Our Oldest (Danielle, 18) has given birth to Kalvin Douglas (no theological implications, I think she just liked the name) and he is almost 7lbs.  Kalvin came on July 29th at 1:30 am at a hospital here (or actually there, in my case) in Louisville.  It has been difficult to be absent at such a critical time in Danielle's life and it feels as if I am just a spectator in all of it.  Tracy has had to handle quite a bit on her own and has done a great job while I am away.   There are certainly a lot of new realities that I am going to come home to in September.  When the Army talks about reintegration issues, this is probably part of what they are addressing. 

The new mom is healthy and was able to have an epidural for the delivery, which makes all the difference in the world.  She had the baby fairly quickly for her first baby and there does not seem to be any complications with Mom or the baby.  She will be coming home from the hospital tomorrow and I am sure that her maternal instincts are starting to kick into high gear. However, I have not quite gotten my head around being a grandfather at 37 and it will probably take some time to get used to the idea.  I am sure that my Fear and Trembling post about buying the convertible is probably starting to make more sense now.

Kennedy hall has two elevators and one up button.  Every time I leave my quarters or return to my quarters on the fifth floor I push the call button for the elevator and try to guess which door will open first.  I have been tracking this for the past 5 weeks and I incorrectly choose which door over 80% of the time.  With this large sample I should be approaching the 50% by now but I miss the mark over 80% of the time!  What bizarre convergence of chance and human effort has conspired against me?  I am indeed vexed and surely accursed.  

One of the narratives that liberals have been pushing on the news programs is that we need to get out of Iraq because our Army has been "decimated."  Considering that this is the word that is always used it is obviously a DNC talking point.  Where as I agree that this conflict has been hard on troops, families and resources, there is an other side of the story that is not being told on the news programs.  The past 6 years has pushed the military to make some serious changes in doctrine, training, solider care, tactics and weapon systems and this is a good thing.

The Army that I joined in 1988 was geared to fight a conventional war on the plains of Europe with the military of the Warsaw pact.  When I went through basic training, there were no drill sergeants that had combat experience (before Desert Storm and after Vietnam) and as we trained the training was theoretical with no significant connection (psychologically) with what we would actually be doing in the National Guard.  The National Guard in the eighties and early nineties was not exactly the most high speed organization and we seemed to be in a constant holding pattern with little to do of major significance.  In fact, I left the National Guard because I was not being used to my potential.

Today's Army is an entirely different Army.  My training here at Chaplain school has been conducted by NCO's and Chaplains that have all see combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the difference is stark.  When we do the low crawl in the sand, get smoked at PT or discuss issues such as Just War theory, there is a greater sense of seriousness and urgency to the training.  This urgency makes all the difference in the world and leaves me with the sense that my efforts are not wasted.  Even the National Guard, with its new role in this war, has changed considerably.  The previous Army doctrine relegated the National Guard to support roles in major conflicts with the bulk of combat operations left to the active duty component.  The modular concept that the Army is moving to has changed all that and many of the new Brigade Combat teams are based in the Reserves and National Guard. 

Another major change is that the Army has finally understood that there is an important civil component to what we are doing in Southwest Asia.  During the Vietnam war the Army resisted this role and the consequences were obvious.  The shift of doctrinal focus can be seen in the recent improvements in the Iraq security situation.  The surge made a difference to be sure, but the surge without a radical shift in mind set from the initial invasion phase would have produced a much different result.   The Army values that I spoke of in the last post are an important part of this change in that the American Soldier must separate, no matter how difficult it might be, from the civilian population we are there to help and the insurgents that are set on creating chaos.  It is not a simple task in such an ambiguous context (like Vietnam or Iraq), but when our commanders send out combat troops to mix with the general populace on humanitarian missions, it is for the sake of the soldier as much as it is for the Iraqis.  These humanitarian mission put a human face to those whom we are committed to helping.  Americans have something wonderful to offer to the world, we just need to be remind ourselves of that when times get tough.  Otherwise the horrors of war make us into something more like those who we are fighting and not defenders of the values found in our Constitution.   Are there "values" in war?  Many would disagree, but I have to believe that there are and it is for this reason I serve my country and the men and women who serve in the Armed Forces.  

Last January at the State Chaplain conference we discussed the Army tradition of the "dining out" (spouses included) and the "dining in"  (soldiers only) and it sounded like a fun event.  Last night our chaplain school had our own "dining out" as a training event and I had a really good time. These events are a gathering of "the mess"  in which there is a semi-formal dinner with specific rules and regulations that must be followed.  There is a the President of the Mess and the Vice-President of the Mess.  The officers of the mess can ask permission of Mr. Vice to address the President and call out their fellow officers when they violate one of the many and seemingly random rules of the mess.  Officers that violate one of the rules (like elbows on the table before the smoking lamp is lit) must take the punishment of the President.  This punishment is usually in the form of paying a fine or drinking from the Grog.  In most units the Grog is some sort of nasty alcoholic concoction but for the chaplain corp is was a non-alcoholic  mix of tomato juice, iced tea, coffee, molasses, ginseng, vinegar, hot sauce and the Vice Presidents used sock filled with dry ice.  All of this was served in a specially prepared toilet bowl.  All the ingredients represented the armed conflicts that the Chaplain Corps has served during our long history (1775).  

Our event was held at the NCO club and even our Chief of Chaplains, Major General Carver (Southern Alumnus, Hooah!)  was in attendance and addressed the Corps at the end of the evening. I had great time and even busted out my friend Hans Ruska.  Hans lost a button off his dress blues and made the mistake of telling me about it as we were in the lobby waiting to go through the reception line!  Once I was confident about the protocol in addressing the President I gave a mini-speech about the shame that Hans was bring upon the Army, the Chaplain Corp and his country by being out of uniform.  Upon inspection he was given an opportunity to explain his missing button and you can avoid punishment if your  story is colorful and dramatic enough, but Hans replied that his "Seatbelt pulled it off on the way over. "  Not good enough Hans!  The President then required him to high step to the grog bowl,  salute the President, ask permission to refresh himself from the Grog,  spin around as he did the "I'm a little teapot" dance, drink the Grog, curtsy to the Vice President and then move smartly to his seat.  This was a training event so the Grog portion of the evening did not last too long, but it was great all the same.  Then again, I did not have to drink from the Grog.  Hans said he was going to try and bust me out on something, but I promised that I would not go down easy and the accuser can have the tables turned on him pretty quickly! 

After the official part of the evening was over, there was a DJ and as the picture will show, there are quite a few chaplains who can do the Electric Slide.  A few of the chaplains had their wives there but Tracy has her hands full at home and I will have to wait till she comes out for my graduation to bring her to her first official event.  I can see where these events are good at building Esprit de Corps and are a release from them tremendous pressure that modern day Army units face all the time.  I am quite sure that one of these events in a regular line unit has a  different ending than the non-alcoholic Chaplain event but this certainly gave us the basics.  I am impressed that the Chaplain School has done so much to train us in the finer points of life as an Officer and a Chaplain in the Army and not just the technical aspects.  As with all organizations, there are many unwritten rules and protocols.  Protocol and tradition are important to the Army and as much as things have changed, they still maintain continuity across different eras. 

Low crawling in the sand wearing body armor is not exactly a fertile condition for deep thoughts.  Now that we are spending more time in study and the academic side of chaplaincy, I have had more opportunity to take it all in and give some considerations to some of my observations.  One of the most stark differences that I have noticed about the present United States Army in comparison to the United States Army of 1988, is an unapologetic focus on values.  I realize that values is a politically loaded word that has lost its meaning by overuse and abuse by political campaigns of all stripes, but that is what makes the Army's new focus all the more improbable and surprising.  In an era that is marked by a shift towards moral relativism and a hesitance towards anything that seems dogmatic,  the Army has replaced "The Three General Orders" with the Warrior Ethos and The Army Values as the mantras that all recruits recite throughout training. 

What are the Army Values?  Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity and Personal Courage  (here is a link that expands upon each value).  At first blush I believe that most people in my generation would look at this list and be suspicious of the message as the establishment's method of manipulation of young minds.  Those of us born in the 70's and 80's were raised in a culture of marketing and whether it is the Church,  MTV,  energy drinks, or the Army, we are media savvy enough to understand when our demographic is being targeted. Ashamedly, this was my first response upon seeing the Army  Values posters that have been hung in facilities around the world.  Over time I have have come to understand that these values that are being promoted during a time of sustained warfare and that they are far from a marketing campaign.  They are a response to the need of our soldiers to hold firm to foundational truths in a conflict that is marked by confusion and ambiguity.

Arguments can be made about the definition of these values and I am certain that although some consensus can be created, there will always be significant disagreements.  The point is that in our modern day the argument is not the centered on the definition of a value such as honor, but rather whether honor even exists.  These arguments are not new, but never has such a large percentage of the population used them as their default position.  When you dig deeper under the simplistic polls of "how many people believe in God" you will find that at their core, many people are relativist that believe that truth is defined by each individual person. Materialistic Naturalist are forced to discount honor as a biochemical response to help propagate the species and Utilitarians ultimately reduce honor to a moral calculus based upon the outcome of a moral decision.  The Army has started to talk about honor in a time when honor (and other values) are viewed, by some, as chauvinist, racist and bourgeois relics of a time gone past. 

I cannot claim to have the market cornered on the definition of loyalty, duty or respect.  It is more difficult yet to understand how they are applied when you are faced with the fog of war against people who have little value for life and you are faced with almost impossible morale dilemmas.  What I can say with certainty is that there is such a thing as honor, duty, loyalty, respect, selfless service, integrity and personal courage and if I can posses these qualities in ever greater measure, then I will be blessed.  Let the debates on definitions begin, but to deny that these values and other absolutes exist outside of the mind of men is a defeat before the struggle even begins.  Regarding my initial reaction to these Army Values,  I mourn the cynicism and worldliness that I still have 15 years after receiving Christ and wonder how much more lives within me.

On an end note, I did a quick Google search (after I wrote the post above) on Army values and quickly found two articles that reflect the statements that I made concerning modern culture.  What I said has no empirical foundation and is anecdotal analysis, but am I wrong in my estimation of our national condition?   Discuss....

http://www.combatreform2.com/realarmyvalues.htm

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020902/hodes20020823

Now that we have moved into a classroom environment, the schedule is much more predictable.  In addition, we can now park near the school instead of "down the hill" (at which point we would march as a formation to class every day!).  This sounds insignificant, but the additional 15 minutes that it adds to my breakfast time, lunch time and dinner time gives me the opportunity to be a bit more deliberate and regimented about my calorie intake.  My success in dropping from 252 in December of 2006 to 207 in September of 2007 came from eating 5 or 6 well balanced (protein/fat/carbs) meals.  When I stopped this regime during the last semester of school, I put on 17 lbs and arrived at Chaplain School at 224.  I am currently at 213 and 24 lbs to meet weight without being taped and 33 for my ultimate goal of 180.

Last night I divided up my food into precisely measured Ziploc bags and I packed my lunch box with exactly 600 calories.  I ate a 300 calorie breakfast, I had a morning snack of 300 calories, a 400 calorie lunch, a 300 calorie afternoon snack and I will eat 160 calorie snack before bed tonight.  That is about 1800 calories for the day and I have found this to be a real sweet spot.  My blood sugar stays dead level all day so I do not get hungry or lethargic (especially during the PowerPoints!), I have plenty of energy for the Morning and Afternoon PT, and I have plenty of protein for muscle recovery (although not enough to bulk up, which is good, I am going for lean, not bulging).  Add a multivitamin, fish oil and a B supplement and I think I have a recipe for some serious and sustainable weight loss.  With the double PT I am looking at about 2.8 lbs of fat loss per week.

During the PT run this morning I took a full minute off of last weeks time and a full SIX minutes off of my May 29 time.  Blessedly it was raining hard for the second PT session and we all went to the gym where I ran on a tread mill for a solid thirty minutes at a moderate pace.  The treadmill was much easier on my legs than the asphalt (hardball in military lingo) and whenever I can go low impact to save me from pain and injury (muscle pain, cool,  joint pain, not cool).  My concern for the second PT sessions in the afternoon is the lack of recovery time.  PT every 12 hours is not good by any scientific research and when I have the opportunity to give a full on effort like this morning followed by a low impact tune up, I consider it a good day.  Tomorrow is "muscle failure" day, so I will probably try to go full on in the cool of the morning and then throttle back as much as I can without attracting the eye of the platoon sergeant in the afternoon. 

I have found a good running partner in Bill Farris and we have some agreed upon some goals for the PT test at the end of August. 13:36 is max for my age and I did a 16:20 this morning.  Is maxing the run in our sights?  Maybe! I can't see maxing the Push-ups and Sit-ups at 73 and 76, but if I am around the 185 mark by then it will be like taking the equivalent of a set of body armor off and the weight loss alone could be good for an extra 20 push-ups.  A shrinking of my belly area will certainly help in the sit-ups.  Half of my efforts seems to be compressing my spare tire when I move to the up position!  I am shooting for 75 points in each area which would give me a 250 out of 300, but I am not going to rule out a 100 in all three events.  As spunky as I feel right now, I just might do it!  I keep telling myself that a high PT score can be a matter of life or death in the places that I am bound to go to in the next few years.  We are playing for keeps these days, this is not your father's National Guard.

This picture was taken just as we were about to put on our berets (I am the third squad leader in that first column).  Now that we are done with the first phase we can wear the berets as a symbolic "rite of passage."  I have been wearing the beret back home for the past 6 months, so it was not really a big deal and the beret does not even keep the sun out of your eyes.  Most of our training moves into the classroom for the next two months and we will be pummeled with PowerPoints for 8 hours a day for the next eight weeks.  As tough as some of our task were during the initial phase,  they went by quick and kept us busy.  The jury is out on the next three phases.  Everyday I get a bit more homesick for the family and found myself envying the soldiers who were leaving after the initial phase. I have a webcam set up, but that just makes it worse in some ways. 

The pictures below are of the 1st platoon.  The funny thing is that despite the fact that we are all ministers, we all revert to 13 year old boys at summer camp.  The humor has taken a drastic turn towards the bawdy and passing gas at inopportune times has become an art form.  I hope this does not ruin the image that some of you may have about Chaplains.  We are soldiers too, after all, and I am sure that our respective wives are not surprised at this type of behavior.  They get to see the preacher behind closed doors and out of the pulpit.  We do have our limits, since we are ministers, and I have not even heard one comment about my mother!  We have established our own identity as a platoon as well and were overly excited about being the winning platoon in this mornings "Ultimate Frisbee" competition. 

Now we have a three and a half day break for the Fourth of July weekend and I was despondent at seeing many of the wives showing up for the weekend.  SIGH.  I will just sit in my room and mope for a few days until the new phases begins Monday.  There is just no way that Tracy can get away with all those kids that we have to take care of home.  I am hoping that she can come out for the last four days of Chaplain School and attend a seminar that they are putting on for the wives.  Like the church ministry, the Chaplain Corps is a family affair.  I have been seriously considering going on Active duty and Tracy needs some data to help her make an informed decision with me.  If everything goes as planned, my mom can stay with the kids, Tracy can fly out in September, and drive home with me after attending the Banquet.   

  My intention was to blog all the way through our trip to Disney world back in the first week of June, but this trip was filled from sun up to sun down with prepackaged and sanitized for our protection fun.  The original plan was for Tracy to take the kids to WDW while I was at Chaplain School, but K's orientation to her new school fell on the week that we planned for the family to go, so we quickly changed the plans to go before I left for Fort Jackson.  I am really glad that I got a chance to go with the family and I think that Tracy was glad that I was along to help!

The best thing that we did with this vacation was to buy a package deal from Disney.  For less than $3000 we got 4 nights and 5 days at the Disney Wilderness Campground.  We stayed in a great little cabin that had a fully stocked kitchen and a SEPERATE bedroom for Tracy and  I to sleep!  Whoo Hoo! The cabin was essentially a mobile home that had been dressed up as a cabin, but it was really nice and gave us more privacy and convenience  than a hotel room.  Our vacation package also came with 2 meals and a snack per day.  This last minute addition kept our budget from being blown.  A lunch for the 5 of us ran about $50 and the dinners were about $100 to $125 BEORE tipping.  The package deal let us just present our resort card and we could order anything we wanted off the menu.  A really good deal that I highly recommend.  The food was good, particularly the sit down dinners.

Our package included 4 days worth of tickets for the parks and we decided to go to Disney Studios, Magic Kingdom, Epcot and Typhoon Lagoon Water park.   Each park had its strengths but it was the general Kroencke consensus that EPCOT was a snoozer.  It was nice to have a more laid back day at Epcot than the other frenetically paced parks.  I think that my favorite was the first day when we went to Disney studios.  The rides were the best and it was the day that I found out that I would be going to Chaplain School after all.  I worked out the details of my new orders between the Indiana Jones Experience and the Star Wars presentation.  Then after that I dealt with an FRG issue while the kids had their chocolate shakes.  Other than those critical issues, I kept the business to a minimum.  I kept thinking about the eye rolls that my XOs wife was giving when I mentioned his Blackberry at the Marriage Retreat.

On the way too and on the way back we stopped at Tracy's folks to visit with them, her aunt and her great grandmother.  The family had a really good visit and we do not get to see them nearly as much as we would like to since they live in Florida and a trip for all of us is a major undertaking.  I posted all of the vacation picture in my album area for those friends and family who would like to download copies.  At the end of the week I had to say hard goodbyes to Tracy and the Kids so I could fly back to Louisville, grab my gear and drive back to Ft. Jackson, SC.  When I left for Florida I did not think I was going to head to chaplain school and my plan was to fly back to Louisville and meet up with my unit that was heading to Arkansas.  It killed me that I had a layover in Charlotte, NC. just one hour north of the base!  I had not been on a plan in 13 years and I was shocked at the new security measures, but I planned ahead and only took my backpack.  I even had to leave my precious Leatherman Wave at home so as not to make headlines like "US Army Chaplain gets body cavity search from HSA."