The Red Bull in Winter

A group of approximately 50 "Red Bull" soldiers, veterans, friends, and family gathered in central Iowa earlier this month. It was the 34th Infantry Division Association's 64th Annual Reunion. Guest-blogger Ashlee Lolkus wrote about the event here.

The gathering was a mix of those who remember Italy and Africa, and those who remember Iraq and Afghanistan. Nationally, the organization numbers around 1,000 members. Like other groups of similar vintage, the 34th Infantry Division association faces a dwindling membership and flagging sense of purpose. Young people don't join clubs and go to dances like they used to. They don't join bowling leagues or Legion halls. And, face it, nobody in this life is getting any younger.

In 1951, in his retirement remarks to the U.S. Congress, U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur famously invoked the lyrics to a song sung often in the barracks: "Old soldiers never die. They just fade away."

So, apparently, do their organizations.

According to an Aug. 25, 2011 St. Louis Dispatch article regarding the 84th Division Association, "more of the men who made up the Greatest Generation are calling it quits when it comes to annual get-togethers with their wartime buddies. The 99th Infantry Division, the 40th Engineers, the 517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team and the crew of the aircraft carrier Enterprise are just a few groups that have hosted their final gatherings in recent months."

At a 34th Inf. Div. "final roll call" read during a cocktail-hour memorial service, names of 84 veterans who had died since the last meeting were read. Soberingly, some of those named were relatively young, killed in action during the Iowa National Guard's 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division (2-34th BCT) deployment to Afghanistan.

The names included that of U.S. Army Sgt. Devin A. Snyder, 20, of Cohockton, N.Y. Snyder was active-duty soldier who had been attached to Iowa's 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment (1-133rd Inf.) operating in Laghman Province, Afghanistan. She and three other military police were killed when an Improvised Explosive Device (I.E.D.) denotated outside a Laghman Povince village. The association historian speculated that Snyder was the first female Red Bull soldier to have been killed in action.

Also killed in that June 2011 event were three other members of the 164th Military Police Company, 793rd Military Police Battalion, 3rd Maneuver Enhancement Brigade:

• Sgt. Christopher R. Bell, 21, of Saint Joseph, Mich.

• Sgt. Joshua D. Powell, 28, of Tyler, Texas.

• Spc. Robert L. Voakes, 21, of Hancock, Mich.

Four other Red Bull names hit closer to home:

• Sgt. 1st Class Terryl L. Pasker, 39, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

• Staff Sgt. James A. Justice, 32, of Grimes, Iowa.

• Sgt. Brent M. Maher, 31, of Honey Creek, Iowa.

• Spc. Donald L. Nichols, 21, of Shell Rock, Iowa.

Some of the older 34th Inf. Div. soldiers hope to return the association to its former glories, particularly when it comes to reunion attendance. In an age of fractious social media, geographic dispersion, and declining interest in formal groups, however, maybe that's an old paradigm--an example of "fighting the last war." Merely getting together for an annual round of drinks and war stories won't cut it. There must be ways to honor, preserve, and celebrate Red Bull history--to make it relevant for recently retired veterans, today's soldiers, and tomorrow's recruits.

Rather than continually revisiting the past, the 34th Inf. Div. Assn. could maintain its relevance by changing task and purpose. Here are some quick ideas:

• Conduct oral history or genealogy workshops for soldiers, veterans, and families.

• Coordinate youth- or community-focused history education programs.

• Create a memorial to "Red Bull" units and/or individuals serving in post-WWII conflicts and deployments.

• Underwrite permanent / traveling museum exhibits regarding 34th Inf. Div. history.

• Sponsor Red Bull “living history” reenactors.

The memories of soldiers--young or old--never die. They just fade away.

But only if we let them.

"Attack!"

How to Measure Success(es) in Afghanistan

The Army is big on delivering measurable results. No personal performance review, no unit training activity, no combat exercise or operation can go without some sort of documentable evaluation of what we did, what we meant to do, and how we can do it better next time.

In a "traditional" war--not exactly the right word, but I'll try to define my terms for purposes of this conversation--the metrics of success are pretty straight-forward. You can measure how many bad guys you capture or kill, for example, and how many beans, bullets, and bandages you have left. In a counterinsurgency (the Army abbreviates this "COIN," and pronounces it "coy-en.") or low-intensity conflict (LIC) scenario, the metrics are harder to come by.

Our objectives might be to help establish a stable civil governance capable of delivering people's basic needs such as food and water and security, as well as infrastructural improvements such as roads and electrical power. How do we get there? How do we make sure that we're on the right path? In other words, how do we quantifiably measure progress toward making life "normal" for people?

These are key questions, not only for our political leaders and military commanders, but also for our taxpayers and our foot soldiers. If we can point to concrete ways our presence is (or is not) making a difference, we will not be as prone to emotional ploys for this or that strategery. "Fighting for freedom," however commendable an ideal, is not a quantifiable objective, just as "hope is not a course of action." At the end of my deployment, I'll want to be able to say that I made a difference, even if that difference was small in scale--down to a couple of names and neighborhoods in a country I may never see again.

I want to be able to tell my wife and kids exactly why I left them for a year.

I wasn't able to deliver that after my first deployment. I went to the sandbox--a different sandbox than most of my buddies, but the sandbox--and waited there, in the desert. There was no threat of direct fire, at least at the time that I was there, and only a vague sense of an IED threat. We were more danger to ourselves. We had some laughs. Saw some things. Even did some stupidly risky things, and lived to tell about it.

I want to learn my lesson by keeping my eyes open for the next lesson.

Foreign Policy blogger and Washington Post defense correspondent Tom Ricks recently posted a series briefly describing some metrics proposed by Australian COIN guru David Kilcullen, himself the author most recently of "The Accidental Guerilla." In the series--Ricks tongue-in-cheekily calls it "Kilcullenpalooza"--Kilcullen mentions bullet-point-by-bullet-point those factors by which commanders and soldiers (and We the People) can begin to measure operational successes:

Part 1: What NOT to measure in a COIN campaign.
Part 2: How to measure your effects on the Afghan population.
Part 3: How to take the measure of an Afghan official.
Part 4: How to measure Afghan army and police units.
Part 5: How to measure the enemy.

He'll Tell It to the Mountains

Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Bari, currently deployed with 34th ID to Basra, Iraq, plans to assault multiple mountains upon his return to the United States sometime in the first quarter of calendar year 2010. First, maybe Pikes Peak in Colorado. Then, maybe Mount McKinley in Alaska. Then, maybe Mount Everest in Nepal?

Bari, a medic in the Minnesota National Guard, recently told an Army reporter that he'd gotten the rock-climbing-bug during some Duluth-area climbs in fall 2008. He'd already moved on to parts of the Appalachian Trail before his unit was deployed.
During pre-deployment training at Fort Lewis, Wash., he parlayed a 4-day pass into an assault on nearby Mount Rainier.

"There was some times during the two months we were at Fort Lewis when I thought, 'well, I wonder if I start getting up there - it'll be cold and the oxygen is a little bit less and maybe I have no idea what I'm getting myself into, and I'll hate it - and I'll change my mind,'" he says. "But that didn't happen. I knew that the more I was climbing the more I enjoyed it."

The Minnesota medic is keeping his focus during his OIF deployment. In the relatively flat confines of Contingency Operating Base (COB) Basra, the will-be climber and frequent marathoner (he thinks he's run about 20) is logging about 35-45 miles a week.

"Your leg strength: that's the power that's going to get you up the mountain," he said.