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October 2001
“The Monthly Diamondhead”
October 2001
Editor-Reporter-Chief Cook-Web Slave-
Ron Leonard
304-728-7012 rollayo@earthlink.net
Company Stuff:
This month brought several new people to the fold of long lost 25th Aviation Personnel. The newly found Diamondheads are Jack Mosley, William Connell, George Heneveld, Dennis Allen, John Smith, and Richard Eichler were added. For the Little Bears we have added George Foster, Lon Zimmerman, and Tim Horrell. The contact information for these additions can be found on the proper roster on the web page.
There has been much added to the historical section on the After Action Report page. The complete listing can be found on the “What's New Page”.
It was unfortuneate that I learned this month, that one of our Diamondhead pilots has been accounted for. Mr Kline, a gun ship pilot in 68-69 was killed while flying for “Air America” in Columbia South America. May he rest in peace.
Reunion Stuff: 156 Days and counting down
For the benefit of the new guys I am going to repost the reunion Informational Letter. It will save answering many questions again, and remind the rest of you who have not responded by now. If you are planning on attending, we need to know so enough rooms can be reserved.
There has been a reunion countdown counter added to the front page to keep posted on the time left. The response is increasing weekly. If you are planning on attending please let me know if a Diamondhead. I need to know 1: If you plan on attending even tentatively, 2: How many people, and 3:If staying at the Holiday Inn
To all Little Bear Reunion Attendees;
The Little Bear Association Reunion will be held on April 12, 13, 14, 2002 in beautiful, historic Charleston, SC. The reunion hotel is the Holiday Inn Mt. Pleasant, 250 Johnnie Dodds Blvd, Mt. Pleasant, SC 29464. The Holiday Inn, Mt. Pleasant is conveniently located three miles from the famed Historic District just across the Cooper River from downtown Charleston and near most of the tourist sites and only five miles from the sun and sand of the Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island. They also offer more in-hotel facilities for the value spent. A tour representative will be present at registration so attendees can sign up for tours as desired.
A special room rate of $99.00 plus 11% tax has been negotiated for those attending the reunion. This room rate includes Continental Breakfast, newspaper and late checkout for those who join the "Priority Club". There is no cost to join the Priority Club, just ask about it and signup when you register. This rate will also be available for those of you who may want to stay longer in the Charleston area. Many other hotels are available in and around Charleston, however most are $125 to $350 per night, plus tax. The Holiday Inn, Mt. Pleasant is currently undergoing a complete remodeling and will be almost brand new for us in April 2002. All rooms have been remodeled and the common use areas will be completed by November 2001.
Reunion costs (banquet, hospitality rooms, and gratuities) will be covered by registration fees and Little Bear Association funds. Therefore, all Little Bears attendees are expected to be a member of the Association. If you are not a member, please send your membership dues ($25) to our Treasurer:
Terry Mix
4610-176 Avenue S.E.
Bellevue, WA 98006
Registration for the Little Bear Reunion is as follows:
Little Bears (members and guests) - $45 per person
Other Battalion personnel <Diamondhead, HHC etc>and guests - $55 per person
Each attendee will be responsible for their transportation, lodging and other associated costs.
Holiday Inn-Mt. Pleasant reservations can be made from now until March 2002. However, you should make them early to assure your room is available.
Contact: Susie York, Reservations Manager:
Phone 1-800-290-4004 ext. 122
Tell them you will be attending the Little Bear Reunion. The code for our blocked rooms is "COA".You can view the hotel at http://www.holidayinn-mtpleasant.com
A parade and ceremonies is being held at the Citadel at 3:45 PM on Friday April 12, 2002. Reunion attendees are invited to attend as "Honored Guests”. If you would like to attend the Citadel parade and ceremonies, plan accordingly
Below is a list of Diamondheads thatare planning on attending as of today. This list grows constantly, and we are still finding people weekly, so it will grow much more.
Attendee.............number.............Staying at Holiday Inn
Ron and Carol Leonard-Holiday Inn
Don Cannata-?
Dianne and George Pendleton-?
Danny Driscoll-?
Steve Thorp-?
Bert Rice and wife-Holiday Inn
Ed Schenk-?
Nolan Little and Robyn- Holiday Inn
Ray and Michelle Huntington-?
Bob Seger-Holiday Inn
Art Gravatt-?
Sam Boswell-?
David Stock-?
Charlie Burnett-Wife -Holiday Inn?
Ron White-?-?
George Heneveld- Wife- Holiday Inn
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Attendee.............number.............Staying at Holiday Inn
Neil Weems-?
Gary Tompkins-?
Ed Schenk-?
Ralph Little and Robyn-Holiday Inn
Rob Amiot-?-Holiday Inn
Charlie Edwards-wife-Holiday Inn
Sal Ambrosia-GF-Holiday Inn
Ron Skamanish-Wife-Holiday
Gonzalo Salazar-wife-Holiday Inn
Al Lewis- Holiday
George Smith-Wife-Holiday Inn
Jack Mosely-Wife-?
Troy Thomas and Paula-Holiday Inn
Fred Panhorst-Wife Holiday Inn
William Connell-Wife Holiday Inn
Richard Eichler-?-?
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Veterans Day:
For those of you that will be in the Washington D.C. area, there will be a Reunion of the VHCMA. We will be allowed to use the Hospitality area, and have a meeting room if there is enough interest. If you wish to come for a mini-get together let me know ASAP and I will take care of it. There is a lot to do in D.C. over the Veterans Day Weekend Nov 9,10,11. If you have never been to a reunion, I suggest don't miss one. It will instill the camaraderie that we have not known in many years. Not only that they are fun. The information as best I know it for the Veterans Day events are listed below.
Hospitality Suites & Accommodations
VHCMA - Vietnam Helicopter Crew Members Association Hospitality Suite Generally, a good place to find folks, kick back, have a beer or pop, sign in and listen to some "war stories" - family members welcome! Crystal City Hilton (same hotel as 1st Cav) National Airport 2399 Jefferson Davis Hwy.
Arlington, VA 800-774-1500 - ask for Hilton Crystal City, ask for VHCMA room rate ($99+
tax, single or double) 703-418-6800 This rate is good only for reservations made before Oct. 23, 2001 according to the VHCMA newsletter.
1st Cavalry Division Association Hospitality Suite & Crossed Sabers Gift Shop stuff Crystal City Hilton (same hotel as VHCMA) National Airport 2399 Jefferson Davis Hwy. Arlington, VA
800-774-1500 - ask for Hilton Crystal City, ask for 1st Cav room rate ($99+tax, single or double)
703-418-6800 This rate is good only for reservations made before Oct. 23, 2001 according to Saber, 1st Cav newsletter.
I understand that these hospitality suites will rev up sometime on Thu. Nov. 8 and in past experience, close down sometime late on Sun. Nov. 11.
Events
Sat. Nov. 10
Mike Sloniker "Loadhacker" Tour of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Mike is a helicopter veteran, VHPA historian and member of VHFCN, who goes to the VVM 50+ times a year on his own time to lay down memorials and show folks around individually. He explains the meaning of every aspect of the Wall that
has 58,000+ names, and the surrounding memorials (3 Statues and Vietnam Women's Memorial). This is comprehensive and in past years has taken about 2-3 hours.
Meet at 9 a.m. at the Three Statues by the VVM
Sat. Nov. 10
Ia Drang Alumni Remembrance & Banquet Part of the annual 1st Cav reunion - banquet is SOLD OUT as of this writing New location this year - Hilton Crystal City at National Airport 2399 Jefferson Davis Hwy.
Arlington, VA 6:30 cash bar; 7:30 dinner; banquet speaker is Randall Wallace, writer/producer/director of the forthcoming movie "We Were Soldiers Once . ..and Young" based on the book by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore & Joe Galloway.
Sat. Nov. 10
DMZ to Delta Dance sponsored by VVA Chapter 227 of Northern VA 8 p.m. - midnight Sat. Nov. 10, 2001 Doubletree Hotel, National Airport-Pentagon, 300 Army Navy Dr., Arlington, VA 22202, phone 703-416-4100 $25 includes "finger foods" - cash bar.
Sun. Nov. 11
Storytelling at the Vietnam Women's Memorial - "In Their Own Words" Veterans and others touched by the Vietnam War telling their stories informally Every 15 minutes 8:30 a.m. - 4:45 p.m. (approximately)
Vietnam Women's Memorial Project 2001 S St. NW Ste 610 Washington DC 20009 vwmpdc@aol.com
Ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery 11 a.m.
Ceremonies at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial 1 p.m.
After ceremonies at the Wall, the 1st Cav Div Assoc will move informally to the Korean Veterans Memorial where a wreath will also be placed. The Division Color Guard will be present to participate in each of these activities.
Other Events & Ceremonies (Per National Park Service Public Affairs Calendar)
VETERANS DAY AT THE SEABEE MEMORIAL
Sunday, Nov. 11
Entrance to Arlington Cemetery Veterans Day will be observed with speeches, color guard and a wreath laying ceremony sponsored by the Navy Seabee Veterans of America, Inc.
VETERANS DAY AT ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
11 a.m., Sunday, Nov. 11
Arlington National Cemetery, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier The nation's veterans who died in war are honored with a wreath-laying ceremony followed by a memorial service. The President of the United States
or a representative will lay the wreath. Music will be provided by a military band. For further information call 703-607-8052.
VETERANS DAY AT FIRST DIVISION MEMORIAL
Sunday, Nov. 11
First Division Memorial, Ellipse south of Old Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C. A wreath-laying ceremony will honor those of the U.S. Army First Division who died in WWI, WWII AND THE Vietnam War. For further information call 202-208-1631.
VETERANS DAY AT THE 101ST AIRBORNE DIVISION MEMORIAL
Sunday, Nov. 11
Memorial Ave. West of Arlington Memorial Bridge Wreath laying to honor 101st Airborne Division battle casualties and dead. Sponsored by the 101st Airborne Division Assoc. Washington Chapter.
VETERANS DAY AT THE NAVY MEMORIAL
11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 11
U.S. Navy Memorial, 701 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. Three wreaths will be laid at the Lone Sailor Statue, in commemoration of Veterans Day, the Grand Commandery of Knights Templar, Naval District of Washington and Mobile Riverine Forces Association Reunion Group. The U.S. Navy Ceremonial Band, Ceremonial Guard and Color Guard will participate in the public ceremony. For further information call 202-737-2300.
ARMISTICE DAY AT ANTIETAM
11 a.m., Sunday, Nov. 11
Antietam National Battlefield, Sharpsburg, Md.
There will be a special wreath laying ceremony in the Sharpsburg Town Square.
For further information call 301-432-5124.
DC Visitors' Guides
Digital City: Washington, DC Visitors Guide List of links to major attractions with maps, schedules, event details, and reviews
Travelocity.com Washington, DC Visitors Guide
Lowest round trip fares, sites, maps, weather etc.
DC Pages
Accommodations, transportation, entertainment, etc.
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority - the "Metro" (subway) - the best way to get around. Maps, specials, fares
Other Recommendations
These are my personal observations from attending Veterans Day in
Washington, DC since 1996.
1. If you want to look for particular names on the Wall, look them up on your computer BEFORE you leave home and take a list of the panel and line number with you. If you forget, there are directories available at the Memorial, or check with a National Park Service "Yellow Hat" Volunteer -they carry their own personal copies of the directories.
•Vietnam Casualty Search Page, http://www.no-quarter.org/
•State Level Casualty Lists,
•Army Medics Listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,
•Vietnam Helicopter Casualties via the VHPA home page, http://www.vhpa.org/
•Wall Q & A, http://www.telepath.com/seanair/wallfaq.html
2. If you want to get a name rubbing, you can ONLY use pencil - no pens or other items as they can damage the surface of the Memorial. Ask a National Park Service "Yellow Hat" Volunteer to assist if necessary. They also have rubbing papers. If the name is up too high for you to reach, only a Yellow
Hat can climb on the ladder that resides at the VVM to get those high name rubbings. General public isn't allowed to climb the ladder.
3. No smoking at the VVM. There are other spots to smoke nearby.
4. Nearest rest room to the VVM is in the bldg. under the Lincoln Memorial, a 2 minute walk across the street.
5. Renting a car in DC is not necessary, in my experience. The Metro is an easy way to get around, if you can walk about 6 blocks to get to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Nearest stop to the VVM is Foggy Bottom. You also can take taxis just about anywhere. There is a tourmobile bus that also circulates to
the sites of interest.
6. Weather in DC at this time of year can be t-shirt weather, warm jacket weather, can warrant gloves (my opinion) or an umbrella. No snow boots needed in my experience the past 5 yrs. But you do want to bring gloves and ear muffs/cap and umbrella just in case!
The Wolfhound Block Party goes on all weekend across the street from the VVM. It is a blast, and goes all weekend. I think they actually love usJ
OK now you experts, what did I MISS??
News Items
October 21 2001 TERRORISM
The Invisible Enemy
The Times - UK
Don't worry, it's only anthrax. But there are other, more dangerous bio-chemical weapons. The real question is whether terrorists have got them to use against the West
A week in the war: Bioterror spreads and ground raids begin | Biochemical warfare | Did the anthrax come come from Iraq? | Anthrax wars
The idea behind Project Bacchus, a secret experiment by the US Department of Defence, was simple. Here's a little money, said Pentagon chiefs to a team of scientists. Go and see if you can build a biological warfare factory. The catch was that they could use only materials bought on the open market.
The Pentagon chiefs did not tell Congress of their plan to create anthrax, or at least a harmless variant, in a way that would simulate how terrorists might covertly make the deadly bacterium. It just quietly doled out the money and let the scientists get on with it.
Operating as ordinary members of the public, the team set out in 1999 to build a small-scale laboratory in Nevada. A local hardware store supplied pipes and filters. A firm in Europe dispatched a 50-litre fermenter unit suitable for culturing germs. A Midwest company provided a milling machine capable of grinding dried material into powder.
As the scientists grew and refined their bugs, they aroused no suspicion. By summer last year they had produced 2lb of germ materials, including one that simulated anthrax, according to Jay Davis, the recent director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Pentagon unit that ran the experiment. No western intelligence agency had detected the operation, let alone attempted to stop it.
"The project had proven its point - a nation or bioterrorist with the requisite expertise could easily assemble an anthrax factory from off-the-shelf materials," said Judith Miller, co-author of a new book, Germs, on biological warfare.
"The results suggested that even with precious little money, a group of terrorists could build and operate a small-scale germ weapons plant."
Long aware that its enemies overseas had been working on biological weapons, the US had now proved that terrorists could be making deadly bugs even within its own borders.
In the spring of this year, the project served one final purpose. As a training exercise, a special forces team was told to "neutralize" the factory, disabling it without releasing its theoretically lethal contents into the environment. They did so successfully.
But that team had one key advantage. They knew where to find the factory and the "bioterrorists". Last week, as the number of people infected with real anthrax in America continued to rise, the authorities faced panic and confusion.
One man has died so far, and at least seven others are infected. The lethal bacteria are tiny, barely a few thousandths of a millimetre in size. They are spreading and nobody knows where they are coming from. Nobody is sure who has made them. Or how to stop them. Or whether other, even more dangerous bugs are next.
IN THE days after the September 11 suicide attacks, President George W Bush rallied the American people. The armed forces mobilised. The FBI began the biggest manhunt ever seen. Bush declared he wanted Osama Bin Laden, the terrorist chief suspected of the atrocities, "dead or alive".
As the superpower's might swung into action, someone approached a mailbox or post collector in Trenton, New Jersey, and handed over a couple of letters, or perhaps several. It was a small act, but one that would have huge repercussions.
A day or so later in the offices of the NBC television station, Erin O'Connor was checking the post for her boss, Tom Brokaw, when a letter with "September 11, 2001" scrawled across the top caught her attention. Inside the envelope was a sandy, granular powder and the message: "This is next. Take penicillin [sic]. Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great."
It was unnerving, but she forgot about it. Brokaw, a news anchorman and celebrity, often received threatening post.
A week later, O'Connor, 38, opened another letter for Brokaw that contained more powder and another threat. This time the letter was dispatched to the FBI, and by then O'Connor was not feeling quite right. A swelling appeared on her upper chest, prompting her to see a doctor.
It was Monday, October 1, and the diplomatic offensive against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was in full swing, but no bombs had yet been dropped. America was not yet properly at war. There was nothing out of the ordinary for her to worry about.
"She had a lesion that was very inflamed, and mild flu-like symptoms," said O'Connor's doctor, Richard Fried. He immediately thought of the brown recluse spider - not a common creepy-crawly, but one that can be found in New York and is highly toxic.
What he didn't tell his patient was that her wound, which went on to develop a black scab, also reminded him of cutaneous anthrax. He had never seen it, but it looked like a classic textbook example. "The city health department had been faxing us their concerns about bioterrorism and I thought it was a distinct possibility," he said. "But I couldn't confirm it and I didn't want to alarm her."
He kept quiet, put her on ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic suitable for various infections, including anthrax, and alerted public health officials to her case.
That same day in the offices of another television company, CBS, Claire Fletcher, a young British woman, was feeling lethargic and seemed to have a vicious insect bite on her cheek. Her doctor prescribed penicillin and she thought little more about it.
Fletcher was an assistant to Dan Rather, another famous news anchorman, and it was her job to open his post. But she has, according to Rather, "no memory of anything in the mail that raised her suspicions". She carried on going into work.
That same Monday, too, a seven-month-old baby was being admitted to a New York hospital suffering from a bright red sore, oozing liquid, on his elbow. Again, a spider bite was suspected. "They can release a toxin which produces an ulcerated sore," said Eric Rackow, the hospital's chief medical officer. "We've never had any experience of anthrax in babies."
The little boy was the son of a producer from yet another television company, ABC, and had been taken to its office a few days before.
HUNDREDS of miles to the south, two employees of American Media in Florida, owner of racy tabloids such as The National Enquirer, the Sun and Globe, were also growing gravely ill.
Ernest Blanco, 73, a mailroom worker, was brought home from work early "feeling bad". Before long he was checked into hospital with symptoms of pneumonia. "It was touch and go and he was extremely sick," said his stepdaughter, Maureen Orth.
Robert Stevens, the British-born deputy picture editor of the Sun, was on his way home from a visit to North Carolina suffering from a high fever. By 2am the next day he was wandering around the house in a confused state trying to get dressed to go to work.
His wife rushed him to hospital, where he fell into a coma, breathing only with the help of a respirator. By then, his blood and spinal fluid were teeming with anthrax. Three days later, he died.
Stevens was the first victim to be publicly identified as having anthrax, and the terrorist connections were soon spotted. Some of the suicide hijackers had lived in Florida; later it emerged that some had rented an apartment with the help of the wife of Stevens's boss.
But the authorities played down the case: Stevens had enjoyed outdoor pursuits, said Tommy Thompson, the American health secretary. His illness was an isolated incident, a freak natural occurrence.
The sweat shining on Thompson's brow belied his certainty and, at NBC, O'Connor was growing increasingly uneasy. She called the FBI and New York health authorities, pestering them for more information about the letter she had received and about her illness.
Her worries mounted as the anthrax killed Stevens and was confirmed as infecting Blanco. Before dawn that Friday in Washington, Thompson was woken with more news from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. A skin sample from O'Connor had tested positive. Though she had only the cutaneous form of the disease, not the deadly pulmonary type, the result was still shocking: the anthrax outbreak was no longer confined to Florida.
THE Hart building of the Capitol complex in Washington is a grand affair housing senators and their staff. The rooms are large and about 30 people were in or around the office of Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader, when one of his assistants opened a letter last Monday to see a "flume" of powder drift out.
The tiny particles had dispersed and drifted away even before the aide could hold her breath or study the letter. "This is next," read the note. "Take your medicine. Death to America. Death to Israel. Allah is great."
The handwriting was near identical to the NBC one and the postmark was the same. Within hours, the heart of the American government had shut its doors. At least 29 people had been exposed to anthrax and many might have inhaled the dust. All were put on antibiotics in case they had been infected - because by the time its symptoms become apparent, it is often too late to treat pulmonary anthrax.
As hazardous material teams, in bug-proof suits and helmets, descended on the Capitol like spacemen, more anthrax turned up in the office of the governor of New York, at mail offices in Florida and New Jersey and at more media companies, including the New York Post.
Panic swept across America as hundreds of false alarms and hoaxes caused chaos, closing offices, stopping flights, overloading emergency services and draining medical centers of Cipro, as ciprofloxacin soon came to be known.
Even in Minnesota, way out in mid-America, the number of calls to the state laboratory about suspicious substances jumped from 15 a day to 500. Most have not been checked.
The scientists have dismissed some cases as clearly crazy, but they simply do not have time to examine others.
To conduct tests, they work in three biological containment cabinets sealed with double doors. Each has its own ventilation system, creating negative pressure inside the cabinet to prevent any spilled bacteria from escaping.
"It's a laboratory within a laboratory," said Norman Crouch, the director. "These people look pretty scary when you look through the windows because they are wearing respirators and this protective equipment."
The process is lengthy and the results not always clear. Sometimes more detailed analysis is required and fighter jets are on call to fly samples to the CDC in Georgia for further investigation if necessary.
As the number of confirmed infections crept up, the FBI began to establish links. The anthrax samples from Florida, New York and Washington were all of a similar type. Two were posted in Trenton. Barcodes printed on the envelopes as they passed through the mail system allowed investigators to work backwards, identifying the machine in the New Jersey office that had handled the mail, and through that the neighborhood they had come from. At least two postal workers had also been infected with anthrax.
Investigators began tracing the collection routes the postal workers followed, searching for contaminated mailboxes or people in the area who had been buying large amounts of antibiotics. Whoever the perpetrators were, they reasoned, they might also have become infected themselves.
They were narrowing down the area where two of the letters had originated. Despite all the clever detective work, however, it was like grappling with shadows.
There are about 1,200 strains of anthrax; some have been dispatched to researchers in many countries. The spores can survive for years. The type used in the letters could originally have come via Timbuktu as easily as Trenton. Whoever had posted the letters in the United States might simply have been visiting the area.
Was he or she a Bin Laden terrorist, or a sympathizer, or a lone lunatic? Were the letters linked to the September 11 attacks or the work of white supremacists in America? A senior intelligence source is convinced it is the work of a US-based cell - whether Al-Qaeda or someone else.
Have all the letters been discovered or are hundreds more making their way through the postal system?
Last weekend, a spokesman for Bin Laden warned: "The news is what you see, not what you hear. The storm will not calm . . ." Was he referring to anthrax?
No clear link with the terrorists has emerged, and the letters do not fit the pattern of suicide attacks previously employed by Bin Laden. But until two planes flew into the World Trade Center, nobody had done that before, either.
Four individuals sought by the FBI over the September 11 attacks lived around Trenton. And one suspect, Ayub Khan, was found to have in his flat articles on biological warfare and poison gas. They included one entitled: "How shock troops from the Centers for Disease Control hunt down killer microbes."
Coincidence? Perhaps. What is clear is that Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network have tried to obtain nuclear and chemical weapons; new evidence also shows they have sought biological agents that can be used for mass destruction. If they wanted to use anthrax - and possibly other biological agents - they probably could.
In the early 1990s a man called Wadih el-Hage went shopping in Eastern Europe and Russia. As he toured chemical factories, his task was ostensibly to find materials for a road-building program. The FBI suspects he might have also been scouting for more dangerous substances.
By his own account, Hage, who was sentenced last week to life imprisonment for his part in bombing two American embassies in Africa in 1998, visited Russia twice and the Czech/Slovak region four times. There he, or other Al-Qaeda fanatics, could easily have found two virtual supermarkets of biological nightmares: the Military Institute of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Microbiology in Prague, and the Institute for Immunology and Microbiology in the village of Techonin.
The Prague institute had collected viruses and bacteria for more than 20 years. Most were destroyed in 1994, but its lax security meant that some deadly diseases are believed to have gone missing before then.
A report by the Czech secret service, obtained last week by The Sunday Times, reveals that the most dangerous samples were stored in Room 625 of the institute.
"Up until 1994 all employees of the institute, including maintenance and cleaning staff, had access to Room 625," says the report. "Access to the room was not monitored nor documented. It was simply locked and various keys to the room were left in the laboratories."
Inside Room 625 were germs such as West Nile fever, rabies, dengue, yellow fever and many others.
The report was commissioned by the Czech government because, according to one of the officers involved, "it was feared an illicit trade" in samples was going on with unsuitable groups. "Following staff interrogations," said the officer, "I can confirm with 99% certainty there was."
At the Techonin institute last week, one employee said: "Groups from the Middle East and elsewhere visited on a regular basis and certain individuals saw little harm in continuing the practice. It was an open secret that some individuals were selling phials to visiting Arabs."
Were Bin Laden's men among them? There is no firm evidence, but the trial of another Al-Qaeda terrorist revealed some of the terror organization's aspirations.
Ahmed Mabruk, former head of military operations for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, is serving 25 years in prison. During his trial in Egypt in 1999 he claimed that Al-Qaeda had obtained chemical and biological weapons from Eastern Europe. That biological material, according to Egyptian intelligence sources, included botulism and anthrax.
Two weeks ago Ben Bradshaw, the junior foreign office minister, stated that Bin Laden did indeed have some biological and chemical weapons. A senior British official who advises the Ministry of Defense of biochemical warfare threats then supported this view.
He said that Bin Laden had been interested in acquiring precursors to make chemical weapons and "seed stock" to grow biological weapons since 1993. The terrorist had succeeded in acquiring a "small amount of biological stock", from which it is possible to grow substances such as anthrax and botulinum.
"You don't need a sophisticated laboratory, though you do need a supply of clean water," said the MoD adviser. "You could even do it in a hotel bedroom."
As for putting it in an envelope, that's easy. By wearing surgical gloves and using a simple plastic bag, the anthrax can be transferred without great risk. The amount required to wreak the havoc seen in America is modest.
"The quantity used so far does not require high-tech, high sophistication," said Dr David Kelly, former head of biological research at the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down. "We're talking around 5ml. I would guess less. It's a spoonful."
Though such a tiny amount has sparked panic and disruption across a continent, the biological effect is narrow: anthrax is not contagious. It won't spread from person to person in the way that plague or smallpox do.
Those sort of highly infectious diseases are the real nightmares of biological warfare. Though they are far harder to obtain and use than anthrax, nobody is quite sure who may have them. According to the Czech intelligence report, the institutes in Prague and Techonin both had samples of smallpox. They were supposed to have been destroyed, it said, but no documentary evidence exists that they were.
MORE than 470 "germ banks" that keep collections of nasty bugs are spread across about 60 countries. The World Federation of Culture Collections holds a voluntary register of what is available, which is accessible through the Internet.
Before last week, for example, 46 collections offered anthrax, 55 salmonella, and 23 botulism. Some were available for a fee, others for exchange or free. The trade is supposed to be restricted to bona fide scientists but has been open to abuse.
Dr Ken Alibek, former deputy director of the Soviet biological weapons program, told the US Congress last week: "For relatively common infections, such as plague or anthrax, a determined terrorist could acquire organisms with some epidemiological know-how and persistence. Acquisitions from culture collections may also be possible if cloaked in legitimate research."
The only comfort he offered was that it would be "much more difficult" to obtain virulent infections such as ebola virus and smallpox, which was eradicated outside laboratories by 1980.
The last known case of smallpox occurred at Birmingham University in 1978. During research on a smallpox sample, the virus became airborne, wafted through a duct and infected Janet Parker, a 40-year-old medical photographer who was working on the floor above the laboratory.
Parker died, but not before inadvertently infecting her mother, who survived. Professor Henry Bedson, a world expert on smallpox who headed Birmingham University's microbiology and virology department, was so mortified that he killed himself a week after Parker's illness was diagnosed.
Since then stocks of smallpox virus are supposed to have been destroyed in all but two laboratories: one in the US and one in Russia.
At the CDC in Atlanta, 49 strains of smallpox (45 infectious) are held under a triple key system similar to that used for nuclear weapons. Even so, Dr Carlos Lopez, former chief of the virus research section at the CDC, argued in 1988 that the world no longer needed to preserve the virus because there was a risk of accident or terrorism.
"It would take a monumental effort to get through the level of security that we have in the US laboratories. But it's not impossible," he said.
Nor is it secure in the former Soviet Union. Its official stockpile, containing 120 strains, is now held at the State Research Centre for Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia. It is ringed by three concentric walls topped by barbed wire and alarms. The guards know all the scientists by sight and nobody is allowed into the store alone.
But Alibek, who moved to the United States after the Soviet collapse, says the former Soviet Union made huge quantities of smallpox during its biowarfare program and that its thousands of scientists have since dispersed. There is a risk that smallpox samples have found their way into other hands.
Dr David Heymann, executive director of communicable diseases at the World Health Organization, believes countries including North Korea, Iraq and Egypt may have held on to old stocks of smallpox or acquired them from third parties. Could they have passed into terrorist hands, too? Nobody can be sure.
Much of the world's population is vulnerable to this terrible disease since vaccination - the only protection - stopped after smallpox was eradicated.
Last year the Americans decided the risk was serious enough to order 40m doses of vaccine. Since the anthrax attacks they are considering increasing that order to 300m doses. But Acambis, the British company making the vaccine, admits it will be months before it can deliver any vaccine, since its plant outside Boston, Massachusetts, will not be ready until December.
Two weeks ago Liam Donaldson, the UK's chief medical officer, returned from America in high anxiety and hurriedly ordered his staff to investigate the production of smallpox vaccine. They discovered that the only organization capable of making it in the UK is Porton Down in Wiltshire. It is believed to have no more than a handful of doses available.
ONE of the most contagious agents known to man is not a virus or bacterium, it's an emotion: fear. Amid all the concerns over the threat of biological attack, a sense of perspective must be retained. Though biological weapons have terrible potential, their use and delivery is difficult.
With luck smallpox is not in the hands of terrorists, and they do not have the expertise to disseminate it. And as Harry Smith, emeritus professor of microbiology at Birmingham University, points out, the worst pandemic of modern times was caused by flu - a disease that is still with us. It killed 20m people worldwide in 1918.
The terror of pulmonary anthrax, too, lies in its high mortality rate once a person is infected. But infecting people is not straightforward.
An oft-quoted study of anthrax, for example, concluded that if 100kg were sprayed over a large city, between 1m and 3m people would die from inhaling the spores. It's possible, but not inevitable. When the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan tried spraying anthrax off a building, they gave up and turned to Sarin gas on the underground instead: the spores had simply been blown away.
So far the effects of the current attacks are limited. The second case of "anthrax by post" outside America was confirmed yesterday in Argentina. A letter sent from Atlanta, Georgia, to a doctor in Nairobi, Kenya, has also tested positive.
In America, Stevens has died of the disease and two other victims have been made seriously ill; the others are expected to make full recovery and some have continued to work despite their illness.
Yesterday Johanna Huden, an editorial assistant on the New York Post, described what it was like to discover that she had anthrax. She recalled how she had put a Band-Aid on a red sore emerging on her finger. The sore became swollen, turned black and began to spread. Doctors were puzzled but put her on antibiotics anyway.
"I returned to work the following Monday," she wrote yesterday. "I felt okay, but I was tired and achy, and I soon developed a sore throat.
"On Friday I was at my desk when the reports were broadcast about the NBC case [of anthrax]. A physician came on the air, describing the symptoms. Red lesion. Black, necrotic skin. Oh, no. I went to the Internet and looked up cutaneous anthrax. My heart sank."
When her diagnosis was confirmed, she was given Cipro, the antibiotic. She rested, then went back to work. "My finger is healing. I'll be okay. Am I quitting my job? Am I leaving town?
"Absolutely not."
You have to beat the terrorists, whoever they are, as well as the disease.
October 26, 2001
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
We Are All Alone
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
O let me see if I've got this all straight now: Pakistan will allow us to use its bases Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays - provided we bomb only Taliban whose names begin with Omar and who don't have cousins in the Pakistani secret service. India is with us on Tuesdays and Fridays, provided it can shell Pakistani forces around Kashmir all other days. Egypt is with us on Sundays, provided we don't tell anyone and provided we never mention that we give the Egyptians $2 billion a year in aid. Yasir Arafat is with us only after 10 p.m. on weekdays, when Palestinians who have been dancing in the streets over the World Trade Center attack have gone to bed. The Northern Alliance is with us, provided we buy all its troops new sandals and give U.S. passports to the first 1,000 to reach Kabul.Israel is with us provided we never question the lunacy of 7,000 Israeli colonial settlers living in the middle of a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Kuwait would like to be with us, it really would, since we saved Kuwait from Iraq, but two Islamists in the Kuwaiti Parliament spoke out against the war, so the emir just doesn't want to take any chances. You understand. The Saudis, of course, want to be with us, but Saudis are not into war-fighting. That's for the household help. Don't worry. Prince Alwaleed has promised to rent us some Bangladeshi soldiers through a Saudi temp agency - at only a small markup.
The Saudi ruling family would love to cooperate by handing over its police files on the 15 Saudis involved in the hijackings, but that would be a violation of its sovereignty, and, well, you know how much the Saudis respect sovereignty - like when the Saudi Embassy in Washington rushed all of Osama bin Laden's relatives out of America after Sept. 11 on a private Saudi jet, before they could be properly questioned by the F.B.I.
And then there's my personal favorite: All our Arab-Muslim allies would love us to get bin Laden quickly, but the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is coming soon and the Muslim "street" will not tolerate fighting during Ramadan. Say, do you remember the 1973 Middle East war, launched by Egypt and Syria against Israel? Remember what that war was called in the Arab world? "The Ramadan war" - because that's when it was started. Oh, well. I guess the Arab world can launch wars on Ramadan, but not receive them.
My fellow Americans, I hate to say this, but except for the good old Brits, we're all alone. And at the end of the day, it's U.S. and British troops who will have to go in, on the ground, and eliminate bin Laden.
Ah, you ask, but why did we have so many allies in the gulf war against Iraq? Because the Saudis and Kuwaitis bought that alliance. They bought the Syrian Army with billions of dollars for Damascus. They bought us and the Europeans with promises of huge reconstruction contracts and by covering all our costs. Indeed, with the money Japan paid, we actually made a profit on the gulf war; Coalitions "R" Us.
This time we'll have to pay our own way, and for others. Unfortunately, killing 5,000 innocent Americans in New York just doesn't get the rest of the world that exercised. In part we're to blame. The unilateralist message the Bush team sent from its first day in office - get rid of the Kyoto climate treaty, forget the biological treaty, forget arms control, and if the world doesn't like it that's tough - has now come back to haunt us.
And who can blame other countries for wanting to shake down U.S. taxpayers when Dick Armey and his greedy band of House Republicans are doing the same thing - pushing a stimulus bill with more tax breaks for the rich, lobbyists and corporations, and virtually nothing for the working Americans who will fight this war?
My advice: Try not to focus on any of this. Focus instead on the firemen who rushed into the trade center towers without asking, "How much?" Focus on the thousands of U.S. reservists who have left their jobs and families to go fight in Afghanistan without asking, "What's in it for me?" Unlike the free-riders in our coalition, these young Americans know that Sept. 11 is our holy day - the first day in a just war to preserve our free, multi-religious, democratic society. And I don't really care if that war coincides with Ramadan, Christmas, Hanukkah or the Buddha's birthday - the most respectful and spiritual thing we can do now is fight it until justice is done.
A Yank in the British army
WND's LoBaido trains in jungle with historic UK regiment
Editor's note: The first Western forces sent into Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were not from the United States. Rather, it was a four-man British Special Air Service, or SAS, reconnaissance and intelligence team known as "Brick." These elite SAS special-forces troops exchanged automatic gunfire with Taliban soldiers in the foothills of Kabul and set up a communications link with the British intelligence and military in the United Kingdom.
It was with British soldiers that WorldNetDaily's international correspondent Anthony C. LoBaido trained recently in the jungles of Belize. This first-person account provides unique insight into the esprit de corps enjoyed by the United Kingdom's fighting forces.
By Anthony C. LoBaido
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
THE JUNGLES OF BELIZE, Central America - Imagine the chance to live and train with an ancient fighting unit dating back to 1694 - then known as the 28th of Foot. A unit whose history is so colorful, grand and epic that it includes fighting against Napoleon's expeditionary forces at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801. A unit whose modern operational exploits stretch from the Korean War to tours in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Kosovo. This unit is the one and only RGBW - The Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire-Wiltshire Regiment. They are the remnant of the greatest Empire the world has ever known and are considered to be one of the finest units in all of the British army.
Belize, known until the early 1980s as British Honduras, is no ordinary backwater of the fabled British Empire - the empire upon which the sun never set. While modern Belize is known for its pristine beaches and Mayan ruins, it is also a popular destination for various armed forces from around the world. Belize plays host to Panther Cub, the jungle-training program of the British army. Other British training exercises are held in Kenya, Botswana, Cyprus, Jamaica, Norway and Jordan.
Once their training is completed, British forces will be shipped overseas once again to places like Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Oman, Brunei and the Falkland Islands. The elite SAS, or Special Air Service, also undergoes training in Belize. After their training is completed, the SAS jungle sites are completely eradicated. The 3rd Regiment of the French Foreign Legion, based in French Guyana, also undergoes jungle training in Belize alongside the local Belize Defense Force or BDF. The BDF is sometimes used as an "enemy" during hunter force exercises against the British army.
A tribal people
"We are a tribal people. I think that that is a strength," said popular Col. David Lee, who served 18 years in Northern Ireland. Lee is the commanding officer of BATSUB, the British Army Training Support Unit - Belize.
"Unlike other armies, our troops will usually serve in the same battalion for their entire career. The RGBW is a unique unit. It is county-based. This is a legacy that goes back hundreds of years to a time when the local sheriff would raise troops loyal to the king or queen."
Lee explained that British forces used to carry out their jungle training in Borneo: "When we pulled out of Hong Kong, we moved our training regimen to Belize."
Maj. David Brown, the commanding officer of the RGBW, explained that the RGBW also has an international flair.
"We have soldiers in the RGBW from Fiji, Mauritius, Australia, and even an Afrikaner (who apparently bears no grudge for the Boer War)," Brown said.
It is not unusual to find Canadians, Kiwis from New Zealand and Ghurkas training alongside British troops.
Speaking of the Ghurkas, Maj. John Knopp, second in command at BATSUB said, "The United Kingdom has long, historic ties to the Ghurkas, the pro-Western government of Nepal." The money paid to the Nepalese government for the services of the Ghurkas is one of the leading sources of foreign exchange.
Said Knopp, "Nepal is a feudal and Hindu nation that is struggling to enter the 21st century. That money helps keep Nepal pro-West. The communists presently making trouble in Nepal are anti-monarchists, and they are backed by China."
Panther Cub is supported by 84 dedicated British soldiers stationed with BATSUB. The BATSUB is also home to 25th Flight, which uses its Lynx and Gazelles to serve both the needs of British troops and casualty evacuation for the citizens of Belize. The Lynx is a duel-engine craft, which features two pilots and can be fitted with TOW anti-tank missiles and mounted machine guns.
"On this exercise, the RGBW is our customer," Knopp told this writer. "They need battalion support in-country. They are learning to live out of a rucksack in the jungle. There is no other infrastructure. We supply them with that. Companies come to Belize to train year-round, except for July and December, when we let the jungle recover for a spell."
Life for the military in Belize was not always filled with a few weeks in the bush followed by R&R on the sunny beaches of nearby Ambergris Caye - better known as "Temptation Island." Until 1994, the United Kingdom maintained over 5,000 troops in Belize. A complete "strike force" featuring Harrier fighter jets was set up, ostensibly to keep neighboring Guatemala from invading.
"The border dispute between Belize and Guatemala is extremely important, because similar border disputes could erupt between Mexico and other Central American nations if common sense and international law do not prevail in our theater," said Knopp.
"The border flap goes back to 1854, when the British Empire carved British Honduras out of Guatemala. The border issues plaguing Central America find their roots in the Mayan concept that 'no one owns the land' and that peoples should be able to migrate freely. It is much like the aboriginal concept in Australia. However, on the Guatemalan side of the border with Belize, the land has been stripped bare by timber merchants, and there are also more than a few shanty towns."
The British armed forces offer additional support to Belize via a patrol ship based in the West Indies. This naval presence carries out drug interdiction and monitors hurricanes.
"In an emergency, Royal Marines will come ashore and set up mobile satellite communications and generators," added Knopp. "In October of 1998, Hurricane Mitch was heading for Belize and would have taken this country back two centuries. However, at the last moment the hurricane veered south and hit Honduras."
Speaking about Panther Cub, Knopp said, "We have some young men who have never been out of London. Coming to the jungle can be quite a shock. For the first seven days, they will learn to live in the jungle. Then for the next two to three weeks, the troops work on infantry tactics. Then comes live shooting. Finally, in the fifth week, they put all the skills together."
Welcome to the jungle
My adventure began in the jungles of Belize in late August. I flew nap of the Earth along the Macal River, flying in a Gazelle helicopter into the approaching Hurricane Chantal. After a turbulent flight, I landed on the small bridge at the Guacamalo Bridge Camp in the dense jungles of Belize. I was issued my gear, had my face painted with black, brown and green Camtec paint and began the adventure of a lifetime.
 A Gazelle helicopter at Guac Bridge.
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Out in the bush, logistics really can be a problem. Our camp was far from fixed lines of supply. As such, most of the supplies had to be flown or trucked in from about 200 miles away in Ladyville. Of course, the British always bring civilization with them wherever they go, and the jungle was no different. We were treated to a delicious proper English breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausages, toast with butter and stewed tomatoes every morning. (Haven't the British heard of cholesterol yet? I'm surprised 7-year-olds back in London aren't having heart attacks). Another important point of civilization in the jungle - tea-time came round not once but twice per day.
Visits by American journalists to the British army are not unlike the sighting of a comet. They emerge from nowhere, pass by quickly and invariably inspire pagan celebrations. A typical day in the jungle for a visiting journalist is long and hard. It might involve mundane tasks such as sharpening one's machete, which actually was more like a butter knife when first issued. You will learn to shoot the light, almost toy-like SA 80 assault rifle right-handed, even if you are left-handed like myself, unless you want a hot round ejected into your face.
You will learn the difference between jelly and Jell-O and come to understand that hookers play rugby. You clean your weapons and wash your clothes, but never shave, because even the smallest nick can turn septic.
You wear your jungle fatigues and learn to accept being wet 24 hours per day, either from rain or sweat - or both. You quickly pick up on the acronyms - like Ex, BFA, Op and MFC. You learn that a section consists of eight men, that a platoon has three sections and that a company has between 100 and 120 soldiers or more, depending on support. There are four companies in a battalion. And, as the book of Acts tells us, 2,000 soldiers form a legion, and there are three legions in a band. It's hard to keep up.
 WND's LoBaido with his SA 80 rifle.
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The officers eat last, and if there is no food that day you make do with candy and soda - if you are lucky. You sleep on a hammock and learn to like it. You might wake up at 2 a.m. to relieve yourself and find out just how cold the jungle can get at night. My first night in the jungle I kept waiting for the hurricane to arrive, but it passed over us, only to wreck northern Belize. You check your boots for scorpions and peer into the shadows wondering if the rumor about the jaguar stalking the camp is true. (The animal was indeed interested in wild game caught in man-made traps during survival training).
In the morning, you arise at 4:30 a.m., brush your teeth and use dental floss and mouthwash.
Says Sgt. Pete "Gizmo" Thomson, the RGBW's chief medic in charge of health, hygiene and safety, "Morning is a great time of day, because we really [make fun of] each other. I really love the banter." The men called Thomson "Gizmo" because of the white patch in his beard resembling the creatures in the film "Gremlins."
Of course, the banter - most of the time for this interloper - was indistinguishable. They might as well have been speaking Farsi or Xhosa. There were accents and dialects like Welsh and Cockney among the men.
"Can you please speak English?" I would often plead with the soldiers.
"We are and we do," they would reply with a laugh.
Another significant cultural difference between Americans and the Brits is the lack of bravado a British person might exhibit, no matter how great his or her accomplishments may be. For example, an American who plays tennis only on the weekends might well say that he is a "great player," while a Brit who just won Wimbledon might say he "plays a bit of tennis."
The British Army is filled with many fine young men who exhibit wonderful traits of leadership, heroism and other old-style attributes not usually associated with Generation X. Says Roger Gale, a Conservative Party member of Parliament from North Thanet, "I think we have wonderful young people in the UK."
Such self-effacing traits are legion around the RGBW. For example, Lt. Charlie Grist's father once commanded the RGBW. He later went on to become a general in the British army. I interviewed Grist at length, and he never mentioned these facts. Grist and I had one special thing in common. We both taught English-as-a-Second-Language classes - he in India to Tibetans, and I in South Korea and Hong Kong.
Grist, who is strong as an ox, said, "We have the best platoon in the battalion, I think. That's because of their personalities. In 1999, we went operational in the Balkans for four months. The first two weeks we were in continual operations and had only three or four hours sleep per night, yet we carried out our duties very well."
During my visit to the RGBW, Grist worked with the Mortar Fire Controllers, or MFCs. They use a microwave radio link and a set of binoculars with lasers to pinpoint enemy targets and pass that information on to the soldiers actually manning the mortars.
"During Panther Cub, we will also work on the non-high tech mortar technique called aural adjustment," said Grist.
"This means listening, looking and hearing. This is a black art, and Maj. Tullach, a retired New Zealand officer who served in Vietnam, will be here to work with us. It's witchcraft, but it works."
Grist is in charge of A Company, a haven in the RGBW for colorful characters. Speaking of the job Grist does with A Company, a fellow officer says, "Give A Company an inch and they will eat you alive. But Charlie uses a unique psychology, and he treats them with respect and acknowledges their knowledge. The colorful characters in A Company bring high energy and high morale."
Another soldier too grounded to boast is Pvt. Young. Young crawled 100 meters in Kosovo through a landmine field, using only his bayonet to feel for mines, in an effort to rescue two injured Ghurkas. He never mentioned that brave act to me.
The men were smart and brave, quick thinkers and always polite. Some were young college students "hoping to make friends for life" and to make their parents and classmates proud of them.
Others were more experienced. One of those experienced soldiers was Sgt. Mark Anthony Clarke, known as "Knobby." He was one of my jungle-training instructors known as the Jungle Jedis - the graduate/instructors of the Jungle Warfare School in Brunei. Knobby told me about how he still believes "in the concept of the British Empire." I, in turn, told him about former colonial outposts I had visited in Burma, Cyprus and South Africa, much to his delight.
 Capt. John Penhale
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There was also the ginger-haired Capt. John Penhale, who holds a degree in Zoology from Nottingham. That degree no doubt came in handy in a jungle filled with snakes and wild creatures of every stripe.
Cpl. Stephen Johnson was another backbone of the RGBW. Johnson, who was deployed as a sniper in Kosovo, told this writer, "We have the most professional army in the world and the best special forces, even better than Israel. Germany's GSG9 special forces are outstanding. The Ukrainian Spetnaz we trained with were not so good."
Speaking of his time in the Balkans, Johnson was resolute: "I was naïve when I first was deployed to Kosovo. The ideas we had in our heads were all wrong. We had been brainwashed to believe the Serbs were evil, and thus we were there only to protect the Muslims and Albanians. But by the time we got there, the Albanians were throwing grenades at us and they were intimidating and hurting Serbian women and children, so we had to change our focus and protect the Serbs. When the Serbs became the minority, the shoe was on the other foot. The people who were wronged in the past were now carrying out the same type of atrocities, rape and murder and organizing a secret police.
"One particular day we were at the mixed market in Lipjuan. The Muslims took over as a faction in a Serb enclave. Every Monday, Muslims came there from far and wide. We would stop and search vehicles. One day, I was walking around a corner in a market, and suddenly someone threw a grenade at us. My head spun around to look. … The shrapnel hit the truck windshield. None of us were hurt. But if anything went wrong, we were wearing the mess. It is hard to be both peacekeepers and an aggressive force. You wind up being the piggie in the middle, and you can't win either way."
Discussing the Russian paratroopers taking over the Pristina airport - an event that, had it not been for the cool thinking of British Gen. Michael Jackson, might have touched off World War III - Johnson said, "The taking of the Pristina airport was a Russian statement to Serbian people. The Serbs felt let down in a political and cultural sense. They never had the administrative ability and kit to maintain forces at the Pristina airport. Within three days, they asked for fuel and kit, as well as a sharing plan for the airport."
Another interesting soldier with the RGBW is Lt. Rob Armstrong, who, like this writer, is also a former kindergarten teacher.
"I was a kindergarten teacher before I joined the army, and of course I enjoyed the fact that there was a 14-1 female to male ratio. I majored in child psychology and spent a lot of time preparing but eventually found teaching less rewarding. I had a long commute to and from work. A lot of kids at school don't want to learn. A teacher can't have winners and losers; they say it hurts self-esteem."
Asked why he joined the British army and the RGBW, Armstrong was crystal clear in his reasoning.
"I'm from Reading, in Berkshire - actually from the outskirts of their tribe. I asked to be attached to [RGBW] because they are county-based. They are like a family and can't help but to be like-minded. I did 18 months with them in Northern Ireland when I joined. You want to be surrounded by the best. We are an optimistic people with a sense of empire and history."
Armstrong talked about the difficulties he'd faced since joining up: "At times, there are difficulties with the rules of engagement we have for every theater we are in. For example, in Northern Ireland, we must only fire warning shots. We give verbal warnings, and we only fire if we are in mortal danger or in the protection of someone who is. We will say, 'Army! Stop, or I'll shoot.' During the motion of throwing, it's OK for us to shoot, but once a person releases a petrol or nail bomb, you can't shoot them - even if they run away to get another bomb."
"The terrorists know our rules of engagement. Make bombs in a coffee can with Semtex, P-4, HME, (Home Made Explosives). There is a tricky situation in Northern Ireland because of the peace process. It's all about being level-headed and keeping a watchful eye."
An esprit de corps
The Guac Bridge Camp itself might not have featured much in the way of infrastructure, but the brainpower and soldiering experience on hand was phenomenal. Each day, Brown, Penhale and the NCOs would gather around a crude table to discuss the training regimen. The table was decorated with only a few scattered half-burned candles, matches and an odd novel. The portable white message board - which looked as though it had been ripped out of a school classroom - was the only item the brain trust really needed. On the board, written in black magic marker was the training schedule.
And it was around this simple table that I came to understand the esprit de corps and resilience that so defines the British character. This army has no conscripts, and as such, morale and motivation are high. The sense of history Armstrong spoke of is readily apparent.
Young was saddened by the current anarchy gripping Marxist Zimbabwe, but lamented, "Next time the Rhodesians shouldn't declare independence." Other soldiers talked about the British troops who had been taken hostage in the west African diamond and gem outpost of Sierra Leone. Some spoke of the apartheid mercenary army Executive Outcomes that had, for a time, brought calm to Sierra Leone.
When I suggested that British soldiers who serve in Sierra Leone receive stock options from British mining interests, Thompson said, "I think you will find that the British people keep a stiff upper lip about that sort of thing."
The glue of the RGBW comes from the top down. That means Maj. Brown. A pleasant man and father of two small children, the major always appears immaculately dressed and smelling of cologne (and once, for a joke, wearing a gold medal he'd won recently in a local yacht race). Brown is committed to providing the finest training environment possible.
"I designed our training regimen. And there are not many places in the British army where you can have this kind of opportunity to completely control such an endeavor. I have been given the trust to take 140 men into the jungle. Not often in any field [does one] get this level of respect and freedom of action," he said.
"All soldiers do training for 12 weeks, even the cooks. They can all fire the SA 80. Other armies are more specialized. We face challenges in the elements. We instill a sense of identity in training and regimental history, as well as officer hierarchy. Sandhurst is recognized as the leading officer-training academy. We have been educated by NCOs, and as such, it is no surprise that we understand what our men require."
Asked about the biggest obstacles he faces in organizing training, Brown said, "There is a massive tendency in society to micromanage, and we are a litigious society. This could lead one to over-try to reduce risks, but that hurts operational capacity. Out here, the biggest dangers are the roads, and I worry most about trucks flipping over."
"We have adapted well from Northern Ireland at Drum Cree - carrying duties like the keeping of public order and support, and in two weeks completely transformed to jungle tactics. We are here to do a job. We do it well, and hopefully we won't be boring."
Asked just what makes the RGBW unique, Brown offered many reasons.
"As a county regiment, our identity is unified by its own very nature. The RGBW has gone through various mergers. It is like a business - you merge and you acquire. The appeal to the recruiting base is the character of the regiment, which will re-forge county ties. We have the confidence of history and lineage to which the RGBW has been tested," he said.
"I am proud of our soldiers in the RGBW. I know each one by name. As you well know by now, we have colorful characters, especially in A Company, but they are good soldiers. Discipline and morale are important. I never use Christian names. Rather, "Sir" is used when they address me. [Ironically,] a stricter hierarchy lends itself to informality. There are boundaries. You want respect over popularity. Everyone aspires to be a popular leader, but in that route there is danger to compromise personal beliefs and a high training standard. What makes an unhappy unit is a commander who does not declare where he stands."
"I truly believe that if the soldiers go back at the end of six weeks and don't say, 'It was one of the best times of my life,' it means personally as a commander that I have failed. There aren't many problems here. Problems in Northern Ireland for the RGBW centered on guarding the base and other duties. There is none of that out here. I would say that potential problems for a unit would be a lack of time to conduct training at the section and platoon levels, lack of advanced training and the lack of a decent night life."
Asked about the place the British Army has in society in general, Brown spoke glowingly about his fellow soldiers.
"We are apolitical, and we focus on the mission. But the British army is synonymous with the Union Jack. When you look at Macedonia, the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, Kosovo and Bosnia, public opinion polls continually show that the public has the highest levels of confidence in the army - more than any other government agency. …"
Continued Brown, "We have zero tolerance for criminal behavior. I am a Christian, and if one of our soldiers were married and were to sleep with one of the local prostitutes, I would not have the same respect for that person any longer.
"The British spirit is indomitable. It is a spirit that says when the going gets tough, the tough get going. We know that out of hardship comes comradeship, a sense of purpose and unity of command. All British soldiers, unlike other armies, train for general war and a high level of conflict. Then we can scale down accordingly for peacekeeping. There is no second place in battle."
The Land of Oz
Sgt. Stuart Lane was one British soldier who really stood out. The pride of Cranbrook High School back in Australia, Lane, who looks a bit like actor Russell Crowe, joined the British army on the "Long Look" exchange.
Oz, as he liked to be called, and I talked about all manner of things. Gun control, the pound vs. the euro, the new European Union army and even novels like "The Razor's Edge." Like many Anglophiles, Oz had traveled through the United States and found the simple values of the heartland of America to be most enjoyable.
 Stuart Lane, an Australian jungle-training instructor in the British army, demonstrates a trap in the jungles of Belize.
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Lane is also a Jungle Jedi and a graduate of the Jungle Warfare School in Brunei. He has served the past two years in Northern Ireland and will be shipping out to Sierra Leone in due course.
Speaking of his time in Northern Ireland, he said, "It's hard to see men holding a Union Jack in one hand and throwing a nail or petrol bomb at you with the other."
And even though he is an Australian, Lane brings his own sense of history to the RGBW. Oz's grandfather Henry Druce served in the SAS. Moreover, Druce was captured and later escaped from Nazi Germany during World War II. Lane's father also served in the SBS, the SAS sister group called the Special Boat Service, a unit akin to the U.S. Navy Seals.
The legacy Lane inherited from his father and grandfather is extremely important to him. For example, when he was tasked to partake in a special hunter-tracker course in Germany as a part of his training, Oz was determined not to cheat, as some others had done.
"During that bit of training, we focused on escape and evasion and combat survival," Lane said.
"It was a three-week course filled with navigational exercises. You had to make and use sketch maps, learn to make a compass from a magnet, resist interrogation, make your own clothes and learn to travel through Germany without any kit or money. You might be dropped off at 2 a.m., tossed out of a truck with only a sketch map and a password to guide you to your next rendezvous point. You might be taken hostage, get searched and then sent on your way again. You are chased the entire time by a hunter force complete with dogs and helicopters. You travel 16 or 20 miles at a clip at night, all the while hunted by a team of eight men flying in Blackhawk and Lynx helicopters outfitted with night vision goggles."
How does one survive such an ordeal?
"You look for food in garbage pails, tins, pizza boxes," said Lane. "You run in and out of the forest, and you run in figure eights to avoid detection. You might climb up and down both sides of a fence, jumping it again and again to throw off the dogs. Some of the soldiers on the course cheat - they get rides, sleep in barns and what have you. But I would say to myself, 'My grandfather did this, and he was really being hunted. He would have been killed by the Nazis if he were caught. It was life or death for him.' I thought, 'For me, this is like playing Boy Scouts.'"
Speaking of the traits it takes to make it in the SAS, Lane said, "It is a long training course. There is no way to substitute the mental pressure of operations, so to substitute for that they use sleep deprivation. They want men who make rational decisions. You need phenomenal personal skills. They want humility, not arrogance within a team. An SAS man must go through jungle training in Brunei, demolitions training and then get his parachute wings. Then there is also a change in lifestyle and the move to Herreford. The SAS men are not like Arnold Schwarzenegger as characterized in the movies. An SAS team must have smart men, quick thinkers with a variety of skills."
Lane spoke of the new line of thinking which now dominates the British armed forces. He called this paradigm the "strategic corporal."
The actions of that strategic corporal are direct, Lane said.
"Think of how quickly news can circle the globe. It goes on CNN and around the Internet. But in the military, there is a long chain of command. From NATO HQ on down to the platoon in the field. There is a lot of pressure on the individual soldier. The actions of one soldier in Cyprus or Northern Ireland could affect the entire British army. We need soldiers who can think for themselves. This makes a commander's job easier. We want to make the most of individual strengths.
"In the British Army, the officers do the same tasks as the enlisted men, but they must do them to a higher standard. The NCOs are the spine and backbone of the army. The officers are the brains. If there is a casualty here on Panther Cub, we need Sgt. Thomson to sort things out. The same applies in Northern Ireland. In the Ops room, someone must take down messages. If he takes down the message incorrectly, it could mean life or death."
Speaking about political correctness in the British army, Lane said, "We haven't got time to hold hands. It's not that we are not sensitive to the issues of others. We are impartial to religion, race and sexual preference. We do our own jobs. We have soldiers here from Australia, Fiji, Mauritius, Scotland, Northern Ireland and an Afrikaner. If you are good at your job, you get along fine."
But war is filled with twists and turns and issues that vex the soul, said Lane.
"However, a woman being tortured or raped in a POW camp would seriously undermine my ability to withhold information. Don't think women should serve in the front lines. They create life, carry life. We all know women are towers of strength. Look at Margaret Thatcher and Joan of Arc. But daddy's little girl must never come back home in a body bag.
"It is standard operating procedure, tactically during an attack: Leave man behind if injured and pick up later. You put a woman in that scenario; it would change the tempo of attack - there is still that chivalry. Yet women tend to be very analytical, and we use female soldiers to search other female suspects in Northern Ireland. This is quite helpful."
As a Jungle Jedi, Lane was tasked to teach the soldiers and the visiting American journalist everything there was to know about surviving in the jungle. Having traveled extensively through the jungles of Thailand, Burma, Laos and Cambodia, I was already familiar with many of the techniques of the Jungle Jedis. The first rule of the jungle is to learn that everything is against you. The heat, animals, snakes and the sheer denseness are just a few of the obstacles. Line-of-sight lasers don't work well in the jungle. Since Belize has no national radar, finding downed aircraft, even with a transponder, can be difficult.
"We teach the soldiers how to make fire, two kinds of killing traps, two catching traps, how to make a bow and arrow, how to purify salt water into drinkable water (in a steel drum placed over a fire with a connecting hose, it turns out). This is the Betty Ford detox center out here. It is a great place to get fit and well," said Lane.
Lane also explained the importance of each and every piece of gear a soldier brings with him into the jungle.
"I carry a Global Positioning System device, IV drops to keep someone alive, a 9mm pistol, grenades - including smokers - a Claymore mine and a machete made by a local in Borneo. I carry all that in my web gear. It weighs about 40 pounds, but it is equally distributed, " he said. (In the British Army there is only one Claymore per section, while in the Australian army, each man carries a Claymore).
Taped to Lane's machete sheathe was a small green box that served as his survival kit.
"In the survival kit, I keep a razor and magnet, a knife with serrated edge, hooks for fly fishing, a condom which will carry two liters of water, a lighter, candle, constipation and dysentery pills, and water purification tablets. Every item must count."
Lovable characters, lovable moments
When I look back on my time with the RGWB, I will always remember it as my last time of innocence, for shortly after I returned to home to New York from the jungle training in Belize, the World Trade Center terrorist attack occurred.
I'll never forget how Armstrong and I talked about the best way to teach kindergarten children how to color, or how he told me about the time SAS soldiers slapped him around during "Operation Lame Duck," a counterterrorism exercise. I'll remember when I showed Grist how to take a burr out of his hand with a sterilized needle (I used them to pop the plethora of blood blisters on my feet), instead of using his giant Rambo knife.
 LoBaido in demolition training
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I'll remember blowing things to kingdom come with Color Sgt. Willam Arbuthnot of the Assault Pioneers, the man I called "P-4 Willy." Arbuthnot was my demolitions mentor. Using the 400-volt shrike box, electric fuses and P-4 explosive - along with petrol - we created giant fireballs that shook the camp to its very core. P-4 Willy was attached to an Irish unit, and as such, he wore a green clover on his boonie hat - a symbol I knew well from growing up eating Lucky Charms cereal. Arbuthnot taught me everything from A to Z about handling explosives.
I'll remember how the men asked me to compare the RGBW with the other military forces I had lived and trained with in South Korea, South Africa and elsewhere. I'll remember how they laughed at my impersonations of the Simpsons (Apu, Moe and Chief Wiggam) and South Park (Kenny and Cartman) while at the same time lamenting American materialism. John Humphries, an Irish reservist, also lamented the moral decline he is currently seeing in Ireland: "You see 13-year-olds having babies and pushing carriages down the street."
I'll also remember how the RGBW's tribalism led to a fight with the rival Green Jackets (who recruit more than a share of soccer hooligans around Liverpool. It was members of the Green Jackets who killed a Norwegian tourist in Cyprus with a shovel for declining to have sex with them) and put more than a few of them in the hospital and jail or both.
I'll remember telling Maj. Brown to take the lid off of a beverage container in order to get the last of the liquid within. "It's easier that way, sir," I said. He laughed when he could have gotten mad, took off the lid and said with a self-effacing laugh, "Old habits die hard." At that point, I could really see what a good man he was - a real leader - and just why the men respected him so much. It was impossible to find even one soldier who would utter anything negative about the man.
I'll remember how a few of the soldiers joked about how they'd pulled down Prince William's bathing costume during a game of water polo long ago. (I told them, "I used to play water polo, but then my horse drowned.")
I'll remember how Johnson - who will soon marry his lovely Danielle - wistfully said, "Wow. In all my years in the army, you're the first person who ever took my picture."
I'll remember the soldier who was evacuated from camp for "snake fright" (he'd sworn he'd actually been bitten, but wasn't), another evacuee who'd swallowed the tab of a Coke can, and a third who needed shots in the bum after sitting on a less-than-immaculate latrine.
I'll remember how I jumped up in the middle of the night and grabbed my machete, thinking the jaguar had come to get me, only to discover it was just Thomson snoring very loudly.
I'll never forget the story they told about one of their comrades who had "fallen in love" with a local Belizean prostitute and offered to marry her and bring her back to the UK. All of the soldiers in the section went to the brothel and had relations with her to "sort out their mate's crazy idea."
Yet perhaps my finest and most enduring memory came at my goodbye party at a nearby camp called Augustine. Johnson and Humphries generously bought me a few beers, and there were bottles of rum to hand out. A soldier named Clarence handed out cigars and kept everyone laughing, although I couldn't understand a single joke because of their accents. But none of that seemed to matter. It is the esprit de corps of the RGBW that cannot be defined, quantified or even imagined unless you have lived it and breathed it. They were very open and kind and quick-witted soldiers with a real zest for life and outstanding sense of humor.
On the night of my send-off party, everyone was well in the bag late in the evening. I noticed one soldier who had his foot wrapped up in a gauze bandage. This led to a real course in the British soldier's sense of humor I'd missed out on - even though I grew up watching "Benny Hill."
"What happened to your foot?" I inquired.
Within five seconds, about ten different soldiers replied with their own lewd comments.
"He cut it with a machete."
"He stepped on a scorpion."
And several other responses not repeatable in a family newssite.
We were all hysterical with laughter. When we finally calmed down I took out my notebook and pen and said, "Can all of you repeat that?"
Then the same soldiers spoke again all at once.
"Oh, that's too bad!"
"How are you feeling?"
"Buck up, old boy."
"Here! Here!"
"Do get well."
"God bless you, old chap!"
When it was time to leave I told the men how much I enjoyed meeting them and thanked them for their hospitality. I had finally arrived at the end of the rainbow - a trek in search of the British military spirit and tradition I'd first encountered while retracing the journey of Lawrence of Arabia through Lebanon and Jordan. But I was tired and exhausted. I smelled terrible and was longing for the comforts of home. I knew that once I got back to civilization, I would feel more than a twinge of guilt about my hot shower and clean sheets.
And just like that, my adventure with the RGBW was over. I have interacted with many militaries and special forces - from South Korea to South Africa and from Lebanon to Laos. But if I had to choose one unit to join, it would be the RGBW. As an American, however, I am not allowed to join. Yet while my jungle experience is over, for those eager to join, new adventures await in Afghanistan and the four corners of the world.
Newsy Links:
I have over the past two weeks forward quite abit of News Information from outside the USA sources. I have ceased doing that as it is creating an e-mail overload on many. I will supply below my source links and they are very good and quite accurate and much more informative than our own Newspapers of late. They are updated hourly.
http://www.afgha.com/index.php This is the official News Website of The Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.
http://www.afghan-network.net/News This is the Afghan News Website
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_411686.html?menu=news.latestheadlines World Headline News
http://ww2.pstripes.osd.mil/ Stars and Stripes
http://www.calder.net/news/world/afghanistan.htm Is Like One Stop shopping
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001350025-2001372097,00.html The London Times
http://www.observer.co.uk/ The Observer. An excellent UK Newspaper with a special section for
Afghanistan
http://www.newsmax.com/ Another good source.
http://www.wnd.com/ Another excellent British source
Most of these have Archives you can search and many other links to other News sources.
A Story Or Two:
Moscow (Idaho), Marines, Flargs and Songs
Hi Guys:
I got this from a friend whom I trust. I don't know the other people involved or named but I added it anyhow because I liked it.
It reminds me a bit of one of my favorite movie scenes: it was in the movie, Casa Blanca, set in Rick's bar in the city of that name in WW II. The German members of The Armistice Commission in Morroco start to sing Deutschland Uber Alles. The non-German patrons are dicomfited. Then Rick (Humphry Bogart) orders the band to strike up the Marsellaise. Guys sing with tears streaming down their faces. Women are overcome. The Germans are drowned out. The German major closes Rick down. Rick doesn't care. A wonderful scene.
The US had just invaded North Africa when the movie came out. It was a grand success (I have watched it half a dozen times since on late TV). So was the invasion - the Allies took the city of Casa Blanca, itself. The movie was a morale builder because the Free French were our allies at the time.
In any case, the story below is a morale booster (I wish I had been there to see it). Read on.
Ron
GOD BLESS AMERICA!
I arrived in Moscow, Idaho (Home of Idaho University one block from Best Western) and went to dinner at Best Western.
About 85-100 people were in the Restaurant. I'm at a table for about 5 minutes when this "Group" comes in (20 people). They have Anti-War Picket Signs with them. It appears that two of these demonstrators are Professors.
They all sit at a large round table behind me and begin to talk very loudly about US atrocities in Afghanistan. One of the "Professors" stands up and gives a brief talk about how the "US is famous for atrocities" and Afghanistan will be no different. One of the students asked a question about Viet Nam POW's. The "Professor" makes a comment about how that was only US propaganda about poor treatment of POW's.
OK - I'm really mad now and I jump up and go over to their table. (In retrospect - Over the entrance to the Restaurant is a huge American Flag. On each table is an American Flag and a small hand painted sign "United We Stand".
I excuse myself and ask the Professor if I can ask him a question. He says yes. I said that he appears to be of age to have served in Viet Nam, and asked him if he had served. His answer was, "NO - I defended this Campus and told the truth to the students." I then asked if he remembered what he was doing on February 16, 1969. When he answered, "Of course not -- that was too long ago," I responded, "Really, I remember what I was doing. That was the second day of my capture and I had been standing in a bamboo cage for 24 hours with water up to my chest." I then said "Sir, your comments about how POW's in Nam were treated are a lie and I personally say to you, you are a ******* liar, as you never were there. I was a POW and they did not treat our POWs humanly. The only other person I have ever heard make the statements like you have is Jane Fonda. Is she telling the truth and not me?" He stood up and after about 10 seconds said, "Jane is a great patriot and I cannot visualize her lying." With that, I reached over and grabbed the small American Flag and United We Stand sign and said, "I'm taking this back to my table where it can be
appreciated."
No one said a word to me as I started to walk back. However after a few seconds, people started standing up and applauding all around the restaurant. Two men got up from a table across the room and walked over to me. The first identified himself as former US Marine Lieutenant Flynn and the other man was former Gunnery Sergeant Graboski. In a loud voice after introducing themselves, Lt. Flynn said they were former Marine Guards at a US Embassy. He then said, "We are over at this table to defend the US Flag from all foes, both foreign and domestic." They then sat down and asked their Waitress to bring their meals over to my table. A few more minutes went by with loud comments from the "Anti-War" table.
All of a sudden, "Gunny" Sergeant Graboski stood up and in a loud voice said "All of you heard what the President said the other night. You are either with the United States or you are with the terrorists." He then said, "Please stand and join me in God Bless America." As he started singing, people all around the restaurant stood up and joined in. Several of the students at the "Anti-War" table also stood up half way through the song and joined in. Both Professors and the majority of the students remained seated and refused to sing. At the end there was a great ovation. The Manager came up to my table. (He and his staff came out from the kitchen and sang.) He thanked me for what I started and then went over to the Anti-War table and asked them to leave. "I will pay for what you have had so far but I cannot in good conscience serve you -- get out now!!"
One of the Professors then made a remark "Well, we are not going to pay one dime for how shabbily we have been treated." As they were leaving, one customer stood up and said, "Manager, here is $5 towards their bill, anyone else willing to chip in to get this scum out of here?"
All over the restaurant, people stood up reaching for their wallet and saying, "I'll chip in" The Manager, in tears said, "My family is from Poland, I am now a citizen and am so proud of what I see tonight." He started crying and a couple of the waitresses helped him into the kitchen.
The two Marines and I were there for about another 20 minutes and finished our meal. The Hostess came up and showed us more than $100 dollars that all the other tables had told their Waitresses to give towards our bill. I thanked her but said I could not take the money. Lt. Flynn suggested donating it in the Restaurant's name to the New York Relief Fund, so I guess that's what will happen.
I just can't believe how Americans are coming together now. Just thought you would like to hear how the rest of the country is reacting to what happened!!!
This Soldier Cries
By Charles E. DeClue
Some people may ask a soldier, for his true story of War, and not a bunch of lies.
But some soldiers don't like to talk about it, because it brings tear to their eyes.
His wounds run deep because of war, and for his part of it, he may despise.
Maybe that is why this soldier cries.
Now a lot of times this soldier, because of dreaming about the war, doesn't sleep at night. For he is afraid of reviewing the things that happened, in each and every fire fight. This soldier can't put the war behind him, no matter how hard he tries.
Maybe that is why this soldier cries.
A soldier has caused his enemy to fall, one by one in defeat. He has also seen a fellow soldier, lying dead at his feet. The ground soaking up the blood, where his buddy lies.
Maybe that is why this soldier cries.
And when a soldier is left behind, and no one knows what has happened to him. It makes this soldier feel guilty, and haunts him time and time again. For he doesn't know if this fellow soldier lives or dies.
Maybe that is why this soldier cries.
Now this soldier made it back home safely, and why he doesn't understand. There were better men than him that died on foreign land. Now this soldier has many thoughts that common people just couldn't possibly realize.
Maybe that is why this soldier cries.
For in a war, a soldier is maimed or dies, both night and day. This is the price of war, and someone has to pay. So this soldier has to look to the heavens, to whom is most holy and wise For God is the only one, that can forgive him of his deeds, and hold him..
WHEN THIS SOLDIER CRIES.
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,
For he today that sheds his blood with me, Shall be my brother."
-Wm Shakespeare-
Well guys Until next month..keep a smile on your face and your skids out of the TreesJ--Ron