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Aeronaut
Hello Mr Jhungary, this is the first of the series of Defence.pk interviews that we will be conducting, with highly respected and experienced members of this board, in the year 2013.
I would like to ask you a few questions today.
1 | I would start with the introduction, so please give us a brief introduction about yourself, about your education and occupation.
Hi, everyone in Pakistan Defence Forum
My name is Gary, better known as the user jhungary in this forum. I was born in the US and move around a bit afterward, i lived in Hong Kong for 13 years, then move to China for 5 and then move back to the US for another 8 years, then 3 years on and off in Sweden, and now i am living in Australia.
I am of Chinese and Mexican descent, my mother was a Vietnam born Chinese and my father is Hispanic, i am blessed with both Latin American and Chinese Culture. And hence i'm am fluent in both Spanish and Chinese, on top of English, i also fluent to some degree in Swedish.
I am currently married, my wife is from Dalarna, Central Sweden. I met my wife when we both served with our respective government in Afghanistan, while she was a lawyer working for Swedish Military and i was in charge with Intel, had a lot of opportunity to interrogate potential insurgents.
I completed one and a half year of University in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), studying Computer Science. Then i moved back to my native country, and continued my education in International Politics in University of Colorado, Boulder, i am currently studying a Master in International Business in International College of Management, Sydney in Manly.
I joined the US Army via green to gold to supplement by Study, and at the end of the study, i got an commission into a 2LT in the US Army. During my army career, i have attend several specialist school to gain some of my skill set i would use
I am trained on the follow specialty or school.
Basic Combat Training + Cavalry One Station Training
Advance Combat Tactics Training
US Army Airborne School
US Army Ranger School
US Army Intelligence Center
I was trained as a cavalryman on initial and professional training, but retrained as an infantryman and deployed to Iraq in 2003. I was later enrolled in Army Ranger School and not got picked in the end(But i finished the course) and then finally enrolled in Army Intelligence School and redeployed to Afghanistan for another 1 year tour. I am specialized in Human Intelligence, Human Performance and UAV surveillance while my tenure in Army Intelligence.
2 | What motivated you to join the US Army ?
Money, mostly, i wanted someone to supplement my studies the US, unlike the system in Hong Kong, there are no Granting and Loan you can take from the government for higher education. One day i walked past a recruitment stall and they say they can help, and that feels like a good deal, so i took it.
Patriotic Thoughts were never in my mind, and i do not have a huge fascination about the military. Although i have to say the whole family of mine were in the military, going back to the Mexican American war. Where my great great grand father fought on the Mexican side defending Texas side and my Grandfather fought in WW2, my dad fought in Vietnam and my brother was in the USAF and my cousin is currently in USCG. But i growth up without a strong urge to join the Armed Force, but then again, here i was. I joined pre 9/11, so that was not an issue for me when i sign up.
3 | How long was your service and how was your, over all experience with the US Military?
Technically it's 8 years, reality is 5 years and 10 months. I had 2 years finishing up my degree under army paid and i have 2 month terminal leave before being discharged. I got a lot of good vibe, military is an unique place that offer a lot of different stuff all in one go. You got to make a lot of friend and see a lot of people.
They also provide you with a lot of training you can never get in the outside world, i mean, where else can you find someone to teach you how to jump out of a C-17 at 15000 AGL?? Military do give you a sense of belonging and their challenge gave you some sort of pride when you complete them. I enjoy learning how to drive an APC and doing the obstacle course, also enjoy firing rounds in range. Military is a diverse circle and you got to do a lot of thing in one places However, bad things always comes with the good.
The downside of the military is they are quite physical and mentally demanding, Being in the military,you are require to be at top shape and keep it for the duration. This is hard by itself. Then you got those challenge i mention, which usually made you exhausted and cannot get up for a couple of days.
But the worse is not the physical stuff, but the separation to all the people you love, separation with family and friend is the hardest part of the entire military life. The situation is better when you are state side training, at least you can take an overnight train to meet up with family and friend, try to imagine only keep in touch with 10 minutes phone call per day and e-mail when you get the absolute isolation from your family. This, for me, is the hardest part.
4 | Please tell us a little about your deployment in Afghanistan and your experiences in a war zone.
I was flying a desk in Afghanistan, manning a Comm station as the Battalion S2 in Eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, my duty is to keep the comm open for the ODA team around the area with the base, make sure the update is provided two way on a timely fashion. I also go out of the fence from time to time, mainly to secure ground intel and also build a better relationship between us and the local imam. When we do go out to the village, we go out unarmed (Apart from my sidearm) and usually rolled in with a humvee, then sit down with the Imam and drink tea
However, i did see action in Afghanistan once, but that was a Rescue Ops. I did saw a lot of combat when i was posted to Iraq in 2003 as an infantry platoon leader, all the way from thunder run to Battle of Fullujah, combat is a mess, where you constantly engaged, the job of platoon leader mean i have a 40 something man platoon and i am in charge of those 40 man. Where they go, what they do and how they eat....
Being in a platoon size force, the tactic is minimal and the duty is also somewhat trivial. I was not involve in any planning at all, it's merely a job of doing what i have been told, with minimal interpretation ground. It actually somehow better than any command role as you got a lot of pressure taken out of your back and you were free to do what you want, without any check and balance thing you need to consider
5 | How was your experience with the US Army, being an ethnic minority ?
Many people blame the US for starting wars, snooping into someone else business and some, as you can see frequently in this forum , would consider US evil. For me, i don't really care, nor do i have a say on our foreign policy. I do believe each country look out for their own interest, Given the same situation, everybody will do what we do if they have our power. I joined the Army not because i wanted to change anything, but i do accept my responsibility to me, my guy and usually people under my jurisdiction.
The Army is getting a lot of Negative Publicity these day, Not just the US Army, depend on where you are, there are going to be someone who hate your outfits. But most of those people hate the Military is not because what we do, but rather what we belong, we are the US army and therefore bad people because we are a tool of the US, which is evil.
Problem is, those guy have no where near saw what we seen, and I can have a choice to see all these go down and people suffer from my living room TV set, instead i believe in the cause and trying to protect those who cannot, while we sit our arse down in air conditioning room, with soft drink or coffee casually browsing the news and reading those people dies. I choose not to do that instead trying to go help those people.
I did not do it for the oil, nor did i do it for money (Which they pay crap, by the way) and if that makes me a bad person, then i guess i am a bad person. Ethnic tension will be there, so did race, gender and sexuality tension. In the army we have a saying. You are a soldier first, then American, then who you are individually. Being a minority does not affect the respect i got and i pay. Apart from some plank that those guys don't even know they are offending people from different culture. We were soldier, we were all American. That's the main theme.
6 | Please tell us a little about your life experiences, do you play any sports?
I am quite an active person actually, i do all sort of sport, the only sport i don't enjoy is cricket (Year, i know how big it is in Pakistan...) I try to enjoy cricket but i have absolutely no idea what was going on, i do runs/walk daily and i play basketball frequently and i will not say no to Soccer or any sort of sport too, i may not be very well at some of those, but i tried to play.
After getting out of the Military, i actually did a lot of menial job to support my life. I build and sold computers and write programs. I worked as a security guard for some mall, i work as a freelance photographer for an Australian magazine and i even worked as a waiter once. I guess i am not the kind of people who would settle in one job, i want to learn something new and use it. Probably that's why i keep changing job, or maybe i am just sucked at working.....I don't know
7 | What is your personal opinion on war, how is it different from the myths among the normal folk ?
Many people don't know what's war's like. People who never seen war would generally mystify it or simplify it. General concept of war is a group of people kills a group of people,either for money or power struggle. But there are many more in between people just don't know. To be honest, i have done stuff in Iraq that i would not be proud of, nor would i ever talk to another person for it, and things that i regretted i did not do, and stuff that i regretted doing...
General public have a way to overlook that darkness of war. Again, as you can see in this forum alone, how many member always banging war drum and advocate the "glory" of war. In truth, nothing glory about one man killing another. In the military, they train you to kill people, they train you to a point, killing another human being is a reflex action. Problem is, there are a lot of train make you ready to kill someone, but there are no such training about how you deal with taking a life. They would assume you would just forget about it.
Indeed, in the heat of battle, when your adrenaline pumping to the max, you hardly have time to think of anything beside how do you get out alive. What hit you is when all the stuff died down and when you are sitting in your bunk alone and criket chuping on the background. This is the time that it WILL Hit you.
You will starting to have flashback about what you did. Starting to doubt yourself, should you or shouldn't you. All that quiet will make you think. and every waking moment you trying to tell yourself not to think about it, at that moment you realize you are thinking about it to tell yourself not to think about it...It is an endless cycle.
Sometime, this thing will get to you, other time not. You would try to tell someone but you then started to get scare, what if i reviewed more than i have to and what if there are consequence. See, the problem is in normal life, THERE ARE CONSEQUENCE when you kill a fellow human being, not so much in war, and you can only keep your wartime mentality when you are right there, in the mist of battle. Other time, you are just a human being.
These kind of feeling then started to eat you up, if not dealt with promptly. And luckily i had help and although i can't say that i did overcome this problem, i do at least function normally. Another problem people thinking war is too easy. People play too much video game, and they started to think War is just like a video game, Like a first person shooter...Everything is laid ahead of you, you have a clear objective and you keep shooting and shooting your way and eventually you will accomplish your objective. That is dead wrong.
War are suppose to make you think. Even when you got mortar and machine gun bullet raining on top of your head, how you going to diffuse the situation. Imagine a life and death choice to be made with that split second to spare, you make the right move, you live, you make the wrong move you die. But if you don't make any decision, you will die too.
Problem is, people today perceived that we fight in a war with unlimited resource, equipment and stuff can be picked up, replace almost immediately. Truth is far from that. War is fought in with limit resource.Everything you use in war you brought in yourself, you don't have unlimited resource like many people think.
I don't know if you understand this, but in War, which country have what actually did not matter much, rather what can i get in that time frame when i need it matter A LOT more, i don't care if USAF have 200 F-15E, it does not really matter if i get none to drop bomb on CAS run when i need one. This is the problem most people don't understand.
A war is never an inventory count for a country, a basic what do my country have vs what's your country have. But rather what can you bring to the table vs what can they bring to the table. Otherwise Combat is much like what Video Game depict, minus the you get shot a multiple time and all you need to do is stay down and stay out of trouble and you will recover...
8 | How did you come by Defence.pk & what is your opinion about Pakistanis ?
Actually i was referred to me by my friend. Funny to mention it, as my friend was a long time PDF user and we were having lunch one day and he was checking his response. And he say, hey Gary, come look at this. Then i joined up a couple of days later. I mainly discuss the technical aspect in this forum, as i do not have much political affiliation.
My general view about Pakistanis is quite positive. In fact i almost went into Pakistan when i was in Afghanistan for some stolen equipment recovery, but i didn't. From what i see and what i hear, Pakistanis are very hospitable. And they are quite hardworking too. Where i live now is settled with many Pakistani and Lebanese, they are quite friendly to everyone, even Indian here. Pakistan is a great country i would want to visit someday, but being at war constantly make that trip a little risky.
9 | What do you enjoy the most about the Defence.pk community ?
I had a lot of great discussions with fellow members, i enjoy talking tactics with fellow member here, i still remember how fun it was when i do my tactical battle analyst and start discussing how each battle was won and lost with fellow member here.
Shame i don't have time now to prepare for any, but i think i am going to come back for it once my hand was less tied.I also enjoy learning different things and culture in this forum. People talk about their background and stuff like that and i am always fascinated by that.
10 | Tell us a little about your future plans ?
Family mostly. Me and my wife is looking for a place to settle down and maybe have kids finally...Problem is she have her world and i have mine and i just can't see how i am going to manage that. I will first finish my master degree and then move on to find a job that i want to do. Or maybe going back to school again for some other training. I don't see myself as anything other than a technical person, i would want to either start my own business or work in an IT Field, probably after getting a Formal Qualification.
_____________
Thank you Mr Jhungary, it was a great pleasure to have you for this interview, have a great day.
Aeronaut.
_____________________End of Interview__________________
Hello Mr Jhungary, this is the first of the series of Defence.pk interviews that we will be conducting, with highly respected and experienced members of this board, in the year 2013.
I would like to ask you a few questions today.
1 | I would start with the introduction, so please give us a brief introduction about yourself, about your education and occupation.
Hi, everyone in Pakistan Defence Forum
My name is Gary, better known as the user jhungary in this forum. I was born in the US and move around a bit afterward, i lived in Hong Kong for 13 years, then move to China for 5 and then move back to the US for another 8 years, then 3 years on and off in Sweden, and now i am living in Australia.
I am of Chinese and Mexican descent, my mother was a Vietnam born Chinese and my father is Hispanic, i am blessed with both Latin American and Chinese Culture. And hence i'm am fluent in both Spanish and Chinese, on top of English, i also fluent to some degree in Swedish.
I am currently married, my wife is from Dalarna, Central Sweden. I met my wife when we both served with our respective government in Afghanistan, while she was a lawyer working for Swedish Military and i was in charge with Intel, had a lot of opportunity to interrogate potential insurgents.
I completed one and a half year of University in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), studying Computer Science. Then i moved back to my native country, and continued my education in International Politics in University of Colorado, Boulder, i am currently studying a Master in International Business in International College of Management, Sydney in Manly.
I joined the US Army via green to gold to supplement by Study, and at the end of the study, i got an commission into a 2LT in the US Army. During my army career, i have attend several specialist school to gain some of my skill set i would use
I am trained on the follow specialty or school.
Basic Combat Training + Cavalry One Station Training
Advance Combat Tactics Training
US Army Airborne School
US Army Ranger School
US Army Intelligence Center
I was trained as a cavalryman on initial and professional training, but retrained as an infantryman and deployed to Iraq in 2003. I was later enrolled in Army Ranger School and not got picked in the end(But i finished the course) and then finally enrolled in Army Intelligence School and redeployed to Afghanistan for another 1 year tour. I am specialized in Human Intelligence, Human Performance and UAV surveillance while my tenure in Army Intelligence.
2 | What motivated you to join the US Army ?
Money, mostly, i wanted someone to supplement my studies the US, unlike the system in Hong Kong, there are no Granting and Loan you can take from the government for higher education. One day i walked past a recruitment stall and they say they can help, and that feels like a good deal, so i took it.
Patriotic Thoughts were never in my mind, and i do not have a huge fascination about the military. Although i have to say the whole family of mine were in the military, going back to the Mexican American war. Where my great great grand father fought on the Mexican side defending Texas side and my Grandfather fought in WW2, my dad fought in Vietnam and my brother was in the USAF and my cousin is currently in USCG. But i growth up without a strong urge to join the Armed Force, but then again, here i was. I joined pre 9/11, so that was not an issue for me when i sign up.
3 | How long was your service and how was your, over all experience with the US Military?
Technically it's 8 years, reality is 5 years and 10 months. I had 2 years finishing up my degree under army paid and i have 2 month terminal leave before being discharged. I got a lot of good vibe, military is an unique place that offer a lot of different stuff all in one go. You got to make a lot of friend and see a lot of people.
They also provide you with a lot of training you can never get in the outside world, i mean, where else can you find someone to teach you how to jump out of a C-17 at 15000 AGL?? Military do give you a sense of belonging and their challenge gave you some sort of pride when you complete them. I enjoy learning how to drive an APC and doing the obstacle course, also enjoy firing rounds in range. Military is a diverse circle and you got to do a lot of thing in one places However, bad things always comes with the good.
The downside of the military is they are quite physical and mentally demanding, Being in the military,you are require to be at top shape and keep it for the duration. This is hard by itself. Then you got those challenge i mention, which usually made you exhausted and cannot get up for a couple of days.
But the worse is not the physical stuff, but the separation to all the people you love, separation with family and friend is the hardest part of the entire military life. The situation is better when you are state side training, at least you can take an overnight train to meet up with family and friend, try to imagine only keep in touch with 10 minutes phone call per day and e-mail when you get the absolute isolation from your family. This, for me, is the hardest part.
4 | Please tell us a little about your deployment in Afghanistan and your experiences in a war zone.
I was flying a desk in Afghanistan, manning a Comm station as the Battalion S2 in Eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, my duty is to keep the comm open for the ODA team around the area with the base, make sure the update is provided two way on a timely fashion. I also go out of the fence from time to time, mainly to secure ground intel and also build a better relationship between us and the local imam. When we do go out to the village, we go out unarmed (Apart from my sidearm) and usually rolled in with a humvee, then sit down with the Imam and drink tea
However, i did see action in Afghanistan once, but that was a Rescue Ops. I did saw a lot of combat when i was posted to Iraq in 2003 as an infantry platoon leader, all the way from thunder run to Battle of Fullujah, combat is a mess, where you constantly engaged, the job of platoon leader mean i have a 40 something man platoon and i am in charge of those 40 man. Where they go, what they do and how they eat....
Being in a platoon size force, the tactic is minimal and the duty is also somewhat trivial. I was not involve in any planning at all, it's merely a job of doing what i have been told, with minimal interpretation ground. It actually somehow better than any command role as you got a lot of pressure taken out of your back and you were free to do what you want, without any check and balance thing you need to consider
5 | How was your experience with the US Army, being an ethnic minority ?
Many people blame the US for starting wars, snooping into someone else business and some, as you can see frequently in this forum , would consider US evil. For me, i don't really care, nor do i have a say on our foreign policy. I do believe each country look out for their own interest, Given the same situation, everybody will do what we do if they have our power. I joined the Army not because i wanted to change anything, but i do accept my responsibility to me, my guy and usually people under my jurisdiction.
The Army is getting a lot of Negative Publicity these day, Not just the US Army, depend on where you are, there are going to be someone who hate your outfits. But most of those people hate the Military is not because what we do, but rather what we belong, we are the US army and therefore bad people because we are a tool of the US, which is evil.
Problem is, those guy have no where near saw what we seen, and I can have a choice to see all these go down and people suffer from my living room TV set, instead i believe in the cause and trying to protect those who cannot, while we sit our arse down in air conditioning room, with soft drink or coffee casually browsing the news and reading those people dies. I choose not to do that instead trying to go help those people.
I did not do it for the oil, nor did i do it for money (Which they pay crap, by the way) and if that makes me a bad person, then i guess i am a bad person. Ethnic tension will be there, so did race, gender and sexuality tension. In the army we have a saying. You are a soldier first, then American, then who you are individually. Being a minority does not affect the respect i got and i pay. Apart from some plank that those guys don't even know they are offending people from different culture. We were soldier, we were all American. That's the main theme.
6 | Please tell us a little about your life experiences, do you play any sports?
I am quite an active person actually, i do all sort of sport, the only sport i don't enjoy is cricket (Year, i know how big it is in Pakistan...) I try to enjoy cricket but i have absolutely no idea what was going on, i do runs/walk daily and i play basketball frequently and i will not say no to Soccer or any sort of sport too, i may not be very well at some of those, but i tried to play.
After getting out of the Military, i actually did a lot of menial job to support my life. I build and sold computers and write programs. I worked as a security guard for some mall, i work as a freelance photographer for an Australian magazine and i even worked as a waiter once. I guess i am not the kind of people who would settle in one job, i want to learn something new and use it. Probably that's why i keep changing job, or maybe i am just sucked at working.....I don't know
7 | What is your personal opinion on war, how is it different from the myths among the normal folk ?
Many people don't know what's war's like. People who never seen war would generally mystify it or simplify it. General concept of war is a group of people kills a group of people,either for money or power struggle. But there are many more in between people just don't know. To be honest, i have done stuff in Iraq that i would not be proud of, nor would i ever talk to another person for it, and things that i regretted i did not do, and stuff that i regretted doing...
General public have a way to overlook that darkness of war. Again, as you can see in this forum alone, how many member always banging war drum and advocate the "glory" of war. In truth, nothing glory about one man killing another. In the military, they train you to kill people, they train you to a point, killing another human being is a reflex action. Problem is, there are a lot of train make you ready to kill someone, but there are no such training about how you deal with taking a life. They would assume you would just forget about it.
Indeed, in the heat of battle, when your adrenaline pumping to the max, you hardly have time to think of anything beside how do you get out alive. What hit you is when all the stuff died down and when you are sitting in your bunk alone and criket chuping on the background. This is the time that it WILL Hit you.
You will starting to have flashback about what you did. Starting to doubt yourself, should you or shouldn't you. All that quiet will make you think. and every waking moment you trying to tell yourself not to think about it, at that moment you realize you are thinking about it to tell yourself not to think about it...It is an endless cycle.
Sometime, this thing will get to you, other time not. You would try to tell someone but you then started to get scare, what if i reviewed more than i have to and what if there are consequence. See, the problem is in normal life, THERE ARE CONSEQUENCE when you kill a fellow human being, not so much in war, and you can only keep your wartime mentality when you are right there, in the mist of battle. Other time, you are just a human being.
These kind of feeling then started to eat you up, if not dealt with promptly. And luckily i had help and although i can't say that i did overcome this problem, i do at least function normally. Another problem people thinking war is too easy. People play too much video game, and they started to think War is just like a video game, Like a first person shooter...Everything is laid ahead of you, you have a clear objective and you keep shooting and shooting your way and eventually you will accomplish your objective. That is dead wrong.
War are suppose to make you think. Even when you got mortar and machine gun bullet raining on top of your head, how you going to diffuse the situation. Imagine a life and death choice to be made with that split second to spare, you make the right move, you live, you make the wrong move you die. But if you don't make any decision, you will die too.
Problem is, people today perceived that we fight in a war with unlimited resource, equipment and stuff can be picked up, replace almost immediately. Truth is far from that. War is fought in with limit resource.Everything you use in war you brought in yourself, you don't have unlimited resource like many people think.
I don't know if you understand this, but in War, which country have what actually did not matter much, rather what can i get in that time frame when i need it matter A LOT more, i don't care if USAF have 200 F-15E, it does not really matter if i get none to drop bomb on CAS run when i need one. This is the problem most people don't understand.
A war is never an inventory count for a country, a basic what do my country have vs what's your country have. But rather what can you bring to the table vs what can they bring to the table. Otherwise Combat is much like what Video Game depict, minus the you get shot a multiple time and all you need to do is stay down and stay out of trouble and you will recover...
8 | How did you come by Defence.pk & what is your opinion about Pakistanis ?
Actually i was referred to me by my friend. Funny to mention it, as my friend was a long time PDF user and we were having lunch one day and he was checking his response. And he say, hey Gary, come look at this. Then i joined up a couple of days later. I mainly discuss the technical aspect in this forum, as i do not have much political affiliation.
My general view about Pakistanis is quite positive. In fact i almost went into Pakistan when i was in Afghanistan for some stolen equipment recovery, but i didn't. From what i see and what i hear, Pakistanis are very hospitable. And they are quite hardworking too. Where i live now is settled with many Pakistani and Lebanese, they are quite friendly to everyone, even Indian here. Pakistan is a great country i would want to visit someday, but being at war constantly make that trip a little risky.
9 | What do you enjoy the most about the Defence.pk community ?
I had a lot of great discussions with fellow members, i enjoy talking tactics with fellow member here, i still remember how fun it was when i do my tactical battle analyst and start discussing how each battle was won and lost with fellow member here.
Shame i don't have time now to prepare for any, but i think i am going to come back for it once my hand was less tied.I also enjoy learning different things and culture in this forum. People talk about their background and stuff like that and i am always fascinated by that.
10 | Tell us a little about your future plans ?
Family mostly. Me and my wife is looking for a place to settle down and maybe have kids finally...Problem is she have her world and i have mine and i just can't see how i am going to manage that. I will first finish my master degree and then move on to find a job that i want to do. Or maybe going back to school again for some other training. I don't see myself as anything other than a technical person, i would want to either start my own business or work in an IT Field, probably after getting a Formal Qualification.
_____________
Thank you Mr Jhungary, it was a great pleasure to have you for this interview, have a great day.
Aeronaut.
_____________________End of Interview__________________
,I am also on crappy phone right now,that is why it is quite difficult for me to make long post.
