R.B. Miller Stepping Off

This is a very specific list of wars. I'd be bummed out if I'd fought in Kosovo, Syria, Somalia, or many other places where there have been conflicts, but who can complain about a road named for his three specific wars? Note that they didn't pick the usual (for Oregon) one-lane or even two-lane road, but a two-lane road with temporary third lane in the middle for turns.

Stepping Off frequently lauds men who showed up for battle, irrespective of the outcome, and frequently criticizes journalists for hyping battles beforehand but minimizing them after the fact. The men who landed on Omaha Beach 75 years ago were brave. So were the men who landed on Utah, Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches. I knew a WWII vet who spent his whole enlistment chasing around the Pacific trying to catch up with the ship he was assigned to. Would he have fought just as bravely as the men at Normandy? I think so. I'm not diminishing the accomplishments of the men who took Omaha Beach. I've visited the cemetery there, spending many hours wandering the beach, rows of crosses, and the chapel. Designers of memorials alternate between nihilism and grandiosity, but the Normandy cemetery is perfect. Visit it if you haven't. Visit it again if you have. The men who fought there had no access to these: To say anything of these: They fought and d...

As described previously, the majority of my publications were short and in a particular section of the Weekly World News . In distant second place are a series of longer essays (usually 2000-3000 words) in the Marine Corps Gazette . Most were entered in writing contests, and I recently won my ~4th 2nd Place or Honorable Mention, not bad for an enlisted grunt. This was my first (and, by the contest rules, last) entry in the Hogaboom Essay Contest. Look for my article in approximately the October issue, and expect the excerpt below to have one fewer comma. By the way, contrary to the implication, I won $500, not a bad consolation prize. My least favorite consolation prize was for a writing contest in Outdoor Life  (something about how being a lousy hunter made me a better Marine). First Prize was a $22,000 guided elk and moose hunt in Canada. Second Prize was a cheap pocket knife normally given to subscribers to induce them to subscribe for another year. I won second. ...

The windier your country is, the more likely Marines are to invade it. I've taken this same basic picture at numerous base camps across the Middle East and Afghanistan, over several decades: The first response is always to make the johns more bottom-heavy: Occasionally, this is enough to prevent a blow-down: Every few weeks, this happens: Then the johns blow over again: After Marines have occupied a country for at least 10 years, they try this: As with most things, we overdo it:

I just came across this picture from 2010. At the time, I'd warned colleagues that Bigfoot had been spotted at Camp Dwyer in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Nine years later, I still haven't figured out what he was doing there, or whose side he was fighting for.

Although Gary commented about so-called "birth control glasses" during his time at Parris Island, none of this made the final cut in Stepping Off . Too many authors have covered this old joke in too much detail (i.e., that the glasses are so ugly that you'll never get to step one in becoming a parent: sex). This picture shows glasses fabricated by the federal government in 2010, almost three years after the first iPhone's release. The quality speaks for itself. I'm in the camp that's somewhat cynical when the government announces that it has a better business plan for the latest company to run afoul of lawmakers. The actual BC glasses at Parris Island were black, more of a horn-rimmed style, and much chunkier looking. They also came with a "brain strap" that tightened across the back of one's skull. Basically, the strap allowed them to fit glasses universally, with no regard to head shape: no matter what, the brain strap would hold them i...

Route 7 runs north from Nasiriyah to Al Kut. We spent about half of our time getting to Baghdad on Route 7. I was pretty happy with my early-2003-vintage camera, but remember spending over $200 for four 128 MB SD cards. Yes, NAND memory has come down in price in 16 years. If you think you've seen mud in America, go to war. It turns out that either Iraq or Afghanistan can provide mud and dust storms like you've never seen domestically. These 7-ton trucks are actually quite good, but you can still need two tracked vehicles to pull them out. This is just some shimmering toxic waste in Nasiriyah. If you think First World countries are polluted, go down two notches.

Staying on the Dear Dotti theme, I tried to get another picture of her during the Iraq war, but failed. For the duration of the WWN's existence, Dotti claimed to be in her 20s, so 50 probably wasn't a stretch. Unfortunately, she only printed the letter. For today's Marine usage tip, "Marine" should always be capitalized, though I'll give Dotti a pass. This doesn't go for soldier, sailor, or airman, but try not capitalizing Marine around a sergeant major or drill instructor and see what happens. Various style manuals say this capitalization isn't correct -- guess if we care? One of my great regrets from the Iraq war is never finding out which of my letters were printed and which were not. Okay, I disappeared for 17 months, blah, blah, blah, two young kids at home, blah, blah, blah, but my wife wasn't able to check every single issue of the WWN for Dear Dotti letters. I have no idea what happened to the letters below. ...

Whenever I visited a new country, my goal was to get a letter published in the Dear Dotti column of the Weekly World News (1979-2007). Prior to enlisting, I'd had many letters published from the U.S., and one from France. The highlight of my literary career was getting this letter published in the run-up to Desert Storm: Okay, the letter wasn't actually true -- I'd kill any Saudi trying to take my Dotti picture -- but it prompted her to send me a picture, something I'd failed at many times previously. It's hard to articulate why I first enlisted, but the 1991-2019 portion of my career reflected my pride that Dotti was behind me, supporting what I did and wanting me to Kick Butt. One usage error that Marines rarely tolerate is being called soldiers. Marines aren't soldiers. Soldiers are in the Army. Whenever a newspaper -- even the Wall Street Journal , Washington Post , or New York City Times -- gets a picture of men in uniform, they label the...

Two tenets of feminism that don't play nicely together are: - Men and women are exactly the same. - Women are better than men. There is overwhelming contradictory evidence for the first -- look down -- and conclusive confirmatory evidence for the second. A current example was highlighted recently in a  Marine Corps Times  article. What percent of pervs who plant video cameras in bathrooms are women? 0.1%? 0.01%? What is the ratio of pornography aimed at male consumption to that aimed at female consumption? 100:1? 1000:1? More? In Stepping Off , Eileen is never afraid to identify differences between the sexes. Here, she's using a restroom along a marathon route: I almost abandoned my plan due to another reminder of man’s foulness. Though I was miles behind the winners, only 2% of runners beat me—a few hundred people. Near the 19-mile mark, on a peninsula with sparse crowds, I had to pee. At most stops, johns fill with spectators. Here, some were open; I jumped in...

From the beginning of time until a few years ago, it was considered normal to hate your enemy during wars. Okay, there were a few incidents where Americans and Krauts sang Silent Night together before killing each other the next day, but for the most part, armies have hated one another. Is that bad? The above recruiting poster is among the Marines' most famous. Wouldn't this be considered a hate crime today if posted on a college campus? I'm sure that 100 years ago, my Hun ancestors in Wisconsin didn't take it the wrong way. It was a war. Watch even the most sanitized, bloodless WWII movie, e.g., Sands of Iwo Jima . Racial caricatures abound. Characters speak of Japs, Nips, little lemon-colored characters, etc. And that was made a few years after the war. T.R. Fehrenbach claimed that (paraphrasing) most Indian tribes called themselves by a word that meant "The true human beings" in their language, as if everyone else wasn't. So give G...

From Stepping Off : 1. Ponch is a haircut Nazi. He continually orders haircuts. Our only clippers cost $12 at an off-limits PX for bigwigs. Americans use 120V electricity. Foreigners, their cars sipping liters of diesel and their foreheads flattened by soccer balls, use 240V electricity. Ponch plugged ten sets of U.S. clippers into 240V outlets. Each burned up within minutes, but before catching fire, they cut hair really fast. Americans will do anything to plug 120V devices into 240V outlets: The result is always the same: Sorry, 1stSgt, but you voided the warranty:

Wait, no, that was Saddam. Still, it baffles me when people describe Jordan as an ally. From what I can tell, this is how they've spent my lifetime: 6 days: trying to annihilate World Jewry 53.98 years: shipping ammunition to Iraq Between the Gulf War and the Iraq invasion, I've seen plenty of unlabeled enemy ordnance, but I've never seen labeled ordnance that wasn't from Jordan. This was typical: Here's another theory about WMDs: maybe we never found any because the whole country was floor-to-ceiling artillery shells. Elementary schools were filled with artillery shells. Foyers were filled with artillery shells. Sports complexes were filled with artillery shells. If one in 100,000 shells contained nerve gas, that would still have been an enormous arsenal. I'm not exonerating the Americans here. In the months after Baghdad fell, nobody came to inspect any of these caches with Geiger counters or gas chromatographs. When we left this posit...

A common misconception in war is that, worst case, an ally is useless. A common misconception in business is that, worst case, HR or IT is useless. In fact, it's easy for a group or country to have negative value. Consider this passage from Stepping Off in the 1991 Gulf War: “Tomaso, you missed it. The BBC just discussed that Wop pilot who surrendered. Lucky he had the white flag, or they’d have shot him, and he wouldn’t be on TV denouncing his country.” “Well, they didn’t cover Luftwaffe pilots surrendering since they were busy strafing refugee camps. Qatar sent more troops than you Nazis did.” “Remember the rumor that five Italian planes turned back with mechanical problems and the sixth was shot down? That was false.” “See!” “The BBC said seven turned back and the eighth was shot down.” “And you’re a Nazi.” Remember that the Italians were assigned a mission. It wasn't the most important mission, or it wouldn't have been assigned to Italians, bu...

Okay, it turned out that weapons of mass destruction were overrated, but this doesn't imply a conspiracy. When the largest post office within 100 miles doesn't have stamps for sale (just happened to me), do you jump to a conspiracy theory, or do you mutter "nitwits"? Bad news: the post office and the CIA draw from the same hiring pool. The figure above is from the one lab notebook I saw in Iraq (a few days before Baghdad fell in 2003). For non-physicists, let me assure you that very bad things happen when Uranium 235 captures a neutron and decides to split into barium, krypton, energy, and more neutrons. I am a physicist, but if you don't trust me, ask the Hiroshimans about this reaction. I believe that my commanders honestly thought Saddam had WMDs, at least of the chemical variety. Why else would they have dressed us like this (bright green chemical warfare suits)? In my next installment, I'll explain why you should blame the Turks and Jordan...

Oh, this is just a picture of an Iraqi riding a donkey. Anyway, about leadership, Gary explains in a number of places the differences between Marine first sergeants & sergeants major (leadership track) and master sergeants & master gunnery sergeants (technical/too dorky track).      All first sergeants act like assholes; only some really are. Gunnies can become master sergeants, first sergeants, or (about half) neither. Some gunnies pull their names, desiring to retire, or knowing they’re uncompetitive. Some want master sergeant, though it’s less prestigious. Tankers might want to stay as such and avoid the headaches first sergeants endure. Promotable gunnies requesting 1stSgt are ranked for the primary Marine leadership traits: loudness and meanness . Those excelling at both become first sergeants . Those excelling at neither become master sergeants. Mixed cases can go either way. But remember: Gary (who is neither loud nor mean) admits that he's ...

Is your cover meant to be disrespectful to the Marine Corps? No, it's meant to be disrespectful to the Middle East. I love the Marine Corps. Why the poop? I grew up with pet birds. They can crap several times per minute. I also grew up in the D.C. area, which has a high concentration of pigeons and statues. For my whole career, I thought, "What must the back of the EGA look like after 200 years?" Most animals can control themselves, bowelwise. What's up with birds? Scientifically speaking, birds are uni-hole-ular -- their poop and pee are the same thing. I think they even use the same hole for mating. This is speculation, but if your job was flying, you probably wouldn't want to carry around even an extra gram once you were done with it. Does your eagle have unusually good aim? He seems to have missed Israel. Good observation. How would that scene arise? Say you're behind the EGA. The DI gives the commands, "Right FACE,...