Blog
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Newsletter – April 5, 2021
Greetings from the Sub-Arctic! It’s been snowing most of the last four days. It’s not bad if you like being buried. Our house and yard are under a solid four feet. The picture is from in front of our garage. We drove out on Saturday when there was only about four to six inches on
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THE PULSE POUNDERS THRILLER BUNDLE
Buckle up your e-reader—the Pulse Pounders Thriller Bundle – Curated by Kevin J. AndersonTake a breath and hold on. I’ve curated a new “Pulse Pounders” StoryBundle, 13 action-packed books, plus a bonus, guaranteed to put you on the edge of your reading chair. Thrillers, suspense, action, dark fantasy, adventure—the common denominator is that they are
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The Ukrainian Air Force
More from my unpublished memoirs. After we left Russia, I was assigned to the Cooperative Threat Reduction group out of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. I first worked nuclear materials tracking, but that wasn’t going to work out as I would have to travel back to Russia. The Russians had made it clear, no returns
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Bonny Scotland
And the time of our formal wedding was upon us! I had reserved everything a year in advance from the comfortable confines of my basement apartment in Seoul, Korea. I reserved rooms in Dalhousie Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland, contacted a photographer, coordinated with the minister, and locked on a bagpiper. All was well. Our wedding
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What Alligator?
More from my unpublished memoirs… Wendy likes alligators. The street vendors and shops in Moscow sell all kinds of varied things and many look out of place in the dirty big city environment of Moscow. A store close to my temporary housing about half a mile from the Embassy had stuffed animals, along with normal
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China or Kazakhstan? There is only one right answer to this question.
After securing my temporary visa for Russia in Seoul, I was given orders for a weeklong trip, part of which was to Moscow in order to get an in-brief and for familiarization. Then I would spend the rest of the time in Washington D.C. at a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) training course. I dutifully
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Korea is different but cool if one only pays attention
Korean food is magnificent, once you develop a taste for it. And like any culture, once you start to understand it, your appreciation is greatly enhanced. Koreans like to fix things that are broken. Not all fixes come from the manual – Koreans pride themselves on their ingenuity. The MARFORK offices were out of the
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A Russian Visa – just a little bureaucracy from the country that perfected it
Getting to Russia was not as easy as I would have thought, considering that I had U.S. Embassy sponsorship. I started coordinating with the ACIU in December of 1998 while still in Korea. My life took on new meaning and focus and I was determined to do well in my upcoming job. Chief of the
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An assignment to Russia
How did I get my assignment to Russia? If I said “Because I didn’t ask for it?” would that make sense? I had been in my job as the G-2, the senior Intelligence Officer, for Marine Forces Korea for only a few months, but it was time to start asking about a new job because
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Eat ‘til your tired. Sleep ‘til your hungry.
The old adage of a Marine aboard ship… There we were, forward deployed, ready to meet Saddam’s forces. OK – the year was 1993 and we were there to demonstrate U.S. and coalition resolve that Kuwait would not be vulnerable again. This meant military exercises, running around the desert, and mostly for me, providing