Suzanne Rice

Oct 22 2019

An Adventure in the “Socialist Paradise” – 1990

In 1990, as an exchange officer serving in the State Department, I was involved in arms control negotiations and treaty compliance issues between our country and the Soviet Union. One aspect was the a diplomatic “tit for tat” unspoken rule – whatever we allowed or did – they did.

Under the ABM Treaty we constantly met on compliance issues and a “big” one at the time was the legal placement of Long-Range Phased Array (LPAR) radars. They were by treaty to be on each’s periphery and facing “out.” They complained about our upgraded one at Thule, Greenland as not being on our soil (we said it was “grandfathered” before the treaty and could be upgraded). We complained about theirs at Krasnoyarsk as not being on the periphery and overlooking Siberia (in truth their construction of such massive buildings had to be not on permafrost and its location may have been chosen for that reason.)

Russia Radar Site — Pechora Radar Site, Russia

In the relaxed tensions after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we engaged in “confidence building measures” with our Soviet counterparts. One such was the idea of trips to each other’s LPARs to demonstrate only early warning capabilities. In the Fall of 1990, we engaged in one that I had a part in developing. We took them to Thule and they took us to Pechora above the Arctic circle in Russia. Both radars had essentially the same capability but were quite different in size and construction. Since theirs was clearly “legal” then we got the added admission that ours at Thule was too – reciprocity in action.

LPAR site Greenland — US LPAR, Thule Greenland

We went first and hosted them in Washington for a week of sightseeing, shopping, and meals. Their delegation was populated, as was ours, with intel and military experts and not the standard diplomatic types. That was interesting as most had never traveled to the West before and exposure to our country was quite the shock.

We put them up at the Dulles Hilton and took them to the Tysons Mall for a shopping experience. They thought the mall was a “Potemkin Village.” (A Potemkin Village was a Russian Czarist era phony “show place” created to deceive the viewer.) So, we took them to the Springfield mall the next day to show them the reality of the commercial shopping. The DC area traffic also amazed them – so many privately- owned vehicles of all types. They could not believe the abundance in the stores – or the wide variety of products.

Socialist grocery — American Abundance Evident to the Visitors

We then flew them to the US base at Thule, Greenland with the Danish Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission along to further emphasize the “legality” of the Thule radar although not on “our territory” but on Danish territory.

Soon it was our turn and we went to the Soviet Union for a week of sightseeing and dining in Moscow – followed by a flight to Pechora. It was eye opening as the Soviet economic system was still in place – although the black market thrived.

Our Russian hosts were very accommodating allowing us the same ability to see and even video things at the sites we had given them. So, we saw the socialist paradise at its best. A few anecdotal events were illuminating – and central control of economy exposed. They needed a cost mechanism called “price.”

My first observation was at a dinner at our hotel, a Stalin-era structure. We could not get service or the attention from any waiter, and those who did around us got it very slowly. The waiter got paid whether he served us, or did not serve us, I guess. We loudly complained that we thought that our host (a KGB general) would not be very pleased with our treatment. We were then served immediately.

Our rooms were quite spartan. The toilet paper was soft as a paper bag. We had brought several rolls of our own and these proved to be very well received “tips” for the maids. The floor had an old woman seated in the hall. Our room keys were tied to a very large object and we had to give them to her when we left. I guess so they could be sure when we were out and were free to “inspect” our rooms. Also, there were no shower curtains around the tub and shower. This concerned our female members of the delegation.

Moscow hotel — Ukraina Hotel, Moscow (today)

Going to dinner in Moscow, we noticed the embassy van had the windshield wiper rubber blades removed. Apparently, these were in short supply in the community and would be taken if left on the vehicle. As currency rates were grossly inflated officially (rubles were worthless except “officially”), we had to be very careful of the use of dollars and rubles. So, we also carried Marlboro cigarettes, a very favorite of the many chain-smoking Russians. A few packs were offered to bystanders to watch over our vehicle while we dined in the restaurant.

Our shopping trip was not to GUM (state department store in Red Square) but along the Arbot. A street allowed to trade in basically black market and bartered exchanges. There were many lines along the state shops and stores with many empty shelves. Folks would line up when any shipment came into a state store. For instance, if boots arrived all would be gone in a moment – even if the customer did not need boots or they were not his size. They were material for bartering for what he did need.

One very interesting site was a Pepsi-Cola vending machine. The Soviets had purchased the rights to bottle it as an alternative to the national drink – vodka. But the system had its planning flaws as there was a shortage of paper cups. So, there was a metal dipper chained to the machine as a drinking cup. One dropped in the kopeks and used the dipper to catch the Pepsi and drink from it. There were not many takers for the community ladle.

We spent some time at the old American Embassy. The newly constructed one could not be used for any sensitive business as the Russian and Polish construction crews had managed to make listening devices part of the concrete pour. The new one did have housing, a bowling alley, and recreation areas. During the week, I observed a road repair crew fixing a single pothole in the street we crossed each day. It was probably an hour job, but these guys managed to take four days – no incentive to getting the job done early.

Much of the trip dealt with information gathering on their radar capabilities and answering our questions on their massive structures. Suffice it to say, the separate transmitter and eleven-story receiver buildings housed massive tubes and floors of old 1960s computer racks. They essentially got the same definition on their screens as our smaller arrays and laptops, but at what a cost! They simply did not have cost or efficiency measures to worry about. And all designs were the same, no matter where they were built. I used the restroom on the top 11^th floor at Pechora site and it would not flush. Embarrassed, I reported the problem to my escort. He had a soldier go down and get a bucket of water. Apparently, the local water tower was well below the 11^th floor level – but the state design called for a restroom on each floor!

So, as we contemplate any socialist state these days, we must beware of central planning, and its consequences and inefficiencies. Incentive is lost and the lack of the simple valuable element called “real price” makes for poor allocation of resources.

Oct 22 2019

CAPS – Detecting and Defeating Foreign WMD Threats 1992-2008

In the late 1980s the Cold War seemed to be coming to an end, and my work as a nuclear weapons designer was about to lose a lot of significance. My boss at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory asked me to take an assignment at the Pentagon to be the nuclear weapons advisor to the Secretary of Defense, and I did. It was during those two years at the Pentagon that I realized that Congress was going to end nuclear testing. I knew enough about nuclear weapons that without testing, one does not design and develop a nuclear weapon. When I returned to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, I took over two groups within the Analysis Division and I had to come to grips with the fact that we would no longer be designing nuclear warheads.

One of the missions of my analytical groups was to design a more effective nuclear weapons complex for the country. So, I had a group of experts who knew how to build a nuclear weapon from scratch. I held a meeting with my analysts and said that instead of analyzing how to better build an American nuclear warhead, I wanted to know how to stop a foreign country from creating one. To get things started, I went to see a midlevel bureaucrat in the Department of Energy and got a grant for two hundred thousand dollars to study how North Koreans were trying to build a nuclear weapon. The year was 1993.

We completed the study in six months and briefed the DOE official on what we had done with the grant money, and he was pleased. But I couldn’t expect to keep getting grants from him. So, I put together a briefing and began to show it to officers in the Joint Staff of the Pentagon. During my time at the Pentagon, I had built up a small coterie of friends on the Joint Staff who knew my background, and they spoke to their bosses about the work I had set out to do. I came to the attention of the newly appointed director of a brand-new Office of Counterproliferation headquartered in the National Defense University. He in turn introduced me to a very intelligent chief of staff of the House Armed Services Committee who was very interested in having the Defense Department conduct counterproliferation operations. He liked what I had to show him. The US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had just opened a staff position within its Strategic Planning section to deal with counterproliferation, and Congress sent funding to it with a proviso to use the funding to support my program. It was the start of a program I called the Counterproliferation Analysis and Planning System (CAPS).

Now, having a more or less solid source of funding, I began to put together a team of analysts. I was careful to get some of the best talent I could recruit within the country. I particularly wanted chemical engineers who had extensive experience building production plants. I took my time and over the course of two years I put together an impressive group of engineers who understood process engineering. The group leader was a chemical engineer who had designed ninety-nine chemical plants around the world during his career. I also hired a chemical engineer from Chevron Corporation who had just retired as their chief designer of petrochemical plants. I brought in a biotech engineer who had designed the factory in Bakersfield, California that produced the bacteria sprayed on farm fields through California’s Central Valley; the bacteria is a cousin of the bacteria used to make the biological agent Anthrax. Then, too, I brought in the missile engineer who was the program leader for building the third stage of the Trident Missile system. These and other experts became the core of CAPS.

Once the program was established, I had to get the combatant commands to use it. (The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 established “combatant commands,” in which regions of Earth were segmented by geo-location into military commands. Each of these Headquarters has a particular mission in their own region as they protect and defend U.S. interests. The combatant commanders become experts in those regions and by strengthening defense capabilities and making contacts in their own designated region, they are able to provide intelligence for and response to incidents in that region. For instance, Central Command held responsibility for the Middle East – during the Gulf War, General Schwarzkopf commanded Central Command, which is why he commanded US troops.)

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf with troops

Our baptism of fire, if you will, was during the Kosovo conflict. The way CAPS presented a country that posed a security threat to us was to thoroughly analyze its manufacturing capabilities, and using intelligence information, locate manufacturing sites within the country that could support a national WMD program. Then we presented how dropping ordnance on selected sections of those sites could cause significant collateral damage. Basically, we showed planners how to stop undesired activities without causing unwanted hazards. Air Force units in European Command had targeted and bombed a suspected chemical agent manufacturing plant and had caused liquid mercury to spill into the Danube River. It was an ecological and public relations disaster. Eventually, someone asked the Air Force why they hadn’t used CAPS in their planning, and that’s when the Air Force learned about CAPS. Once they became familiar with the program, the Air Force became a solid promoter of the program.

The commander of STRATCOM, Admiral Richard Mies (USNA ’67), greatly appreciated the work we did. He had a vision of adjusting the mission of his command to address the threat of proliferation, and he made CAPS an essential part of his new mission. To make better sense of his vision, he invited me to join him to Tampa to visit the commander of the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), General Charles Holland (USAFA ’68), and to brief the staff of SOCOM about CAPS. I remember standing before the two commanders and the senior staff of SOCOM, there must have been fifteen stars pinned to collars sitting around a conference table and showing them what we could do in counterproliferation. My briefing worked, and eventually SOCOM took over sponsorship of the program.

Especially in the beginning of the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan, CAPS was used extensively. We were asked not only to analyze and locate possible WMD program sites, but to also locate manufacturing sites in the war theater that could cause an environmental threat to troops in their vicinities. For instance, many small cities had fertilizer plants that possessed large storage tanks of ammonia, a highly dangerous chemical to breathe. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, we identified over four hundred sites that posed dangers to advancing Army units.

I led the CAPS program for seventeen years before moving on with my career at the Laboratory, and I am proud of what the program accomplished. At least on two occasions, data from CAPS was given to a US President to guide him with making decisions about combat operations. The program was cited by the Secretary of Defense as being the department’s premier counterproliferation planning tool.

Sep 24 2019

Stranger Things – 1990

We have all had those moments: a bump in the night and a search of the house reveals nothing; you look out a window as you travel and you have a revelation——I have seen this place before, only you hadn’t—the deja-vu thing. A crossover, a message—or not. make of this story what you will.

It was early April 1990. Carlisle, PA—in the last months of the Army War College. Our routine started with early rising: Dick off to class, Sallie off to work, Nate to school. We have always been info junkies. 1990 was before the ubiquitous IPad, IPhone, PC so we got our daily infusion of news the old-fashioned way: TV for quick headlines but the newspaper for in depth details. As soon as we were up and moving, we headed to the front door for the daily paper.

We lived in a brownstone in downtown Carlisle, a property owned by a retired general who leased it to students at the War College. Time of occupancy was less than a year, changing every August. There was no paper box, common to the suburbs.

The delivery of the paper came in the form of a folded up, rubber banded, sometimes plastic bagged paper “missile” pitched at the front door. We could find the paper anywhere left or right of the front stoop or tumbled on the sidewalk—however it landed in the vicinity after being pitched out a car window.

That morning, we opened the front door to find the paper on the stoop, placed flat and perfectly on the mat at the front door. It was in the most immaculate condition of a paper we had ever seen as if the English butler had gently pressed it with a warm iron to present it flawless to the lord of the manor. We were taken aback: we paused and stared and then gently lifted it (with some reverence I might add; it was that impressive).

Now, I know newspapers (this is Sallie speaking). My family had paper routes for years. Not your “Leave It to Beaver” bicycle through the neighborhood type either. We had routes of over 400 deliveries in various areas. Papers never got to the carrier in any condition even remotely resembling this one. Once off the presses, the papers were bound in certain quantities, thrown from a delivery truck on certain designated street corners (this was called “spotting “) and left for the carrier to complete the final leg. The carrier then “clips” the metal bands around the papers, the papers spill out and the inserting of ads, etc. begins and the papers are restacked in the car for delivery. Before the papers even make it to this point, they universally have small tears, wrinkles, fluting, and maybe a few smudges from so much handling. I have NEVER seen a paper in this condition, even straight off the presses.

Ok, so the paper’s condition was astonishing. In fact, in the annals of “paper deliveries” (if there were such a thing), it would have been a legend.

Newspaper at the front door, folded – not quite as flawlessly

But its condition is not what took our breath away. After marveling over its presentation, we finally looked at the headlines. Our first reaction was, “What! How could this have happened again—in the same place, same result——- “. You see, the headline and picture and most of the front page read, “Devastating Plane Crash at Sioux City Airport”. Terrible news—-only this crash had occurred the previous year 1989. We looked closer. The date on this pristine newspaper was July 20, 1989—-the day after the actual crash on the 19th. But this was April 1990. The newspaper was almost 9 months old.

Remember school paper sales? Every few months, we would bring our old papers to the school to be weighed and recycled. The schools would get a few bucks. The papers all looked “their age”. No newspaper lasted more than a week without yellowing and wrinkling, especially in a humid climate. Where had this paper come from? Who had kept this paper in this condition and how? Why had they kept it? Why bring it to this house? Why now? It wasn’t even the anniversary or in recognition of some special memorial of the event. The occupants of the house during the crash had been the Argentine exchange student and family-no one remotely connected to a summer flight to Iowa.

We checked the front door again, looked up and down the street, saw no perfect papers on any other stoop. Just as we started back in, we found the “real” paper in the gutter to the left of the door, rolled, banded and in a plastic bag. By then, we were running late for our daily obligations. We put the mystery paper on the piano and life moved on. Soon we would be off to our next assignment. We kept the paper for some time and, yes, it did start to yellow and curl. Finally, we could find no good reason to keep it and it was discarded. But the “happening” never left us and we have often talked about it. When we play question games, it is always the event that comes to mind for, “What is the strangest thing that has ever happened to you?”

We never knew the significance of this “traveled through time” paper——-until now. Maybe. What do you think?

After we retired finally, we came back to the state where we were born and grew up. There was a reason for this. In the time just prior to our retirement, we had noticed a recurring theme in our experiences and associations: the importance of validating the people and their sacrifices and choices that had contributed so many positives to us directly and indirectly. We wanted to “Leave Nothing Unsaid” before it was too late to say it. We made a list of those we needed to acknowledge. This exercise in itself was a life review and made us humbled by our many blessings in the form of people who lived above the common level of life. We especially wanted to go beyond the “Thank you for your service” to our fellow “patriots”. Our country is one of the most incredible blessings anyone can imagine. Those who sacrifice to defend it are the greatest heroes. They deserve the deepest admiration.

So, maybe you call it “karma”, “what goes around comes around”, but in recent days, we have had similar feedback—-assurances that some of our choices and sacrifices mattered, even if we were unsure at the time we were living these out. Now, what does all of that musing have to do with a supernatural newspaper 29 years ago? Funny, you should ask! Recently, (July 19th in fact) we opened our newspaper. Yes, we still get one— and lo and behold, the headline article in the business section was about the Sioux City crash that had occurred 30 years earlier. What has that got to do with business? Well, the characteristic of a leader they were highlighting first was incredible reasoning and “cool headedness” under impossible odds. The example was the pilot of the Sioux City plane. Over a 100 people died in that crash but far more survived. Despite the loss of some, the saving of so many was considered a miracle under the circumstances. The pilot’s goal: save lives. Where did he get his “cool”? His time in the marines. Like Sully, his service became not only his salvation, but that of many under his care.

The “maybe” of the newspaper—both of them – MAY BE – you all need to know that the hard and difficult choice you made to serve your country mattered in ways you may not know and may be yet to realize. Could that have been it? Who knows? A Stranger Thing.

Sep 16 2019

Tales from Nick’s FARRP, Part 1: Beer – 1978

The “Tales from Nick’s FARRP” series are a fictionalized version of real events and are dedicated to the memory of friends and classmates from the Class of 1969.

“HEY, NEW GUY!” I felt every eye in the bar focused on me. “Gimme a beer!”

* * * * *

My Uncle Nick used to be a helicopter pilot in the Army. All I know is, he was in Vietnam for a long time when I was growing up. After the war was over, he got too sick to stay in the Army, so he was medically retired from the Army. So he opened a bar in Fayetteville, NC, which he called “Nick’s FAARP” – why I never knew. It’s right next to Fort Bragg, where he had been stationed at the time.

Last month the cancers finally took him. To my complete astonishment he left me his bar! Don’t know why he did, because I really never knew him very much. Maybe he just felt sorry for me, after I flunked out of college in my first year.

By the way, my name is Gil Edwards. Anyhow, I had just arrived in Fayetteville, and only about ten minutes before had walked into Nick’s FAARP, the bar I was now owner of. I had been warmly welcomed to the establishment by Miss Peggy. She was Uncle Nick’s bar manager, now mine, who had been with him since the day he opened the place.

Miss Peggy had written me a letter after his death, telling me that her late husband and one other guy had been Nick’s best friends, ever since they had all finished Army flight school together in the early 1960s. She had lost her husband in Vietnam in 1972, and had been struggling to raise their son as a single mother. So when Uncle Nick offered her the job as bar manager, she had jumped at the opportunity, and was fiercely loyal to him. I had been surprised when I met her, although I guess I shouldn’t have been, to see she had a lovely milk chocolate complexion.

* * * * *

“Gil.” Miss Peggy startled me out of my shock at being called “New Guy.” “I told all of the regulars here at the ‘FAARP’ that you were arriving today. And that short, fat rude bastard who just walked in and yelled at you is Chief Warrant Officer Rod Jordan, your Uncle Nick’s other oldest and best friend.”

I noticed he wasn’t really very short or fat either, but rude certainly fit. I also saw now that there was an amused twinkle in his eye. He sat down between two other guys in Army uniforms who were at the curve of the bar, looked me over, and said, “Well??”

I gulped, and figured I’d better do something, so I reached in the cooler and pulled out a can of the classiest beer brand I knew, Mitchell “Great Life!” Popping the top, I poured it into a frosty mug and set it in front of him.

All of a sudden the whole bar went silent. The look on this Jordan fellow’s face got icier than the mug I had handed him. He stared at me, then at the beer, then me again, growled “FNG!” and stomped out of the place.

I looked helplessly at the guys at the bar, then at Miss Peggy. “What the hell just happened?”

Miss Peggy shook her head sadly at me and said, “Now, you’ve really done it.”

“What?” I asked. “What did I do?”

“Kenny, maybe you’d better tell him,” she said to the younger of the two men at the bar’s curve. “By the way, Gil, this is Captain Kenny Wayne, one of our regulars here at the FAARP.”

The soldier called Kenny looked me in the eye and slowly said, “You gave him Mitchell beer in a can. You don’t ever do that to anyone who served in Vietnam.”

“Why not?” I implored. “What’s wrong with that?”

Captain Kenny patiently began to tell me the story: “It seems that during the height of the Vietnam war, when we had over half a million troops in country, the US government was awarding huge contracts to supply everything the troops needed. Every major American company was getting their ‘fair share’ of the government business. It seems the Mitchell Brewing Co. had a batch of beer that spoiled on them in their process. Instead of dumping it, they decided to can it anyway and send it over to the troops. Guess they figured, what the heck? They’re just a bunch of GIs, so who cares?

“Back in those days canned beverages came in steel cans, not these new aluminum pop-tops we have today. As soon as that Mitchell beer started getting distributed in country, the troops who tasted it began puking their guts out. Very soon the word went out, that stuff is bad, bad, BAD! The units quit issuing that brand of beer to the troops, so it just sat in the PX warehouses, corroding in the steel cans and getting nastier and nastier. Anyone who ever tasted that rotten stuff will never again in his life touch Mitchell beer from a can. And that’s what you just gave to Chief Rod Jordan.”

“Wow,” I said. “I guess I’ll never make that mistake again. Thanks for telling me, at least.”

“The tale of the Mitchell beer doesn’t end there,” said the older guy sitting there beside Kenny.

Miss Peggy introduced me. “Gil, this is Major Williams, another of our regulars.” I just now noticed some kind of gold leaf on his uniform.

“Gil, I’m Tony Williams,” he said, reaching out his hand to me. “We all loved your Uncle Nick like a brother. Kenny,” he continued, “let me tell Gil the rest of the story.”

“Yes, sir, Major Williams, sir!” said Kenny.

“Oh, cut the crap, Kenny. You know we don’t have rank in here.” He turned to me and pointed to Kenny’s collar. “You see those two silver bars? They mean that Captain Wayne here is still a probationary officer in the US Army. He is a company-grade officer, as we field grade officers refer to our juniors. After ten or twelve years of exemplary service, he might be selected for promotion to major, like I was.”

“I’m Gil Edwards,” I said, shaking his hand. “Guess I don’t know a thing about the Army.”

“That’s ok. We don’t mind –” and he turned his head and made a spitting sound, “– civilians. Now, as I was going to say, here is the rest of the story:

“By the time I got over to Vietnam for my second tour at the end of 1971, the American forces had been drawn down so far, there were more Korean troops in country than Americans. I was still a captain then, fresh out of flight school. My first tour had been with Special Forces, and I had been so far back in the boonies we never saw beer of any kind, so I hadn’t heard about the bad Mitchell.

“I had just arrived in Saigon for a few days in-processing before going up-country to my flying assignment. In the PX there I noticed that beer was $2.40 or $3.60 a case, depending on the brand. But they had Mitchell ‘Great Life!’ for only a dollar a case. Sounded like a bargain to me, so I took a buck’s worth of beer back to my temporary hootch. But when – “

“Wait a minute, Tony,” I interrupted. “Hootch?? I thought that means rotgut liquor. What are you talking about?”

Captain Kenny interceded, “Gil, ‘hootch’ is Army slang for living space. It can mean anything from an infantryman’s tent in the mud to the fancy apartments the Air Force guys have, even in a combat zone.”

“As I was saying, thank you very much, Kenny,” resumed Major Tony. “When I punched a can opener, what we called a churchkey, into my first can, I almost vomited.

That’s when I noticed the can was corroded, as were most of the others in the case. I took the case back to the PX and demanded my money back. The cashier showed me the asterisk on the sign, which said, ‘Absolutely no refunds on Mitchell beer.’ I just walked out, leaving the case behind.

“It seems the PX system still had tons of this nasty Mitchell beer in their inventory. With all the American units standing down and going home, the PX was desperately trying to get rid of this stuff. Under government rules they had to clear it off their books. They could write it down and sell it at a discount, or else they had to ship it all back to the US.

“A month later, Mitchell beer was going for a quarter a case, then a dime a case, then a nickel a case, but still no takers!

“Finally, in the spring of 1972, at the giant PX warehouse in Nha Trang, they got a great idea: ‘Let’s let the little people steal it!’ That way, they could write off the beer as stolen and be finished with it. So one evening they moved all their pallets of Mitchell beer just outside the PX warehouse yard by fork-lift. Then they instructed the MPs to stay completely away for the entire night. That should take care of it!”

“So, what happened?” asked Captain Kenny.

Tony Williams continued. “Next morning, when they came in, the little people had been there in the night, sure enough. They had broken down the pallets of Mitchell beer and stacked the cases to build a ramp over the fence. Leaving the Mitchell beer behind, dang if they hadn’t gone over the fence and stolen all the Coke and Pepsi in the whole PX storage yard!”

IN MEMORY OF BILL AND TERRY AND EDDIE AND JERRY

Sep 16 2019

Tales from Nick’s FARRP, Part 2: FARRP – 1978

The “Tales from Nick’s FARRP” series are a fictionalized version of real events and are dedicated to the memory of friends and classmates from the Class of 1969.

“SO, MISS PEGGY, what does FARRP mean, anyway?”

“I was standing behind the bar at my uncle’s cozy watering hole for Army guys in Fayetteville, North Carolina, just outside Fort Bragg, which I had only recently found myself the new owner of. My Uncle Nick, whom I barely knew when I was growing up, opened the bar after he had to leave the Army several years ago because he got really sick after all his tours in Vietnam. Two weeks ago, I found out he had finally died, and to my astonishment he left the establishment, called Nick’s FARRP, to me.

I had just arrived here a couple of days ago, to learn that it was being run most effectively by Miss Peggy, widow of Uncle Nick’s long-time Army buddy Miguel, who died in 1972 when his Cobra gunship was shot down in Vietnam. Because of her deep affection for my Uncle Nick, Miss Peggy has really taken me under her wing. Knowing nothing about the Army, I have to ask lots of questions in order to try to understand what these Army guys are talking about.

“Well, Gil,” Miss Peggy replied [my name is Gil Edwards], “the best person to answer that question is sitting right in front of you.” She nodded to a stout fellow sitting at the bar. “Rod, can you explain the term FARRP to Gil?”

“Sure, New Guy, that’s really a good question,” he began with a twinkle in his eye. He always referred to me as New Guy. “Your Uncle Nick was a master Army aviator, right along with me and Miss Peggy’s husband Miguel, that we all called ‘Mikey.‘ We three all entered the Army in 1961, then went through flight school as Warrant Officer Candidates, and served together from time to time in aviation assignments over the years. We were known as the Three Musketeers.

“Your Uncle Nick came down with cancers while we three were all serving here at Fort Bragg in senior aviation positions. The Army gave him a medical retirement, because he was a few years short of the twenty years’ service it takes to earn a regular Army retirement. Because his cancers were caused by exposure to Agent Orange during his three flying tours in Vietnam, he received full disability health benefits. He decided to open this bar as a watering hole for his aviation buddies, as well as any other guys who wanted to hang around.

“Several years ago, the Army’s battle doctrine evolved to apply maximum use of the aviation lessons learned from Vietnam toward the Soviet threat in Europe. They established stations to refuel and re-arm combat helicopters as far forward toward the battle zone as possible. These stations were designated as Forward Area Refuel/Re-arm Points, or FARRPs for short. When your Uncle Nick opened this bar, he chose that name to represent a refuge where his aviation buddies could relax and recharge themselves from the stresses of duty here. Hence, Nick’s FARRP.”

“I get it,” I replied. “It’s a helicopter pilot’s refreshment place. But all the guys in here aren’t helicopter pilots, are they?”

“Good point, young lad. Sitting next to me here is Captain Kenny Wayne. Kenny, tell this New Guy what your connection to aviation is.”

“Right, Chief,” spoke the fellow in starched Army fatigues. “I have the distinction of having over 65 more aircraft take-offs than landings.”

“That’s crazy,” I replied to Captain Kenny. “How can you take off in an aircraft but not land in it?”

“What Kenny is trying to say, in his clever way,” spoke the man on the other side of Chief Rod, “is that he is a master paratrooper, what we call a Master Blaster. The mathematical difference between his take-offs and landings is the number of successful parachute jumps he has made. And as you have seen in these past few days here, paratroopers are really proud of those silver wings on their chest.”

“Okay,” I said to Major Tony Williams, “I know about the parachutist wings with the wreath on Kenny’s chest. But you have two types of wings on your chest. What are they, anyway?”

“Sure,” replied Tony. “My upper wings that go out long and narrow are aviator wings.

You see mine are plain, but the aviator wings Chief Rod wears have a star surrounded by a wreath on top. That’s because he is a master aviator who has been flying for 16 years, since 1962. Below my flight wings are my parachutist wings, with a star on top which means I am a senior parachutist. But you see the big insignia on top of Captain Kenny’s jump wings? That long rifle with a wreath wrapped around it is the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, known as a CIB. That means he served in combat in an infantry role. That is the most highly esteemed award you see around this bar.”

“But, Kenny,” I replied, “I thought you are an engineer. How did you get your CIB?”

“Well, Gil, it might interest you to know that all Army engineers have the secondary mission to fight as infantry. However, I did not get this CIB as an engineer. Originally, I was commissioned as an Armor lieutenant, and served my first two years in armored cavalry. In Vietnam I served in the armored cavalry unit in the 173^rd Airborne Brigade, E Troop of the 17^th Cavalry. Armored cavalry units, even at the platoon level commanded by a lieutenant, always contain an infantry section, along with their scout sections, tank sections and mortar sections.

“We were organic to an infantry brigade and we had infantry troops in our command, and we operated primarily with modified infantry armored personnel carriers. The brigade headquarters assigned all the officers in E Troop the secondary specialty code of mechanized infantry and awarded us the CIB after we had served a few months in combat.”

“So, Tony,” I asked, “you wear a CIB too, over your aviator wings. I thought you told me you are in Military Intelligence. So how did you get that?”

“Well, Gil, when I graduated from Texas A&M in 1965, I was commissioned an infantry lieutenant and assigned to a mechanized infantry battalion in the Panama Canal Zone, the 4^th battalion of the 20^th Infantry (Mechanized). It was pretty neat in the Canal Zone, because the Army element of the Southern Command, the 193^rd Infantry Brigade, contained our mechanized infantry battalion, plus a straight leg infantry battalion and an airborne infantry battalion. On top of that, the 8^th Special Forces Battalion in the Canal Zone operated a jump school plus the Jungle Operations Course, known as Jungle Warfare School. I spent almost two years down there, and went through both schools, earning my jump wings and ‘the coveted Jungle Expert tab.’

“It was while hanging around those Special Forces guys, the Green Berets we called ‘snake eaters, ‘that I decided SF was what I wanted to do. I completed the Special Forces Officer Qualification Course here at Fort Bragg in 1967 and served two years in 5^th SF Group in Vietnam. They awarded me my CIB.”

I was puzzled. “But why did you tell me you are Military Intelligence?”

“Gil, in Special Forces everyone on a twelve-man A-team has specialties, besides their language qualifications, such as medical, explosives and engineering, weapons and communications. As the senior officer on the team, my specialties were operations and intelligence. After Vietnam, while still an infantry officer, I served in several intelligence roles in various places. When the Army created Military Intelligence, or MI, as a new officer branch toward the end of the Vietnam war, it became a magnet for duds and turds who weren’t competitive in their own branch to get a fresh start. MI branch had a bad name, so I avoided it like the plague.

“After I made Major and completed Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in 1976, the Army sent me on an exchange assignment to the Mexican National War College. I could never have performed that assignment if I had been in MI, because the Mexicans would have regarded me as a spy and never let me in country. But once I completed that assignment and became a fully qualified Foreign Area Officer for Latin America, MI branch finally won me over.”

“But why do you have aviator wings too?” I had to ask Tony.

“Well, Gil, in 1971 I applied to go to flight school before returning to Vietnam for my second combat tour. So, I flew Huey helicopters in Vietnam from January 1972 to January 1973. My last day in country was the day the North Vietnamese finally agreed to sit down at the peace table, so I have always told people that I am the guy who won the war.”

“Wow! So, you’re the guy! But I am really puzzled. ‘A lot of you guys are helicopter pilots, but you keep saying the word ‘aviator. What is the difference between a pilot and an aviator?”

“All right, New Guy! That’s the best question you have ever asked,” replied Chief Rod. “The Air Force has pilots. All those guys do is operate aerial machinery. An Air Force pilot colonel does exactly the same thing that an Air Force lieutenant does – fly an airplane. The only difference is that the colonel is at the front of the formation and the lieutenant is flying the last bird. The Air Force does their own thing pretty much, sometimes supporting the Army with airlift or close air support. But they never know the people they are supporting.

“In the Army, aviation is integrated with the ground forces. Major troop units all have their own organic aviation assets, guys they eat and sleep with and know face to face. A pilot is a machine operator, but an aviator is a pilot who is primarily focused on the troops he is integrated with. In fact, for commissioned officers like Tony here, who we Warrant Officers like to refer to as RLOs, meaning real live officers, being aviation rated is considered an additional skill. Tony started out as a combat arms officer, was still a combat arms officer when he was flying in Vietnam supporting combat troops, and remains primarily a combat arms officer, if you want to consider MI a combat branch. That is the difference between a pilot and an aviator.”

“Yes, Gil,” concluded Miss Peggy. “We have a lot of aviators here at the FARRP, but we hardly ever see a pilot.”