I was an Ambassador and Taken Hostage by Militants

http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/09/i-was-an-ambass.php

by DanielBMarkham • 17 years ago

77 18 17 years ago

yan• 17 years ago

Thank you for sharing that; I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

ghiotion• 17 years ago

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I've been quietly following you on the net for quite some time. You seem like one of the nicest people I've never met. Can I buy you lunch sometime? :)

amackera• 17 years ago

A very interesting read!

donw• 17 years ago

I have an idea of how hard it is to share something like this, because I've been through something similar.

Thank you.

maxklein• 17 years ago

Sorry to be the bad guy here again, but though the story is interesting as a story, I don't get what was 'learned'. I did see a lot of the "a lot of bad shit happened to me when I was younger" text in there. Whenever I see that type of stuff, my whiner radar switches on.

It's unimportant what you overcame in the past. If this is important for you, then you still have not learned. A muscleman will not win a competition because he lifted a huge weight during training, he will win because he put his effort into lifting the weight in front of him right now, and did not think about all the weights he lifted in the past.

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

Upvoted.

Thanks for sharing what I feel -- and I wrote it. It's got a lot of "poor me" in it.

The story would be very different if I told it from today's point of view. The purpose was to tell it the way I was feeling it at the time.

There were a lot of things learned, but like any real story in life, it's muddled. One of the things I learned, not mentioned, was that if you have a problem that you can't solve -- it's your responsibility to communicate it. And to keep communicating it until something is done about it.

But at the time it was very muddy, as I think you can tell. Can't help that -- that's the way it happened. Maybe there are other people in similar circumstances that this would speak to that wouldn't get the point if told differently. Also the story is more powerful by being told the way it is, in my opinion, of course.

Great point about living in the past. I think maybe you misunderstood the tone, however. I still feel very badly about the whole thing. It's not like I think of this as some kind of great feat that I performed. It was a total disaster. I was lucky to have skated through as well as I did.

I'm out of this conversation, as I'm way too biased to do a good job commenting. Thanks for the thoughts.

frig• 17 years ago

I don't know of another organization that, on balance, comes across as having a deeper well of general competence and organizational smarts than the marines (/not a marine).

How much of marine philosophy and organizational style makes it into your consulting work?

I had a similar experience at one point, though in different circumstances and a different organization. Hardscrabble, self-bootstrapped types tend to try and solve everything on their own b/c that's just how they've done.

It's good to have that backbone but can be sabotaging if it's your only strategy; the frame of mind it puts you in is intrinsically adversarial and limiting -- how do I do X for Y despite Z? -- instead of collaborative -- Y wants me to do X but there's Z...can Y and I figure something out?

People from more privileged backgrounds generally are more comfortable taking the latter approach; the behavior can be learned, but once you do you realize how much ground you needless lost, which is sobering.

Bravo for the excellent anecdote.

rms• 17 years ago

There is nothing wrong with an interesting story for the sake of a story.

mr_luc• 17 years ago

I didn't get that at all -- perhaps because I'm a young guy, I saw it as a cautionary tale for me.

"Cautionary tale" is not "whiner." It's not "bad crap happened to me" at all; in fact, that was the whole point of his story (don't just "let" things collapse around you in order to return some kind of predictability and order to a situation you're too weak to handle).

I saw it as a "learn from my mistake" post. Those are invaluable; I'd rather learn from his mistake than my own.

I understand you when you say "It's unimportant what you overcame in the past." Fair enough.

To extend it, though, and say "What happened in the past is unimportant" is to say "I'll cheerfully repeat the mistakes I and others have made," which is hardly a recipe for success.

Learn from history so as not to repeat it. All win, no lose.

He told his story, described his (unwise, etc) decisions us to learn from, and did it with helicopters and forward recon to boot.

nate_meurer• 17 years ago

Wow. You packed a whole lot of yourself into a very short post. Thanks for this.

I love the paragraph that describes your reasons for running away, especially this: "Serious trouble was good: it meant that people would start taking options away from me and things would work out".

Beautiful. This is the proverbial cry for help, right? But the way you describe it makes it seem like a perfectly logical, albeit destructive, strategy for dealing with powerlessness. A lot of people do this "running away" thing all the time-- many of us do it daily-- often without realizing it. For the really unlucky ones, running away is built in to our reflexive psyche, so it corrupts every attempt at resolving conflict.

But then, like you say, sometimes it's possible that you have no better option. That's a hard one.

ekanes• 17 years ago

One of the lessons learned was that there was another option, he simply didn't see it (ie. tell his commanding officer about his problems -- ask for help).

Running away was the best option he could conceive of, not the right one.

Thanks for sharing your story Daniel.

hughprime• 17 years ago

Interesting story.

One thing I've always wondered about these war games (I realize it's somewhat tangential to the actual point of the story, but...) -- how do you know when you're "dead"? Some guy plays dead, then leaps up with a machine gun and starts firing -- what exactly was he firing? And isn't "playing dead" an especially unfair tactic when the "actual dead" are also playing dead?

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

As I remember, it was an infrared system very similar to today's laser tag (combat troops of the 80s, please weigh in). I think it was called MILES. You wore this thing around your head and on your body for a target?

The main thing I remember was loading blanks into magazines and putting this weird cap on the end of the rifles. As the weapons were fired (which sounded just like live fire to me) the laser was activated. There was some kind of coded thing going on as well.

So you could fire anything that could take a blank. The flash-bangs, of course, were real. As were the concussion grenades and tear gas (if it was used).

I didn't see what happened to my sergeant, so I can't say how he faked it. I know it pissed off a lot of guys from Charlie company, though.

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

As he says below, MILES gear with a blank firing adapter. Basically laser tag 2.0.

Neat trick with MILES gear: If you run out of ammo you can slap the butt of your rifle against something and still "shoot" people...the mid 90's version at least worked on the recoil of the weapon.

run4yourlives2• 17 years ago

As a veteran myself - Infantry, Canada, I thank you for sharing this perspective. I can appreciate how you felt (and still do no doubt) having served myself.

All I can say is that you seem to have lived a fine life so far, but it was you who was able to learn from your experiences, not your experiences educating you.

How does it go? Semper Fi, bud.

YetAnotherAcct• 17 years ago

Thanks for posting this, Daniel. I am going through something somewhat similar, although my problem, as it were, is entirely in my head I think:

I absolutely despise my job, although I don't know why entirely... the best I can come up with that would change the situation for me is if my company paid engineers overtime. I am feeling somewhat guilty of "lacking a sense of urgency", as I was told; I think my problem is not being able to care, or fake caring, in situations where I am told to do something I consider stupid and/or futile.

Like you, I started "running away" by declaring I will work only forty hours a week, which has started the inexorable path towards my being fired.

However, I do not see what I can do to tell my superior about my problems or fill out forms: any suggestions there?

rgrieselhuber• 17 years ago

I rarely read anything longer than 5 sentences these days, but I couldn't stop reading until I had finished. Thank you.

Estragon• 17 years ago

Good article, but the title was misleading and sensational.

I was an Ambassador and Taken Hostage by Militants

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