Around Aberdeen: Suggestive Delivery Truck

I try to keep things pretty clean on this blog, but I have a hard time helping myself with this item. A few months ago, I saw this truck near my digs, and I continue to see it every now and again. The look in the parents' eyes is just so... Suggestive. I'll spare any more commentary, but the picture makes me shudder and snicker at the same time. I'm sure that my old buddy Sam-Wise probably knows plenty of jokes to go along with this delivery truck, but I'm sure not going to be the one to ask him to share.

The Dissertation: Dhofar Rebellion Part 10

I met with the Director on Monday and gave him a rundown of my revised dissertation plan. He was onboard with it, so I'll be proceeding with that in the waning days of August. I've reached a point where I just have to suck it up and finish actually writing the damned thing. The research is mostly done and dusted, so now it's just a matter of filling the sections with text and occasionally checking a source or two so that I have something to cite to justify all of the things that I already know. That's a bit of an annoyance, but I'm meticulous, detail-oriented, a bit of a perfectionist, and a bit of a workoholic (go figure), so it must be done.

Two of the sources that I have copies of are We Won a War by John Akehurst and SAS Operation Storm by Tony Jeapes. Brigadier Akehurst was the second of two commanders of the forces in Dhofar (after Brigadier Jack Fletcher), and Jeapes was an SAS squadron commander, and later the commander of all SAS operations in Oman. I started reading Jeapes' book on Monday, only to find out that it's focused almost entirely upon the SAS, and not on the overall war effort. It's still been valuable, but that means I'll have to go through both books in the next couple of weeks to ensure that I'm not missing any glaring details about the conflict. I've also been reading The Third Way of COIN: Defeating the Taliban in Sangin by Dr. Mark Moyar, and will be reading Victory in Hades: The Forgotten Wars of Oman 1957-1959 and 1970-1976, Part 2: The Dhofar Campaign 1970-1976 (Part 1, Part 2) by S. Monick. There's so much spinning around in my head right now, and I love the sensation, but it's sort of exhausting and I'll be relieved when it starts to calm down.

One of the things I'm going to be writing about is sufficient and efficient resourcing for COIN campaigns, and particularly commensurate force strength. I'll be using a couple of quotes on this topic in my "Part 2" once the actual dissertation is complete, and these deal specifically with Afghanistan, Iraq, and the size of the Army and Marine Corps after the pending Afghan withdrawal.

TR: "On the one hand, one thinks that this initial, opening move, which seems to have been so critical to the British campaign, one hand there was a strategic logic to it, so the British had insisted on a change of governor to a new governor, Mohammed Daoud, he said to the British, 'I need you to go up to the northern towns because they're under threat', the British commander on the ground said 'Well, I need to do this because we need to support the governor'. But on the other hand, of course, there was this notion that he was desperately overstretched, he had, he had six, really only four helicopters available, he had only a few hundred men, so he had to put small packages in, so the interesting thing is, to what extent, though, should he have said, 'I can't do this, I'm just gonna stick to the plan, which is to stay in Lashkar Gah in the center of Helmand, and hard luck, governor', or to what extent was he correct in saying 'We're the Parachute Regiment, we take risks, that's what we're paid for, that's what we're paid the big bucks for, and so we'll attempt a risky operation, which didn't come good in the end?"
JR: "Personal view, I think it was a bad decision to do what he did, I recognize why he did it, coming as he did from a special forces background. But, we knew from Iraq, from al Amara and places like that, from Geresda where I was the force commander in Bosnia, what happens when you put small groups of forces in isolated positions. You spend all your time trying to sustain them, and then rescue them, to the exclusion of all else, they just become a magnet for trouble. This was really a decision which was above the brigade commander's paygrade, and the correct course of action would have been to say, 'Well, it's a policy objective that we support Daoud, Daoud interprets that to mean that we move into the north, you have resourced me to hold the center, if you wish me to support the governor and follow your policy, it requires more resources. What more resources are you going to supply?"
- Dr. Thomas Rid, King's College London Department of War Studies, and Lieutenant General (Ret.) Jonathon Riley, British Army, former Deputy Commander of ISAF (link)

* * *
"So when we attacked the city of Fallujah – now, just to give you a sense for how big Fallujah is – you know, it was in the papers, you know, in 2004. I mean, everybody was hinged on Fallujah. We had six infantry battalions surrounding Fallujah. Six. That’s it. Four Marines and two Army. And it took us, what, forty days to – forty days to beat the threat down and to force our will on a single city. What we’re talking about, the capability for the United States of America, is six infantry battalions worth of forcible entry capability for the entire United States of America as we look at the Marine Corps and we start talking forcible entry. That’s all we’re talking about. So for our country, as global power, as powerful as we are, we’re going to have the same capability that we had to force our will on Fallujah. I think that’s actually a pretty modest investment for a country that has global responsibilities. You don’t know when you may need to force your will on somebody, but it would be very nice for the President and the National Command Authority to have that capability."
- General James F. Amos, address to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 08 November 2012 (link)

More to come.

Weekend Down South: Hadrian's Wall

Two weekends after my now-infamous debacle in Shetland, I rolled down south to visit Captain John and his lovely and gracious Household Six. I met the Captain and HH6 in Florence, Italy in April of 2003, and visited them at their home in Orkney in September of 2004. It was Captain John who introduced me to the island paradise that I love so much. On the occasion of Captain John's retirement, they did a road trip across the southern United States, and spent a couple of days hanging out with me in Hampton Roads, Virginia. Gray 1 helped me to reestablish contact with the Cap'n during my triumphant return to Orkney. The Cap'n and I pinged back and forth during my ill-fated Shetland trip, as he had some experience with Shetland earlier in his life - he could identify with my plight! Before the Easter Holiday (which was too long), I touched base with Captain John and we decided on a weekend for me to come down to visit.

The Cap'n and HH6 left Orkney a few years ago to retire outside Lockerbie. The Cap'n picked me up from the train station, and the three of us enjoyed an evening together. The next morning, we got ourselves sorted out and headed for Northumberland, to the tiny area of Once Brewed/Twice Brewed. Our mission: to rendezvous with their daughter and granddaughter, and to see Hadrian's Wall. For those of you who are unschooled in Roman history, Hadrian's Wall was built during the reign of Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus Augustus - you know, Hadrian. It marks the border between the Roman province of Britannia - present-day England - and the untamed frontier of Caledonia - present-day Scotland. Of course, England now stretches further north than the original line of demarcation, but the border region has shifted a bit over the course of recorded history. The wall stretched from what is now Newcastle in the east, to what is now Carlisle in the west.

Our first stop was the Roman fort at Birdoswald, which we followed with a quick run out to a parking area for another quick photo op. Then, it was off to the Twice Brewed Inn for a lovely lunch with the Cap'n and HH6's daughter and granddaughter. After a while, as the granddaughter started to get a bit squirrely, we helped them to relocate to a more private area of the inn, and then Cap'n John and I set out for a bit of a bona fide adventure.

Aside from the wall itself, this particularly hilly area of Northumberland near One Brewed/Twice Brewed boasts two major landmarks: Milecastle 39, and a sycamore tree that was featured in an early scene of the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Fans of the film may remember a scene when Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman have just landed in a rowboat that somehow got them from the Holy Land to the English coast, and they rescue some kids that Alan Rickman's goons have just treed for poaching or something. Captain John noted, with his trademark grin, that they would have had a pretty long walk from the English coast, since the tree in question is located pretty much equidistant from either coast. Roman historians will remember that Hadrian's Wall featured a number of small and large forts that were built into the wall itself. Milecastle 39 is an example of the smaller type.

After leaving Orkney in 2004, my wanderings took me down to Carlisle, where I had hoped to see Hadrian's Wall. Unfortunately for me, I learned upon arriving in Carlisle that the western end of the Wall has long since disintegrated, as it was made out of turf due to a shortage of stone with which to build. (On the plus side, I had a fantastic dinner and saw some really cute waitresses at the Ristorante Adriano, so the sojourn wasn't a complete bust.) Given my earlier near miss, I was thrilled at the opportunity to have a bit of a hike and chew the proverbial fat with the Cap'n, and to see such well preserved ruins (and, y'know, the Robin Hood tree). It was a great way to spend a day out with the Cap'n and HH6, not to mention seeing signs directing us toward a village that shares its name with the colloquial phrase for a specific intimate act performed while the participants are travelling in a motor vehicle. (I'll admit it, my internal monologue snickered uncontrollably at that one, and I brought the Cap'n in on the joke later on.)

Of course, the weekend was just getting started.

Around Aberdeen: Summer at King's College

A few months ago, I posted about King's College, and I also posted about King's College at night. Well, one of the great things about King's College is that it's beautiful all the time - for example, during the Summer. I've been dividing most of my time between Starbucks and my digs lately, but I've had a few occasions to enjoy the stunning spectacle of King's College during the Summer months. One of the other great things about seeing King's College during the long days is that you can actually get a look at it lit up under natural light - something that's impossible with the short days and comparatively low solar apogee of the Winter months.

Adjacent to King's College Chapel is the King's Lawn. One of my favorite memories of the past year is of a warm afternoon, when I took a break from studying for exams to spend a couple of hours reading one of my favorite books of all time, Starship Troopers, while sitting on the King's Lawn amongst a ton of undergrads. Right... About... here. In fact, even though the lack of foliage indicates that that satellite image was taken during the Winter or early Spring months, you can see plenty of circles of students enjoying a nice day on the King's Lawn. Unlike the Hideous Glass Cube, which is modern and hideous, the beauty of King's College and its surrounding environs is that its evergreen - it will always be beautiful. That's just one of the perks of attending a university that was founded more than five centuries ago.

The Gurkha Highlanders' Picnic

CN GBU-16 and I are pretty close friends. We've been able to lean upon one and commiserate with one another through some challenging times, both academic and personal, over the course of the last few months. Owing to our shared Scottish experience, our shared Nepalese fixation, and our aspirations toward careers supporting national defense, we decided several months ago to inaugurate a sort of honorary, ad hoc military organization: the Regiment of Gurkha Highlanders. With me as the commander ("The Brigadier"), and her as my deputy ("The Colonel"), we adopted the latin motto "MOTIVA PLVS OCCASIO" - "Motive and Opportunity" - traditionally the gauge of whether a suspect may have committed a crime, but a more motivational slogan for our shared and individual endeavours. In fact, I even photoshopped an image from one of the most unintentionally awesome films in history, Starship Troopers...

... that features our "unit crest". I took the badge of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, changed the motto to "MOTIVA PLVS OCCASIO", and added our "battle honors": Muscat (in Arabic), to represent my own focus on Oman; Pokhara (in Nepali) to represent GBU-16's work in Nepal, as well as my work with the Nepalese in the Middle East; Napoli (Naples) to represent GBU-16's homeland; and Aberdeen (in Scots Gaelic) to represent our time here in the Granite City. Behind the crest are a Nepalese khukuri and an Omani khanjar.

All of that information is background for what happened on the final day of July: we hadn't hung out in a few days, and GBU-16 was missing Nepal, so we agreed to meet up and have a Gurkha Highlanders' picnic! I stopped into the Gurkha Kitchen and got two orders of momo dumplings, an order of motor paneer, and two pieces of Peshwari naan. I met GBU-16 at the Mounthooly Roundabout, and then we walked to Union Terrace Gardens. GBU-16 picked up some Tennent's, as the only beers available at the shop where she had stopped into were Tennent's and Budweiser, and she knows from prior conversations that I "wouldn't wash my car with that stuff!" It was perfectly appropriate for a Gurkha Highlanders' picnic, as Tennent's is brewed in Glasgow. We had a taste of Pokhara alongside a taste of the Clyde! Brilliant!

UTG didn't disappoint in the entertainment department, either. There was a young couple, the female member of which was really cute, who were making out on one of the nearby park benches. There was another couple, not quite as young (or as sober), whom we couldn't decide whether they were making out, or copping a series of collective feels, or what. There were folks juggling fire and barbecuing, several dogs running around and playing, and even a few little girls who went in less than two minutes from playing with one another's hair to sliding down a slightly muddy hill. Perhaps the most entertaining episode was when I threw the last bit of Peshwari naan (GBU-16 having conned me into eating half of her momo dumplings - I was stuffed) to a group of seagulls, which then proceeded to chase one another all around the park on foot and in the air. Hilarious, because Aberdeen's seagulls are truly insipid (to the point that they've made me appreciate Aberdeen's comparatively polite and non-invasive pigeon population - congratulations, universe, you win).

As the evening wore on, we left UTG for the Tippling House for one last drink before walking King Street back to our respective digs. The Gurkha Highlanders' picnic was an overwhelming success, and perhaps GBU-16 and I will have a chance to repeat it before we part company later this summer.

The Thistle: A National Symbol of Scotland

One of Scotland's national symbols is the thistle. (As I mentioned previously, Scotland's national animal is apparently the unicorn, because that makes sense.) They've been in bloom the last few weeks, and I've had opportunities to take some snapshots of a few of them. (This picture was taken on North Street, below Greyfriars House.) According to Wikipedia, the infallible and undisputed source of all knowledge: "In the language of flowers, the thistle (like the burr) is an ancient Celtic symbol of nobility of character as well as of birth, for the wounding or provocation of a thistle yields punishment." This fits with a post I made on Facebook a couple of weeks ago:

One of Scotland's national symbols is the thistle, and for good reason: the Scots are a slightly prickly, but otherwise lovely folk.

Some readers may remember a truly awful movie called Braveheart, in which Mel Gibson plays a tragically inaccurate interpretation of William Wallace. In that film, Wallace's eventual bride, Murron, gives him a gift of a thistle at the funeral of Wallace's father. He keeps it throughout the years, and it comes to represent their love, or his love of Scotland, or irony, or tragedy, or some other such nonsense. It's said that the rise in Scottish secessionist sentiment is largely attributable to the popularity of the film, though if it's true, then that's tragic; then again, I've found that a number of secessionists (and even some bona fide Scots nationalists) have a love/hate relationship with historical accuracy. (That second picture was taken near here, while I was riding the Aberdeenshire Circuit.)

At any rate, it's been great to see thistles (silybum marianum or "milk thistles", apparently) over the past few weeks. As my time in Scotland wanes, it's nice to see at least one symbol of Scotland - and trust me, if I catch a glimpse of a unicorn, I'll get a picture of it and post it on the blog. At the moment, the only horse pictures I've gotten have been of Shetland ponies, right after my ill-fated geocaching adventure; but those are a symbol of Shetland, whose history is distinct from that of Scotland proper.

Aberdeen's Public Gardens: Union Terrace Gardens

Aberdeen's central public garden (what we'd call a "park" in the States) is Union Terrace Gardens, or "UTG". It's a beautiful Victorian era garden (that's in need of a bit of upkeep). There were recent efforts to spend millions of pounds to transform UTG into something much more modern, but that effort was defeated last year. I'm not educated on the issues involved, other than to acknowledge that it would have been a very expensive project. I'm not sure why it was necessary, though; save for a few thousand dollars worth of necessary renovations, and the fact that you have to climb up a hill in order to get back out of UTG, it's a lovely green space. It even features its own geocache!

Early in this particular operation, I talked about the William Wallace statue, which is right above UTG. The Wallace statue and UTG, along with Union Street and the Bon Accord Center, rank among my memories of Aberdeen that date back to the single day that I spent here in 2004. I've spent almost no time in UTG during the year that I've been here, but I've found myself spending time with friends there several times in the last six weeks. It's really a neat place that puts Aberdeen's rich history adjacent to its modern infrastructure.

Fun With Whisky

It's funny how many people assign you missions when you spend a year in Scotland. I already mentioned how my buddy Chops directed me to go visit his old stomping grounds in Edzell (challenge accepted, and accomplished). Another buddy, the Man of Steel, wants me to bring him back as much IRN-BRU as I possibly can. My buddy Gus, who came here with his own two feet on my dime, has yet to orchestrate a mission he volunteered me for to get him a bottle/cask/flagon/tankard/some other such measure of some specific alcohol. On that note, a buddy of mine from my days of working with the Army, Sergeant G, has repeatedly insisted that I locate and consume a dram of a whiskey called Edradour. The Edradour Distillery is apparently located outside Pitlochry, apparently not quite fifty miles outside such cities as Dundee ("Scumdee", if you're Aberdonian) and Perth.

The thing about Scotland's many, many whiskys - not to be confused with Irish whiskeys, which are pronounced the same, but spelled and distilled differently - is that there are tons of them, and some are more rare than others. Orkney, for example, is home to two distilleries: Highland Park, and Scapa, which are literally within walking distance of one another just outside Kirkwall. (By contrast, Shetland has no distilleries.) Highland Park is ubiquitous in Aberdeen's pubs, while I've only ever found Scapa a couple of times. Part of the reason why I had delayed on Sergeant G's orders was that I had no clue how common Edradour was - when I'm out for a dram, I usually just default to Highland Park 12.

A few weeks ago, I was at The Tippling House with CN GBU-16 and CN Homeboy. We were about to leave when we sort of accidentally got roped into another group's pub crawl when an attractive young lady who was almost tragically inebriated began "twerking" and got our attention. GBU-16 and Homeboy were able to extricate themselves, due in no small part to my assistance; I, on the other hand, got roped into joining the pub crawl. Our next stop was a place I'd been hearing about for months called The Grill, whose claim to fame is that it boasts Aberdeen's best whisky selection. Of course, having only ever read the name of this particular whisky a couple of times from Sergeant G, I was unable to try it.

Earlier this week, I changed all of that. I checked, and re-checked, and checked once more, from the instructions Sergeant G had sent on Facebook...

Tom: Hey, what was that whisky you were on about? I finally found the whisky pub here, so I want to try it out this week if they have it.
Sergeant G: Edradour
Tom: Cool, thanks.
Sergeant G: Let me know which finish you tried and how fantastic it was to your mouth!!!!

... and went into The Grill on Saturday evening for a dram of Edradour. Before I'd gotten even halfway into it, I snapped a picture with my phone and posted it to Facebook with the caption: "Sergeant G: Mission Accomplished." And you know what? Even without my usual single ice cube, it was a damn good dram.

The Grill is a pretty neat place. The outside makes it look like a rough, beat up old pub. Once you're inside, though, it's actually pretty impressive. The bartenders are smartly dressed, the woodwork is beautiful, and though it could do with a bit of renovation, the bottom line is that it provides the best selection of Scotland's various whisky offerings of any pub in Aberdeen. If you're like me, and just enjoy an occasional dram of Highland Park 12, there are plenty of pubs that will make it happen for you; but when you need something specific that you can't find anywhere else, The Grill may just be able to make it happen.