Lessons-Learned after a Year of Mil-blogging

I started writing the Red Bull Rising blog on Dec. 20, 2009. Coincidentally, over the course of this rough-and-tumble roller-coaster year of now-you're-deploying-to-Afghanistan-and-now-you're-not (with bonus rounds!), Dec. 20, 2010 turned out to be my mandatory retirement date from the Iowa Army National Guard.

I'm officially a civilian next month, although I'll continue Red Bull Rising as an unofficial historian of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division, as well as the larger division community. (Call it ... "Red Bull Nation?")

We have lots to talk about in 2011.

For now, however, I'd like to share these reflections as I prepare for another productive year of writing and reporting ...

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Your high-school English teacher was right: Write what you know. The trouble is, if you don't end up hiking across Asia, or running with the bulls, or doing something obviously notable and sexy in your life, it can be a trick to figure out what it is, exactly, that you "know."

After 20 years in uniform at least one weekend a month, and working my day job as a newspaper and magazine journalist, I realized what I knew:

• I knew about being a citizen-soldier in the National Guard.
• I knew that it was difficult to translate experiences between military and civilian friends and family.
• I knew how to communicate within, without, and about an organization.

So, 12 months ago, I started this blog.

I started writing the Red Bull Rising blog as an experiment. My military job potentially involved both internal and external blogging, and I wanted to learn not only some of technological tricks and tools--setting up and maintaining a blog, interacting via social media such as Facebook--but also how to gather an audience from the ground up.

(Before I go any further: If you're reading this, thanks for being a member of that audience.)

One of the things I wasn't expecting to learn? How great people can be. Even as a faceless, semi-anonymous blogger, I've "met" any number of people who have offered insight and advice, kept me honest and on my toes, and introduced me to still more people and opportunities. I cannot say this enough: I am honored and humbled.

I'm certainly not an expert in military blogging, or "mil-blogging," but I offer here a few personal lessons-learned, best-practices and rules-of-engagement (R.O.E.):

Write ONLY what you know. Do not speculate above your pay-grade, or outside your right-and-left limits of fire. Avoid chasing, spinning, or regurgitating rumors. Nobody likes a know-it-all.

Write only what you are SUPPOSED to know. Realize that if you're the only one who knows something, there may be plenty of reasons to keep it that way.

Don't over-correct. You may know more than the guy spouting off on Facebook about "Fobbits" and "POGS" (you may even wish to sarcastically educate him on how to spell "pogue" correctly), but you don't need to correct him at every turn. All of us is smarter than one of us, and the social network is self-correcting. Stay in your lane. That said, everybody on the Internet range has the right and responsibility to call "cease fire" on any unsafe act, OPSEC violation, or general dumb-a--ery. Just be careful when you take the safety off.

State the mission. Write a "who, what, where, when, why and how" statement about you're about, then stick to it. At the same time, give yourself some room to explore, grow, revise and revisit your purpose. In Red Bull Rising, I write about "ways to remember, celebrate, and support citizen-soldiers, particularly those of the 2nd Brigade, 34th Infantry division." If a potential topic doesn't fit that description, I force myself to ask whether the blog is really the right place to write about it.

If you wouldn't want it on the front page of the New York Times, don't write it. This useful rule works in a variety of ways: Don't write jokes into official memos, assuming that they'll edited out before distribution. Don't write hateful or slanderous words. Don't write about friends, family, and colleagues without care. Don't write about military details that pertain to dates, plans, strategies, or capabilities.

Take a breath. Do not aspire to be the first draft of military history. If there's big news, wait for perspective and official release of information. You don't need to always hold the official Army line, but you do need to wait for information to be vetted, processed, and released. The Army supports those who tell the Army story honestly and openly--and who demonstrate discretion. Particularly where the physical and emotional lives of other soldiers are involved. 'Nuff said.

Avoid talking about politics or religion. This was a good rule both when I was dating and living in a dormitory, and it seems like a good rule for blogging as well. Many of my friends, both long-standing and on Facebook, are staunch liberals or starched conservatives. I prefer not to take sides. I prefer to think of all of us as "Americans"--or (shout out to Canada and Australia) better yet: "allies." We are ALL on the same team. We are all New Yorkers now.

Be respectful. Whether you choose to talk about logistics and tactics, or about politics and religion, argue the merits of your case and avoid personal attacks. Play nice, and realize that too many problems in this world are caused by tribes who can't agree to get along--or even to talk--for the greater good.

If you begin to think it's about you, you're wrong. There have been many times in my life (and my blog) that I've come off like a know-it-all. (See above.) There's a fine line between self-promotion and self-aggrandizement, and I've probably crossed it too many times to mention. I've seen too many of my creative heroes, however, cross into self-deception and self-destruction. Keep it real. Keep focused on your mission, not on yourself. It's not about you, even if you're writing about your personal experiences.

It's not about you--it's about the troops. And their families.

It's about the Red Bull.

"Attack!"

5 Books to Read About Afghanistan

Don't call this a Gift Guide, or even a "Best Books of Pre-Deployment" review. Reading these titles won't make you an expert on Afghanistan, or What We're Trying to Do There. That said, as a citizen-soldier, I've found each of these helpful in piecing together What We're Doing in Afghanistan.

Best of all, each of these is accessible to non-military audience. In other words, you don't have to be a military historian fluent in Army acronyms to get a lot of bang from these books:

"War" by Sebastian Junger

This book covers much of the same ground as the 2010 documentary "Restrepo," which author Sebastian Junger ("The Perfect Storm") co-produced with Tim Hetherington after continually embedding with a U.S. infantry company in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley in 2007-08. I saw Restrepo first, and even been lucky enough to have seen it a couple of times. The book enriched my understanding not only of how the soldiers of Battle Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team fought the fight, but how they came to the fight in the first place--and where it left them afterward.

• First impression on reading the book: "Wow! That was ... Wow!"
• Second impression: "I can't wait to read that again!"
• Third impression: "I can't wait to see 'Restrepo' again!"

I've decided to start describing Junger's book as one facet of a larger multimedia work, one that needs to be visited and re-visited, turned over and reflected upon. Yes, each of the components--"Restrepo," Junger's "War," and Hetherington's "Infidel" (reviewed below)--is independently worthy of much praise and consideration. They add up to something even greater, however.

For his part, Junger makes writing about war look almost too easy. One can spend hours unpacking his simple prose, as if the sentences were written by Confucian fortune-cookie makers. Here are some personal favorites or mine:

Every time you drove down the road you were engaged in a twisted existential exercise where each moment was the only proof you'd ever have that you hadn't been blown upon the moment before. [p. 142]

Rear-base limbo: an ill blend of apprehension and boredom that is only relieved by going forward where things are even worse. [p. 199]

When I asked the men about their allegiance to one another, they said they would unhesitatingly risk their lives for anyone in the platoon or company, but that the sentiment dropped off pretty quickly after that. By the time you got to the brigade level--three or four thousand men--any sense of common goals or identity was pretty much theoretical. [p. 242]

*****

"Infidel" by Tim Hetherington

Packaged to resemble the type of black Moleskine sketchbook favored by some artists and writers, this collection is a jumble of Hetherington's photographs, words from soldiers and Sebastian Junger, and other mental ephemera.

Hetherington's photographic view extends to a more-artistic, less-journalistic treatment of some of his subjects. Sometimes, rather than a straight-forward newshound's pictorial account of soldierly toil, Hetherington gives the grime and squalor a near-transcendent treatment--combat as still-life. Trust me: After reflecting on these images, you will never look at fly-strips, Army cots, and cheesecake centerfolds the same way.

The book takes its title from one of the tattoos shared by the Battle Company soldiers. (One of the soldiers packed a tattoo gun up to the remote outpost.) Hetherington documents the body art in both photographs and drawings. Each soldier has his own designs, his own scars, and his own brand--variations on a theme.

If "Restrepo" allows us to witness the conditions that Battle Company endured, and "War" illuminates how fighting men are bound together, then "Infidel" allows us to see each of these men again as individuals: flawed, young, and innocent.

As Junger writes in Infidel:

Creeping through the outpost came Tim, camera in hand, grabbing photographs of the soldiers as they slept "You never see them like this," he said to me later. "They always look so tough, but when they're asleep they look like little boys. They look the way their mothers probably remember them." [p. 15]

Having seen the war through Hetherington's eyes, you will not look at your sleeping sons and daughters the same way, either.

*****

"Where Men With Glory" by Jon Krakauer

I'm not sure I would've liked Pat Tillman. That's probably saying more about me than it is him, but more on that in a second. In the mid-1990s, Tillman played college football for Arizona State University, and eventually ended up playing professionally for the Arizona Cardinals. After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, however, he and his brother enlisted in the Army--he gave up millions of dollars to serve his country--and later deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

I tend to be biased against jocks and meatheads, and pictures of Tillman as the square-jawed Army Ranger or the long-haired gridiron gladiator tend to play into my worst high-school instincts.

The problem is, Tillman doesn't fit anybody's stereotype. And he was anything but a meathead.

As he was an everyday free-thinker, iconoclast, and patriot, I probably would've ended up liking Tillman, if I had been given a chance. Unfortunately, too many of us were never given the chance. He was killed in Khost Province, Afghanistan in a friendly fire incident April 22, 2004.

In the United States, political and Army leaders at the highest levels sought to celebrate Tillman as a martyr in the "Global War on Terror," a position at odds not only with the circumstances of his death, but with his increasingly articulated views against the invasion of Iraq.

The events leading up to Tillman's death were largely driven by bad calls made by unthinking leaders who were back in a Tactical Operations Center ("TOC"), rather than out on the ground. Army leaders failed to investigate and accurately report those events. Tillman's death was used for cheap political gain.

Ask any soldier: Accidents can happen--even fatal ones--but cover-ups are made. Cover-ups are more insidious than friendly fire. Cover-ups chip away at trust and honor within an organization. If we don't have trust and honor, what are soldiers left with? And what good is an Army?

*****

"Afghan Journal" by Jeff Courter

I reviewed this book in June, and had the pleasure of working with the author when he guest-blogged for Red Bull Rising in November.

Illinois Army National Guard Sgt. First Class Jeff Courter weathered a 2007 deployment to Afghanistan with plain-spoken good humor, quiet faith, and a passion for trying to put it all together. A former Marine cook and Navy Reservist, he deployed to Afghanistan as as an Army ETT tasked with training Afghan Border Police (A.B.P.). While there, he blogged about his experiences, and later self-published this book. His blog-posts are presented here chronologically, which creates a conversational, easy-to-read pace.

When a National Guard mother or father asks me about what the Afghan mission is like and for, I often start by putting Courter's book in their hands.

*****

"Greetings from Afghanistan: Send More Ammo" by Benjamin Tupper

Reviewing this book was one of the first good things I did shortly after launching the Red Bull Rising blog in December 2009.

New York Army National Guard Capt. Benjamin Tupper had worked in Afghanistan as a civilian in 2004 before deploying as an Embedded Training Team (E.T.T.) member in 2006. An ETT is a small group of U.S. soldiers who train and mentor Afghan police and army counterparts. As such, they're really the less-celebrated core of the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan. You can kick down as many doors and kill as many bad guys as you want, but until the Afghan government can keep its own people safe and secure, it's all just tactical cats-and-mice.

As Tupper writes:

Sending an additional 30,000 soldiers may seem like a rational approach to fighting and defeating the growing Taliban insurgency, but it misses a simple truth. As the Afghans like to say: "You Americans have all the watches, but we Afghans have all the time."

Cooking Up Some Red Bull Love

Sometimes, particularly during the holidays, it's too easy to focus on sending deployed troops stuff they really don't need, and too hard to focus on the daily challenges their families face here at home.

"I don't think you understand," Household-6 says to me one night. "When you were away, I felt like I never had any time. It was always onto the next thing. I'd get dinner made, and then it was time to get the kids ready for bed. I'd get the kids to bed, and then it was time to get the kids clothes ready for the next day ..."

Yeah, I know--"food isn't love." Sometimes, however, it can come in a close second. For a couple of years, off and on, Household-6 has leveraged her love of cooking into her way of helping others. She got the idea a couple of years back, when we were a member a church that had a "Ministry through Meals" committee. If there was a birth, death, or sickness in a family, for example--whenever people didn't have time to take care of themselves because they were focused on bigger, more important things--this group would help out by preparing and delivering meals.

With the deployment of my buddies in the 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division, Household-6 decided to again pick up the spatula. She's cooking one meal a week for one or two other Red Bull families.

The way she sees it, she's not providing food to these families--she's providing time. Time they don't have to worry about grocery shopping. Time they don't have to cook. Time to think. Time they can spend focused on their kids.

It's good food, but not nothing too gourmet. Household-6 works it into her busy schedule by preparing extra servings of whatever is on the Sherpa family menu that day. The menu rotates, but it's usually the same day every week. "It's what I'd want someone to offer to do for me, if you had been deployed," she tells me.

People often struggle to find ways to help National Guard families. They even struggle to find ways to inquire if and how and when to help--nobody wants to be nosy or invasive, after all, particularly at the holidays.

I want to ask you to give into your better impulses. Take a chance, and ask someone if you can help.

Before you tell yourself you have nothing to bring to the proverbial table, however, consider these words from Natalie, a self-described "homefront warrior," Red Bull spouse and occasional blogger, and mother of two small children:

It’s [...] not my nature to ask for help, even when I should, and I suspect that is a quality shared by many of my fellow homefront warriors.

That said, please do something for me--if you know any military families (besides me, obviously) with a deployed service member, please find out how you can help, and then follow through. Just saying, “Call me if you need anything,” doesn’t usually cut it, because that leaves the ball in her (or his) court, and she’s already juggling too many of them in the first place. Find out what needs are there and do something, even something small, to help meet them.

In general, there is too little of this type of service to neighbors in the world right now, and sometimes those who are doing their best to seem together on the outside are the ones that need help the most.

(Be sure to read all of her thoughts on the subject here.)

Sherpa says: Be persistent, be insistent, be consistent. Ask what you can do. Commit to it. And make sure you deliver.

Have fun with it, too!

Consider this wonderfully funny story from Red Bull spouse and blogger Emily, who describes how two friends recently helped prepare her house for the holidays:

At a few minutes after 10 AM, just out of the shower, towel wrapped around my head and in my bathrobe, I came downstairs to check on Asher ... and there is a knock at my door ...

My dear friend Erin was standing on my front porch ... and as I opened the door, it was too late.

I had been ambushed.

Erin & Jodi were standing on my porch. With cleaning buckets and supplies. And boxes of decorations and ornaments. And wine. And Velveeta Magic dip.

SERIOUSLY. Ambushed.

The dog was barking, the kid was running around screaming, and I was not wearing any underwear. WHAT were my friends thinking?

I was certain we were still shopping. "I'm not ready to go shopping! You said 10:30!" I protested.

"We're not shopping. YOU can go shopping. We're putting up your Christmas tree & cleaning your house," they said.

(Read the full story--with pictures--here.)

It doesn't have to be food, but it does have to be love. Done right, it might take only a little effort, and result in a whole lot of fun. Do the Red Bull a favor this holiday season--and throughout the coming new year--and see what you can cook up.

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What are some ways in which you've helped Red Bull families, or had others help you? Share your ideas in the comments section below!