyone or anything in a broken form of English no American or English speaking person would link to anything but gibberish, yet is a very effective way to privately discuss matters without offending anyone or at any time in any place exchange ideas or comments that go unnoticed by all! An hour later finds us locked up inside with the fans cooling us as we romp & play around the place with me playing the Big Bad Wolf and Kathy 'Little Red Riding Hood'. The sensual is not for this home-page but suffice to say like fresh spring wine we have both matured into full bodied enjoyment of each other in all the ways that count to make this relationship complete. My friend Andrew completed a hand engraved story-board (haranga in Tahitian) wooden Polynesian style story of Kathy's life from birth thru present which we shipped FedEx back to her home a few days before she flew back. He completed mine in 2008 and it tells my life story in a factual, unique and beautiful way. That was how the first few days were spent, Kathy would come up with an event or memory, I'd sketch it out on paper and when we had maybe 25 panels done, her life from birth through today was engraved onto native wood from Tahiti. He also made her a wonderful ornate walking stick and a Chinese charmed necklace with a prayer/good luck coin on the end, so unique and so very rare. It was the best vacation of my life with the only person who could make it so utterly complete and feel so right that like a wolf missing his mate I look at this empty place, sigh then I pine for more, but realize I may have to wait out some time before we reach the 1/2 a year in America and 1/2 in Norfolk, England which is Kathy's other home proper. The very best of both worlds my friends is all I can sum this part up with until we get to make more adventures and quiet/intimate moments for each other again soon. That leads me to this next section quite well!

ANNOUNCEMENT!

The very best news I have for the folks who come here to check-up on my life, now I'm not slamming out 10 e-mails a week to 4 or 5 folks (sorry) but spending most of my cyber-time sending and receiving audio-video YouSendIt files to and getting from my fiancé Kathy in England, well on 29 October 2008 I will no longer be calling her my fiancé anymore, she will become my wife (wahine male hou) and I her husband (kane male). At 6pm on that Wednesday evening we will be joined as man and wife by our Tahitian friend who has the blessing of a high-ranking Kahuna, (a high level priest of the Polynesian faith, spirituality and culture who resides in Bora Bora, Tahiti) to join us in an ancient, traditional and very real ceremony of exchanging Tahitian vows of love and marriage. Dress will be traditional, a robe of sorts that is being crafted for us by his students, a lei (necklace of Tahitian flowers) for each of us, and each of the 4 other very special people in our lives here who will be coming to bare witness, see a sight seldom seen except in movies or for real in the islands that make up Micronesia, and of course the braided piece of fiber we will tie together signifying the bond we will make, 'tying the knot' for real takes on a very real part of this formal ceremony, repeating the words in his native tongue, which for all purposes that have nothing to do with a justice of the peace, a priest of any faith who claims their God is the only way to a happy life, and the dogma of converting to anything but a practical approach to taking our love one step further, by making it official only in each other's hearts, souls and minds, and should we ever visit Tahiti we would of course be called husband and wife and expected to cohabit in our home there... if we ever decide that is where our paths lead, or more likely me staying right here and Kathy (no name change to Murphy as a surname) will return to England and visit with me here whenever she feels like cohabiting with her husband, or me taking a trip to her home where we would be just common-law wed folks, same deal here too, so no official rigid anything to complicate what already works well. The mark of that event will live on in the memories of those we invite and the many photos/video that it is sure to produce. Our 'wedding certificate' is the flower leis we wore that night kept pressed and preserved for our lives. Not the type of 'normal wedding' and a slip of paper that in the U.S. or U.K. would make us legally married and will not be part of this very private and very special event in our paths through life. Yes it is different, rare and very unique, but then again so is the long-distance love and life we both choose to live apart and at times... together. There will be Polynesian music, dancing for anyone who feels like a little hula practice, it will be catered so our guests will eat well and by 9pm we will bid the last of them a good night MAHALO NUI! The man who will marry us will be wearing his traditional skins, tokens of nobility and adornments of the chieftain and master of both artistic and martial arts he teaches both in the islands and here in Spokane where he teaches these skills to many students who call him Sensei, or Master, which he is in any Dojo/school here, or when he returns home to be amongst his clan which is amongst the more noble, ancient and respected ones of the islands the French do not control and a place where the trappings and luxuries of westernized living are not what drives their in tune with nature lives. A noble and honorable clan with much love and wisdom that is passed down through each generation in songs and dances and stories, a much more laid-back and genuine race of people it has ever been my honor to live around for the 7 years of my life I lived on Oahu, in Hawaii and fell in love with the real Polynesians, not Waikiki Beach and Don-Ho, which is not Hawaii, that's what the tourists who flock there pay big bucks to see and miss the whole idea that to meet and get to know real Hawaiians you have to get off Oahu and live around them on the other 5 islands that make up the chain, with the big island with it's volcanos being the only island called Hawaii. A place I once saw a strange white dog, that me and my unit training there could not figure out was doing up in a place where no living creatures thrive, but came out of the mists and looked at us then like it was not held down by the gravity we all are, bounded effortlessly away through the air back into the morning mists. Pele the Goddess of the Hawaiian people sometimes shows herself to humans, either as a beautiful young woman dressed in a way Hawaiian women did hundreds of years ago, sometimes as an old woman in tradition garb, or if an eruption is about to happen, as a white dog. HELLO! Later that day Mauna Loa (the White Mountain) blew it's first huge eruption in late March 1984, it's first in a decade and that still trickles hot lava into the sea, making that the only U.S. state that grows in size every year. When we called in the sighting to figure out what a dog that none of us could even agree on what breed it was but was as large as a small pony was doing in an impact area for live fired weapons, where the only things that are even there are rocks and sand with not a blade of grass growing nor a drop of water for miles. We expected a dog-catcher, but the mayor of Hilo called a Kahuna and she was sent up from Hilo up the roughest road in the whole state, 'Saddle Road', to investigate a documented sighting of what she and I now believe my unit saw that morning, was the only deity I call upon in prayer. Yeah, I am a strange one all right, but seeing is hard to dismiss what over 120 of us G.I.'s did that morning. Hard to explain but imagine seeing Jesus or Buddha on your way to work! An epiphany indeed! Some of our troops became euphoric and disoriented just by the sheer power that we all felt emanating from this apparition, a few passed out and our only Hawaiian troop lost it and lay prostrate on the ground praying in pure Hawaiian words, refusing all orders to budge, he was yelling at us to show respect, it was pretty wild that morning to do much but show awe. My epiphany of conversion from an agnostic to what they call non-Hawaiians who embraces their beliefs, a kama'aina, or one of them who by choice and their acceptance of me as not a 'haole' pro: how-lee (a non-Hawaiian, non-affectionate term/outsider of any race, mostly Anglo) is now aaina or one with them and one with the land of the Polynesian people. So for me this ceremony has a deeply profound meaning, but I do not plan on trying to convert anyone, including Kathy into believing that all a unit of 120 infantrymen and their senior medic (me) saw that morning was anything more than a huge white dog moving like no other could and living in an area where there isn't even vegetation, water or a home/farm for 20 miles in any direction! That's my story and helps give a reason to why I chose this atypical way to marry, or more accurately, to join with the woman I love, in a way she has no problems with, because for her it just fulfills a promise I made to her at the age of 19 in the slums of London's east-end, that I wanted to marry her and she wanted to marry me. Over the past year or so that union is still one she desires as much as I do, and as much as anyone who knows us and sees us together thinks we are made for each other, it just is so obvious in all we say or do that others are delighted to see me so lit-up and happy when Kathy graces my humble home, now her's too! So here we are some few years later making that promise come true in a way neither of us ever dreamed it would in the here and now. I will send out pictures of this changing point in our lives to all I stay in contact with. Mahalo and Aloha! (Thanks and greetings). Aloha Aku No, Aloha Mai No ~ I give my love to you, you give your love to me. And to back-track, this is how we came to find each other after 3-decades of nothing but memories of the other but no contact or even knowledge of the other alive or dead. In late October 2007 after four years of long distance phone calls and daily cyber contact, planning since January 2007 which was beset with delays and changes, I was reunited with the first love of my life, a still very foxy British lady who stole my heart at age 15 when the East-End of London was our humble home and start in life, and 1979 the last time we saw each other. She came back into my middle-aged life and within a few years became the main focus of that life I lead. Kathy, I guess we were destined to fall deeply and completely in love again and never knew or planned it even when we both rediscovered each other thru a mutual friend in November 2003: Mike I owe you M8! I introduced you to the gal you went on to marry and 3-decades plus later still are with a fine family and two late teen-age sons to show for that union, when you told me about Kathy in an e-mail late in 2003 little did you know what door you had opened and where it would lead to in October 2008! In those wonderful golden and brown sunny days of October 2007 Kathy gave new meaning to my life and changed its direction. I have never been so happy nor felt so comforted by your company, your warmth, your unconditional love and your natural charm. Kathy I love and miss you as I update this page months after our last embrace as I watched you walk away through the airport gates to return home from that last trip. October 2007 was a wonder-filled and tender week of getting to rediscover each other again, finding some of us had remained much as when we first met and so much more we had both become. But even six days (after so long apart) was too short but to skim the surface of who we really have become and I think she left knowing more about where I live than who I had become, and vise-versa. That pure joy far exceeding the sweet taste of a 1971-1979 union we enjoyed in our youths, grew up and apart through the trials and hardships of very different lives, significant others who faded out of our lives and now has come full circle to rekindle a relationship that had me counting days until your return on Easter Sunday 2008. For the 1st time in decades I am deeply in love again with my soul mate and best friend all rolled into one, and it feels totally exhilarating! Stay safe, have fun and be happy until I can hold you in my arms again and be complete with the only woman I desire to share my love, my life and soul with. It was worth the long wait to find you in the full wonderful bloom of womanhood. Kathy my lover, you excite me with every breath or thought of you in ways I have never felt with any other, nor could with anyone but you again. On Easter Sunday 2008 Kathy revisited my life for a 12-day stay, her second trip out to see me after a LONG 5-month wait. The main purpose of that trip was to catch up on more of the normal chit-chat/living together we did not have time for in only 6 days of October in 2007. Catching up on many parts of our lives (time-line) spent almost 3 decades apart is exactly how the trip played out. No real agendas except to live and love around each other as normal couples do. March went out like a snowy lion and I know Kathy finally saw that snow she: "Loves so much" as half of her stay was freezing nights and almost daily snowfall or rain. That trip also came to a close as I kissed and hugged her again, we waited for an hour at Spokane airport just enjoying those last few magic moments together and talking softly about the more simple pleasures that living together brought us both this time around. I could very easily get used to Kathy as a full time presence in my life without complacency ever becoming a normality. I think we would both enrich each other's lives by that, but those days may be years away, or we may always be in love but never know the continuous love so many other couples take for granted.

A word of caution to anyone trying to reach me via e-mail. My private e-mail account has changed to a Google-based one and it has been a change for the better where e-mails are making it to and from me with few of the total blocks and drops Sisna.com was notorious for with a policy of arbitrarily blocking-out entire legitimate domains like (British) ntlworld.com, and it then added G.B.'s largest Internet Service Provider btinternet.com to it's (very flaky) swallow & destroy ALL inbound e-traffic to it's nefarious list of blacked-out ISP's, with the very LAME excuse that: "Too much Spam is coming from them!" Even South Africa seems to be on their hit list. The ONLY reason I even stay with such a shitty company is the competition is more expensive and even worse in many areas. The change so far to the new e-mail system has allowed many previously blocked legitimate ISP's to send e-mails to my new Gmail account so if you were having problems before, give it a try and see if it comes thru, if it still blocks you, then Yahoo will let you thru, that e-mail address is listed near the end of this page and is one I've had as back-up for 10+ years. Please do not assume that just because you sent me an e-mail I even got it, or know you did, it would be wise (unless you know I receive all your e-mails to my new private Gmail e-mail address and you get all mine with no drops) to make that e-mail one that generates a 'Return Read Receipt' if you use Outlook Express to send me e-mails. Most of my e-mailing friends is by using YouSendIt audio-visual files at 1MB per 1-minute of a face and words moving in real time on your monitor. This beats black text on a white back-ground e-mails with a few JPG's attached once in a while, it is so much faster and much more personal than texting anything to anyone but businesses who still require that type of input from me. Sorry, but I do not have all the dead time I used to have to type out pages of text and become a prisoner to these computers I have, not when I can say a lot in 20 mins and even on a 56K modem that 20MB/20-minute long audio-visual file downloads in 5-10 mins tops and covers more than 20 pages of text, some pictures thrown in and 4 hours of work it takes me to do the same on a key-board. Sitting upright for that long does painful damage for my (Scoliosis) back problems and exceeds my pain threshold. Please give it a try, the link to join up with them is on each YSI A/V file I send out and you could get a free account with them allowing you to send up to 1GB (1,000MB's) or 1,000 minutes or 16 hours of chit-chat a month of your audio-visual files to anyone you choose with very little computer skills required above novice to make it happen, and they don't even have to have anything special on their end to view and hear your sights and sounds. The recipient does not need a cam-corder, home video files software, just Windows Media Player Ver 9 and above, standard with all PC's Windows 98-XP and also compatible with Macs too! If you have a web-cam and a stick-mike, a $50 investment tops, try it before you dismiss it please. You may find it makes staying in contact a lot easier, faster, much more fun/personal/realistic and does not require hours per contact typing out words. That is the topic of the next paragraph. Skip it if you do not plan on entering the audio-visual world of the Internet. Thing is, if you want pages of text e-mails from me, sorry... it will not be forthcoming, gone like hand written letters I sent to friends/family as the only way to stay in contact. Those are now greeting-cards sent for special events or holidays to a few folks I still keep that a tradition with.

I'm using an audio/visual program called 'Debut', an Australian nice bit of power web-camera software from NCH. With a decent web-cam & mike it allows me to send audio/visual e-mails to you or you back to me! It allows me to record quality audio/visual files in most formats, (WMA, WMV, AVI, etc.) for as long as I wish. For file attachments under 10MB's I can attach them to Outlook Express and send them thru my ISP as e-mail attachments. BUT if I go over that limit my ISP gets to be a ROYAL pain in my cyber-ass, and love losing my larger e-mail attachments reminding me that they are not in the File Transfer Protocol [FTP] business. For larger files I use $10 a month professional FTP online service called YouSendIt (Pro) which gives its users 40GB a month of uploading and downloading capabilities without the need to stick to rigid ISP file attachment limits which they host for Pro-users for 14 days or 500 downloads. Amazing that I now send audio/visual (almost) 'real-time' messages to friends around the globe and most can reply in kind if they have the free software, DSL, a web-cam and a mike. This is a tool for DSL or faster than 56K modem users and Windows XP or better users, plus Mac uses too! The data moves too fast for anything slower than normal DSL, or @ least 1MB/sec transfer speeds. This is a BIG step up from the 'View my Web-Cam' found in Yahoo, AIM or MS Instant Messenger programs with much better sound and picture quality & duration. You may get a compressed A/V send/link in your Inbox from me as many others already have and loved the technology that jumps out of your screen & thru your speakers, or even your big-screen T.V. with an S-cable link! A much easier, faster & more personal way for me to stay in contact with owners of P.C.'s or Mac's. I have 'e-known' some folks for years and this is the first chance I have to show them what I look and sound like, vice-versa. Big frigging deal, right! But it is sure good to see & hear my cyber-friends for the 1st time, I welcome Mike L.! Download their free Lite software and activate a free account, then with a decent web-cam and a mike you can be sending any types of files up to a 100MB a day limit which they host for 7 days on their servers or 100 downloads, 1GB a month [still free] up or downloading limit for their (free) Lite software package. Hit send and an e-mail to the recipient that the file is ready for downloading from a URL (e.g. http://YouSendIt.com/download/123456abcde ) arrives in that person's Inbox within seconds, you get a CC copy for your confirmation too. Decent U.S. toll-free phone customer support M-F 7-6 PST, HQ's in California. Get a decent brand USB 2.0 web-cam ($50) & a noise canceling & echo suppression $20-30 plastic stick mike then you too can be making time consuming typed-up e-mails with (maybe) a still picture on it seem way-obsolete. Forget spell-checking! Not limited to web-cams, if you own a cam-corder, then transferring your home made movies into your computer is not that hard and once in your computer sending those files is exactly like using a static web-cam, in 'My Documents' somewhere! Also moving non-A/V data only files is as easy. Just be careful about copywriter rights which YouSendIt Terms of Service prohibit, good way to lose more than your account sending boot-legged copieZ of hot movies from one place to another! No catches, bugs/malware, no nags, ads, pop-ups or anything that normally comes with VoIP voice only pay-for services offer for more than I pay for audio and video combined! YouSendIt.com will soon be opening a string of offices in Europe as its popularity sky-rockets. Follow this link to DEBUT for the free hi-end, e/z to use software designed to capture and mesh audio and video into a standard format like Windows Media Video (WMV or *.wmv files) or other even more high-definition formats (REAL Player) that produce higher quality sound and vision, but make for larger file attachments. It does not require much above novice level cyber-skills to get it up and running, but make sure you have at least 1GB of RAM with a >1MB/sec upload/download DSL connection or file transfer will be slower/not possible. It uses Windows XP or Vista to record & send to your heart's delight. For folks who want to move even more than 2GB a day or 100GB a month, YouSendIt offers pay-for business plans that boggle the mind about how much data they will transfer, securely and with no lost data. One e-mail to services@news.yousendit.com will get you hooked-up. Once you invest you may not want to go back to normal text e-mails!

The section that covered my medical status which used to be here has moved back down this page (1/2 way down) to where it belongs (for now), with healing or critical issues and lengthy medical explanations it does not belong as the first item of news in my life which I consider worthy of head-line news on this huge home page. I get to see the V.A. at least every 2-3 months, and any changes in my medical status is posted in that section. As it stands now I have asked the V.A. to change providers, a 1st in 11-years of being treated well by reliable physicians, a year of my current doctor has led me to understand that even after 25 years in the trade, practicing medicine had not made her proficient it. So on 19 February I fired her! I now have a new V.A. primary care provider, a Physician's Assistant, our first meeting was on 20 March 2008, and my medical care has returned to normal, as I close the book of dealing with my last provider who IMHO treated her patients very much like a disinterested/overworked grocery bagger in a supermarket check-out lane. With more disabled Vets entering an already stressed & overworked/understaffed V.A. I do not see access to care or quality of it improving beyond the current level, maybe even getting harder to obtain as this nation goes into it's 8th year at war since the WTC towers fell. I have cut back on visits to the V.A. allowing that time to be used by those fresh back from war who may need MUCH more help more than I do, so my only reason to hit the V.A. is for times I get sick or scheduled appointments as they roll around, like dental. My way of helping even if it only frees up a few hours a year to those in dire need of heath care.

Well we have a new president elect Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th President of these United States of America, it's first man of color and 1st ex-Muslim now Christian (?), a middle-aged ex-Senator from Illinois. An unknown person not so long ago except to the voters in Illinois, to most Americans, a guy with some strange relatives doing some weird stuff back in Mother Africa, but most presidents did have some skeletons in their closets as they walked up the steps of the White House to take power after being elected. Coming in with a promise of 'Changes ahead for America' but fuzzy unexplained ones so far. Oh how many very bad folks rose to power using those words to charm a disgruntled public as America is now after 8 years of G.W. Bush and entry into 2 wars both stale-mated, plus 9/11 and al-Q & Taliban hatred still awaiting a chance to repeat that attack in a much worse way if allowed to. He has a load of heavy issues to deal with, an economy that has not been so bad since the Great Depression that led the world into World War II, we shall see what he pulls off. I hope it is a palatable dish we end up eating for our voting fervor. With both the Senate and Congress now Democratic party heavy, in majority he should have no problems passing any laws he wishes, I sure hope he votes Veteran friendly as his voting record shows he did in previous years, but sadly he has never walked this earth in the uniform of the military who protects the United States of America, nor ever swore the very solemn oath that all servicemen and women do or did. God help us if this all turns out bad!

The winter we are still going thru right now broke all records for snow and I am sick of seeing piles of the crap frozen into huge mounds that have been around since mid-December, it's cold, slick and gray every single day. If I never see another winter again it will be too soon. Spokane used to have bearable winters, but this one made living here fucking miserable even for the folks who have lived here their entire lives and never wanted to leave.

Right now in Spokane, Washington, U.S.A. this is the current weather:

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Now what follows is only a small portion of my autobiography, my entire life would take up enough space to fill a thick book or a 100GB hard drive, so I have hit only on pivotal episodes which still takes even a speed reader 2-4 hours to read from top to bottom. Some of my story goes to the grave with me c/o non-disclosure forms I signed that limit (for very good reasons) what will never be included in this narrative or any other to even those closest to me while I live. If wading thru this much data is too much time for you to get an idea of who I am, some of what I've done, where I've been and the events that changed my life & that of others, then log off now, U have been warned and I won't get my feelings hurt if you check out, or choose to: 'Save As Web-Page Complete' and go over it @ your speed off-line later. I keep this page updated at least monthly ;-}

My life and story starts in the beginning; 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. 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, now the Patriarch of that line , and aunts Aurdry, an old bitter broken woman with a vile temper (both out of my commo loop indef.) and younger by 10 years Aunt Bernadette still alive today. I remember times when they all were alive and the interactions I had with each one. My Grandfather 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 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 also drifting 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 the youngest, including my Mother were 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. My grandfather 40+ was too old now for recall to duty, but as required of any able bodied male he became a member of the Home-Guard helping out 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 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. He was buried at sea over the wreck of the Titanic by the Captain of the Q.E.II, arranged by my 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. All kids scrap; I just seemed to have to more than others with names like plain old John Smith. Clan Murphy in Gaelic comes from the ancient tribal name Muirchu, meaning sea warrior or pirate, depending on who is telling the story. The English waves of invaders couldn't pronounce the word so they morphed it into Murphy a name of English creation as so many Irish names are today, and the 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 Charles Stewart II'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 the 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 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 70-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, 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. 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 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. This is an ongoing autobiographical account of my life, and it gets heavy later. I weave new events around old when I remember or experience more, so this stays current and at times pedantic for the regulars. A dear friend recently asked me to put all my "new stuff" in one easy to get at place on this page, something I have given much thought to, but as time goes by, more of my past comes back to me, and serves only to expound on my life with events new and dated. To stack only new events up front would confuse any 1st-time visitor and make this site even more disjointed than it already is. Like the Star Wars prequels to the the originals, it has a time-line but to study me is to know me and if I do not rate that much of your time, then find a good fiction book that tells a quick exciting story in 300-pages. If you get tired of long reads then book-mark my site and revisit it when you have 2-4+ hours to kill. Regulars can spot new blogs from constants, so for now my life story grows with each update and this page just grows with it to keep pace. And having a fast Internet connection does NOT make it do anything but load faster!

Surf-on visitor ;-}

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, i.e. M.S. Word. 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! U will lose all the photos, the audio/visual 10 minutes of me talking to you, 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 reading through the 4-hour 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 :-)

The Journey Begins...

Major back-track to my first trip out of England. 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 her 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. 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 46 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.

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, but used a 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. 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 two 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. 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 very badly, but I never killed, even the worse scum-bags who I always thrashed. 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 has 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 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. The first real love of my life was a pretty London girl, my age, called Kathleen G. We met at a dance (early 70's) at my high school, with me just turned 15 and her a few months away from 15. That part of our relationship lasted almost three wonderful years. My best male friend who I 1st met aged 4 years old, day 1 in Saint Patrick's Catholic Elementary school was Mick. We bonded and became like brothers, but meeting and falling in puppy love with Kathy bounced him into 2nd place in my social life 11 years into our friendship. A real rotten break for my best M8, abandoned by a bloke he thought would never ditch him for any cute chick. Kathy's Father ended our relationship after my father's much publicized armed robbery stunt. I do not blame him for making that decision, even though it broke my heart badly at a time I was not yet mature enough to understand the stigma I carried was a badge of shame no father would want his only child associated with. Now in my middle years I know that in his place I would have done the same, with an only child/daughter dating the son of a notorious convicted violent criminal. I was however allowed to visit Kathy after I had returned to Europe (London) as an American soldier on leave. We fell in love/lust again, although my leaves were short days and romances over even faster. I was thinking marriage, but at a time neither of us was really ready for it emotionally or financially. Guess by then I had proven I was not my father. I ran the marriage idea by my commander back in Germany who told me that being a legal alien Green-Carder, not a U.S. citizen, meant I could not marry another "alien" and take her home to America with me, as my Yank friends often did with lucky German fraulines. This meant breaking my word to her and it haunted me for years. I didn't have it in me to reply to her letters & phone calls, which finally stopped arriving. A cowards way out and something I am not proud of, but I did many things in those days that were not moral, as many young fools still do today I guess. Kathy came to visit me in Germany (Christmas '78), staying at my (British CLG Captain) civilian friend's home off-post while he was home for leave in England. The Black Forest is a wonder to behold at any time of year and that's where it ended in those snowy forests. My Mother would have loved me to have married that cutie, reminding me every time I came home on leave and comparing her to the woman I did marry some years later. She was right! After many years of totally unknown anything about each other silence we both made e-mail and phone contact on 2 December 2003 through my old M8 Mick in England. Add the very real fact that Kathy has a home, an adult son, a job, friends and a solid life in England, which I don't, and Britain will always draw her home, chances are very remote that cohabiting for more than a few weeks or months per year in either place is not an attainable goal or in our near future, but is a way we have both chosen to pursue this long-distance love affair. I think fate and time will allow us more time together as we age and keep us looking forward to the next trip for her with a home wherever I am in the U.S. and also where she lives back in Britain a home waiting for me to visit, the best of both worlds! On 12 April 2006 Kathy's father passed away aged 85. His passing was by the grace of God a fast and natural transition form one path onto one we all will follow one day. He was a good husband, father and a hard working honorable man. Ronald, many will miss you on earth, and you made tough choices for those you loved, but they were the right ones as time has proven. Plans were made and paid for a long overdue reunion, a 2-week visit for her to fly into my lowly digs in the summer of 2007 and they started going wrong 3 weeks after I booked the flight, I got sick with an ulcerated ankle and ended up in a V.A. hospital for a week with a long drawn-out recovery. It all just started piling up! Then a more recent and much more serious obstacle arose; her Mum and good health parted ways. The sicker her Mum got, the less Kathy [of course] wanted to leave her side, let alone fly to Spokane worrying about someone who she has loved her entire life and has IMHO had a moral duty and an unconditional mother/daughter love to remain with her, and she did right up until the end. Margaret G. (Kathy's Mum) born 11 June 1926 passed away the day before her 81st birthday and Kathy is IMHO is slowly coming to terms with the very real emotional trauma of burying both parents just as she was learning to cope with her father's passing in 2005. She had to repeat the task which she managed very well with trusted friends and family to help her out, I stayed close to my phone here and helped as much as I could, but it was her courage and her circle of trusted local friends that helped her most.  Margaret lays in rest next to her lifelong husband following a funeral that went off well on Monday, 25 June 2007.  One small consolation, the suffering her beloved Mum endured for a long while is finally over with, which is no substitute for an alive and healthy golden age Mum I know she loved dearly. I salute Kathy's choices and her courage to endure so much in such a short space of time, keep focused, and know this; in a different world than I live in she has innate strength and endurance that I value above all in any wife I'd ever choose, and almost did at an early teenage part of our lives when a significant other would have been a premature move for us both, as time and 2 failed unions bare proof to with us both having ex-spouses. Thankfully Kathy was spared my drinking days and long deployment Army ways, plus being dragged around the world as a G.I. bride alone most of the time with American gals and Yank ways her only support groups, with me deployed and her missing home and parents and friends that did not tie me to G.B., but surely would have ruined her best youthful years, and maybe produced a child of ours who would have been born into a very up & down parental relationship. Meanwhile I hope & pray each day for a real cure to the disease I have which prevents my moral self from endangering the gal I love from afar when we meet and safe contact makes for complete times together is all I need say about my very private life and hers together :-) This may sound strange, but I relish the communications we have nurtured since we rediscovered each other thru by best and constant childhood/teenage buddy Mike L., in December 2003. As normal next-door lovers, not even close, but as a friend I knew growing up and fell madly in love with her are memories of London, E17 that were the very best. After the funeral we planed for the trip anyway giving Kathy the time she needed to settle her Mother's estate and come October those matters were all but completed, allowing Kathy the freedom to come and spend some quality time with her old boy-friend now all settled into a life of modest comfort in a very nice smaller Washington State town/city called Spokane. England is place I will never return to live, except as a (lo-profile) Yank visitor living with my beloved, then returning to my chosen home nation. No permanent EXODUS home as it took 4 years of heavy-duty planning and tremendous sacrifices just to get away from there to a place where me and my Mum had to start afresh. England is Kathy's home and she has no desires to emigrate away from so much she has which took her decades to establish, who knows if that will be the same story 10 years from now, way too many factors/variables to plan that far ahead that could join us for much longer periods or make this relationship unattainable even if we want it to work. The world as we know it changes and with that neither of us is 100% sure that where we live or what we do will not be affected by nations and cultures moving towards a flash-point. However in October 2007 Kathy did get the chance to spend some precious time together here with me, what a week! We quickly discovered that we still have that magic spark that burned so brightly for us both in our youths. Funny thing to say, but I have just as many time-proven genuine friends in a place I left 32 years ago as I have in my daily life here, even with a real biological family tree in several U.S. States they are mostly indifferent strangers to me now. Most of my Christmas cards this year came from England or local friends, only 2 from my age cousins now living in D.C. and in California, which is a comment I hope my California 'family' gets to read here and ponder why they let that happen! I wonder if that's the bane of all who left their homeland lives behind them for hope of a better life in America even if they found it? I did and those few I grew up with loved/befriended and left are still like a magnet to a me, but 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, but may return to stay for a while with the woman I love, in Norfolk, avoiding the slums and hoods of my youth in London.

I returned to in Washington State, U.S.A. on 17 July 2001, and 56 days later.... the world changed as the twin towers fell.

©

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'.

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 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 combat. 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. Something I still get reminded of by certain members of my biological family, who know little about the military and were raised with luxuries (like good clothes and good food) that I never had and took an easy loving life for granted. Not one of them ever served a day in the uniform of their own country; thereby making most of them 'armchair experts' in all aspects of a military life they knew nothing about. 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 Hornfels, 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 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 old friends and 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, 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. 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 whoever 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.

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 close we came, and how few knew.....

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. Brrrr!

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, 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 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? 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/medic 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 in Germany) from start to finish of my 20 years. My first real 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. 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 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.

Married Life.

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 mother-fucker to testify, 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. In the case of my lover's adult son my plans for our interaction do not go beyond friendship and mentoring. In my current relationship there also exists a son of the woman I love, but not of my creation, he is nowhere close to the personalities which evolved in the three step-children I helped to raise for 15 years, but still lacks the maturity to bond with me as a mentor, so for now he is bound to Kathy. I can only hope that with time this young man and me form some type of meaningful relationship, I will not repeat the mistakes I made giving total control to wayward kids to the point of my exclusion from the formative input I must be allowed the latitude to mentor or teach good from bad in any step child who enters my world. It leaves me with a warning for those who try. The term: "You ain't my dad" often 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 3.5 months 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 called me for my 51st birthday and we actually had a very nice 30 minute call, 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 doing a state by state road trip off seeing America and playing a middle-aged hippy, and has recently written some very profound poems she may get published. I wish her happy trails.

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".

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. I had plenty of family in town and California State, most of whom (after my Mother's funeral) avoided me like a leper when I needed their emotional support the most. One ex-convict cousin moved in as my Mother's personal effects were being divided amongst certain members of my family who cleaned shop with the finesse and speed of a pro repo team, and Patrick settled in just adding to my misery with his criminal acts and free-loading moocher ways. That was and still is (by most accounts), a cousin called Pat. None of my business how he comports his life or if he gets off on beating up women, or cops. You are not welcome in my 'hood', so don't even try a surprise visit when (or if) you outstay your welcome in California, a place I have put far behind me. 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. In May 2001 my closest friend in California (Vince Esleeck) a happy drunk even when lit-up, died of a 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 1 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. Now feeling truly alone, I decided that there was nothing left for me in California but bad memories. 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. One reason for the move was to escape the constant hot California climate and sprawling bustle of the area, as well as a disinterested and distant local 'family'. Another attraction was I had already served two years on the Washington coast at Fort Lewis, and liked the place! I had some 'Army days' friends who have lived here for many years. We had stayed in contact (on & off) throughout my military career, into my retirement and at least one who never wore a military uniform is still there for me as a true friend. 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. A moving game I knew all too well from my Army days. 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 195,000) 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, 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 (1,200+ sq. ft., carpeted & tiled, ground-floor/walk-out, 2 bed, 2 bath, walk-in closets, large living room with fireplace and air-conditioner, dining room, both with great views, washer/dryer area, plus a full modern kitchen and loads of storage space) 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 an enclosed garage/work-shop/storage area right up front and a forest full of wildlife out back. 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! I have looked at other apartments in town and have yet to find all of what this place offers me. It is going through changes but I think they will be for the best. 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. 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, something that will change to a pay-for extra bill when my current lease expires in June 2009, no big I'll pay the extra $20-30 a month for something that once was free and any home owner must pay for, plus more like yard upkeep or roofing, the list goes on and on. 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. 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, 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 but that is changing fast, the pros still outweigh the BS, but that factor is sliding towards the dump status by the day. In 2005 I bought (online) over $600 in medical equipment to finally reconstruct the best possible aid bag any first aid responder could dream of owning. I no longer have the right to do the medical procedures I took for granted as an EMT, so the entire 40-pound jump-bag is geared for procedures I am allowed to do from splinting to CPR to wound care. I am now the 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 life or death. This is something I volunteered for and expect no reward other than a "Thanks!", and has made me a real medical asset for my neighbors, which they didn't have before. Hopefully all my aid bag does is gather dust, but I have a feeling it won't be long before my phone rings and I do what I do best, save lives that can be saved. My journey continues and I don't think it is finished yet. Vets are always the silent casualties of any war. No one gave us our freedom. If us Veterans got busted up in the process of maintaining the long peace and waging the short wars while I served, then the U.S. government should (by law) compensate us for the physical and emotional scars it left us with.