Scoutmaster trip to Eurpoe 2007

Friday, July 27, 2007

The scouts arrived at the Jamboree today; most exhibit areas are still closed, but a few, like the Scout Shops have opened. Our amateur radio area still does not have electricity, so there’s not much we can do. Our staff has been asked to assist where we can in other areas. Some will help unload busses as the scouts arrive. The American headquarters tent opened yesterday and lines formed as poncho’s and patches were distributed. The American staff patch has a gold border; we each got one for free and we could purchase up to three more. We also got a nameplate and an American neckerchief. The IST T-shirt was also available back at the adult support center. In order to get the T-shirt we had to show a black circular stamp on our identification card that indicates we completed the IST training. I am starting a collection of things I will mail home.

Our staff held a short meeting in the amateur radio area, and then scattered. I opted to head into Chelmsford again to find a coin laundry. I met a fellow scouter from Rye, NY, who had the same idea, so we traveled together. Although, I am prepared to do my laundry by hand, I am concerned about drying the clothes. It has rained almost every evening, and there really isn’t a good place to hang clothes anyway. I would have to put wet clothes on lines attached to my tent. So finding a laundry place in Chelmsford was well worth the effort. However, I have done some underwear and socks by hand because they are quick drying.

I think I may have solved my problem connecting to the Internet. My computer runs the new Vista operating system, and when I boot up, a dialog box appears saying that Windows has blocked some start-up programs. Looking around, I found a program called Microsoft Defender that is doing the blocking, and I was able to turn it off. The Internet center at the adult hub offers wi-fi, and I was able to connect with the laptop after turning the MS Defender off. As you might guess, this was quite a relief.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Today was the official opening ceremony at the main arena. The staging was terrific. Scout units from all of the Sub-Camps marched into the Arena with their national flags. Troops from many countries were intermingled and our American scout troops were scattered among all the nationalities. Part of the opening ceremony included a parade of flags from most of the countries represented, more than 200. In fact, this is the largest gathering of scouts in history; every Country that has Scouting is represented. The official number is 40,000 scouts and another 8,000 staff. It was amazing to see the flag of the Palestine Authority and Israel on the stage at the same time. The same might be said of many others: Pakistan and India, Northern Ireland and England, Taiwan and China, etc.; perhaps some of these scouts will go home and tell their parents that they could get along with one another. Prince William and the Duke of Kent were the guests of honor, and the Duke of Kent talked to the scouts with a message of welcome from Queen Elizabeth. Like our own American Jamboree, there were helium filled balloons, parachutists, fireworks, music and dance. It was just an amazing, inspirational event.

The World Jamboree is both similar to, and different from our American National Jamboree. The sub-camps are organized into various categories. Most sub-camps have unit campsites, other sub-camps have displays and programs, and some sub-camps are for support services. The sub-camps are not numbered as at an American Jamboree; rather, here at the World Jamboree the sub-camps only have names. The central exhibition area is in the World Scout Centre and the Plaza sub-camps. The Energize sub-camp has athletic areas and a circus tent where scouts can try their hand at juggling, mono cycles, etc. The Global Development Village is all about cultures and developments in the third world; the presentations, facts and activities relate to homelessness, hunger, education, the status of women in developing countries. Off the site, there’s a climbing and rappel activity center at Gilwell, the historic scout camp, home to Wood Badge. An aquatics center is at another site. About 10,000 scouts leave the main site at Hyland’s Park each day to visit the off-site activities, and an equal number of day-visitors are allowed to come on the site.

One of my fellow scout leaders, Barry Jones, from the National Capital Area Council (my home council) is here as the Scoutmaster of our council’s Boy Scout troop. Barry and I were fellow Scoutmasters during the American National Jamboree in 2005, at Fort
A.P. Hill, near Fredericksburg, Virginia. In fact, one of the boys who attended the Jamboree with me in 2005, Steve Montgomery, is here with Barry. When Steve saw me, he exclaimed to me, “you’re everywhere!”

Our amateur radio activity is up and running as we have somehow managed to get electricity. It’s an impressive facility with much equipment. We’re keeping a log of contacts we make around the world. Our call sign is “GB100J.” Since I did not know in advance that I would be working in amateur radio, I did not bring my personal radio and more importantly did not remember by personal call sign (required).

Demi Pulas ran an amateur radio license course that I attended in 1997. Back then, we often had scouts operate emergency radio communications at our George Washington district camporees. Our district was quite large and we often had more that a thousand scouts at a camporee. I remember at one George Washington district camporee when a young scout climbed down the side of a very steep cliff, and could not get back up. He may have been injured. Our amateur radio operators were able to patch through to emergency responders, and to rescue climbers to save the boy.

To get my license number call sign, I logged into the FCC site on the Internet, and lo-and-behold, there I was: “KF4OSN.” So I am official now. If any of you have amateur radio access, try to contact us here at the World Jamboree. There are a lot of frequencies listed on the web (google World Scout), or try these:

20 meter band: 14.290 cycles
50 meter band: 21.360 cycles

Tomorrow I have a day off, and I plan to take a trip to visit the Imperial Air Force War Museum near Cambridge.

Sunday, July 29, 2007
I got up early and walked into Chelmsford to catch the train to Cambridge. I had to go back into London to transfer trains, but after about two hours of travel, I made it to Cambridge where I caught a bus to a branch of the Imperial War Museum in a town called Duxford. The Imperial War Museum has three other branches including the HMS Belfast, the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms, and the main Imperial War Museum in London. I have not visited these other sites, but they are on my list of places to see now. The Air Force museum is outstanding.

One of my friends, Dominick Caridi, asked me to check out some old US Army Air Force sites while here because his father served in the US 8th Air Force during WWII. Folks at the Jamboree told me that Duxford was the place to go, and I discovered that the museum there has a new exhibit area dedicated to the American Airmen in Britain, so I had to go when I got a day off.

The museum has a very modern exhibit building that houses historic aircraft dating from WWI (Rickenbacker Spad) to recent times (SR-71), but the majority of the exhibit is about WWII. Although, most of us know of the American contribution to the air war, it’s amazing to see the display that shows just how extensive our involvement was. By 1944, about half of the entire USAAF was in England: 500,000 people at 120 air bases, many in East Anglia. America’s bomber, fighter, and transport forces were absolutely amazing. D-Day would not have happened without air superiority. In his book, “Wild Blue,” Stephen Ambrose credits the B-24 Liberator crews with making it possible to win the war by bombing the oil refineries they vitally needed.

The museum has displays and excellent media presentations for all of the bombers of WWII. BG Jimmy Stewart (actor, Wonderful Life, etc.) piloted a B-24, and so did George McGovern, Senator from South Dakota. Additionally, B-17’s and B-25’s are on display. All the fighter and trainer aircraft are there too. Among the more modern aircraft at the museum, there is a B-52 D-model, that I flew during the Vietnam War. Under the wing of the B-52 is a section of the Berlin Wall. There are some people who credit the B-52 and our other strategic forces for ending the Cold War and bringing that infamous wall down. Then at the far end of the exhibit hall is an SR-71, Blackbird, like at our own Air and Space museum near Dulles.

There are many other exhibit hangars at Duxford. British and other nation aircraft and land warfare equipment is on display. There’s a great exhibit, mostly from a British perspective about D-Day, and another exhibit dedicated to General Montgomery. They have several “caravans,” that Montgomery used during the war. The caravans include a map room, sleeping room, and command center. Some of these caravans were captured from the Italian’s! The American commanders, including Eisenhower, had a hard time with Montgomery; he was not an easy person to get along with, but he was a brilliant tactician, and the British admired him as a commander and as a leader and trainer of soldiers.

After the museum, I went to Liverpool Station to check on transportation to Stansted airport where I am to catch a shuttle to the Jamboree. The train to Stansted leaves every 15 minutes, and I bought an advance ticket for the trip tomorrow. I also bought a ticket for the train to Inverness, Scotland where I will go after the Jamboree. I will have to return to London to catch the train to Scotland, but I was not surprised by that.

The Liverpool Station has a special place in Holocaust history. It was the place that German Jewish children were brought before the war, 1938-1939, to be sent into the British countryside to live with families until things got better. The effort was called the “Kindertransport.” A memorial statue and plaque are in front of the station.

Near the Liverpool Station is a very unusual modern glass and steel building shaped like a giant pickle! A Swiss Insurance company built it; locals call it the “gherkin.” Since the Liverpool Station is not far from St. Paul’s, I decided to walk back to the hostel. I passed the London Museum, but did not go in. The street is called “London Wall,” and at the museum I found out why. The Romans built a wall around the old city, and remnants remain near the museum. Near the museum is an old church with a plaque to John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church. There’s been some type of church at this spot for more than 900 years. Further on I came to a little side street that went into Finsey Circus, which is not a circus, but a park. There was a great open green space with a tight grass lawn like on a golf green, but it was about the size of a baseball field. It was a field for bowling. A couple of guys getting ready to play explained the rules a little, and it reminded me of bocce. This English bowling involves throwing a small hard white ball onto the green, and then bowling with larger black balls to try to get close to the white ball, or to knock your opponent’s bowling balls away from the white ball. This must have been what they played on Bowling Green in lower Manhattan. The park also had a wonderful planting with a Boy Scout Logo and 100th Anniversary done in colorful plants and flowers.

Garrett and Kimberly showed up at the hostel around 7:30 p.m.; I was in the middle of trying to connect to the Internet, but not having much luck. My laptop is new and it was giving me a message saying that it could only connect locally. Garrett is a computer science/engineering graduate, but he was not familiar with the new Vista operating system, and couldn’t find if I had a real IP address. We had a similar issue at Raven Knob where Nathan Sherrard discovered that I did not really have an IP address when I tried to connect to one of the camp’s networks. Moving to a place closer to the router did the trick at camp, but moving around in the hostel did not seem to work. I put the computer away, put on long pants and a short sleeve shirt, and the three of us went out to dinner. We walked across the Millennium Bridge to the warehouse district where there are many restaurants. We picked a Portuguese place that served a variety of chicken and hamburger type meals, but also had a selection of vegetarian meals (my choice was a bean burger sandwich with a hot sauce).

Garrett and Kimberly told me about what they have been up to here in London for the past eleven months. Garrett accepted a transfer to the London office of his North Carolina company, and Kimberly started an MBA program when they got to London. However, soon after moving Garrett’s company decide to close the London office. So Garrett took a job with a small start-up firm working on mobile phone communication software. He really seems to enjoy the challenge, and they both seem to enjoying living in London, traveling on holidays and weekends.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

This is the big day as I head to the Jamboree. After checking out of the hostel, I walked to the underground station at St. Paul’s, only to discover it was closed for engineering work. I had to walk another quarter mile to the Bank station, and then only one stop to the Liverpool Station where the train to Stansted was just about to depart. It took about 45 minutes to get to Stansted, and there I waited for the shuttle to the Jamboree site. Scouters kept arriving, and the women in charge kept saying the bus was on it’s way. Of course, more than two hours later the bus did arrive. However, one good thing was talking to the folks waiting for the bus. Several of my friends from home, Bob Zung and Demi Poulas, had flown into Heathrow that morning, and took a taxi to Stansted. It cost quite a bit, but they said there was a limitation on how much luggage they could carry on the regular shuttle between the two airports. Demi knew he would be working at the amateur radio section and Bob who has attended and worked at several World Jamborees expected to work at the human resources section (checking people in and assigning them to jobs, etc.). I did not know where I would be working, but Demi said he would get me a job with the amateur radio section, and he did. Demi was my instructor when I took my amateur radio license course many years ago.

It started raining just as we approached the Jamboree site, and we knew we would have to walk about 20-30 minutes to the International Support Staff camp, called the Island Hub. A group of people met us when the bus stopped, and we felt fortunate that they had a small car and trailer in which they hauled our bigger luggage to the check-in tent. We hiked to the check-in tent carrying our backpacks. It rained a little as we hiked, but by the time we arrived the sun had come out. Check-in was trivial; in fact, we were told that the “real” registration would start in the morning back where the bus let us off at gate five. At the check-in, people filled out a short form with information from each of us and with our ID numbers from their database. I was not in the database! “Don’t worry,” I was told, “tomorrow, at registration, I would be added to the database.” It turned out that a lot of people were to be added to the database.

The next step in the process was getting our tents, and setting them up in our campsite. The amateur radio section had staked out a site at the far end of the adult camping area. Demi and I headed up there and helped each other set up our tents. At our campsite, I was introduced to Alan Willson, his wife Barbara, and other people on the team. Most were English, but we anticipate having about 40 people all together from many countries. In fact, Demi and I may be the only two Americans working in the amateur radio section.

The tents provided to the American staff as part of our fee is not like anything we normally see back home. The tent has an inner shell and outer and an outer shell. The inner shell is an enclosed tent with a “bath tub” waterproof plastic floor. The outer shell, like our looks like a large igloo, the dome-shaped rounded part hast the inner tent under it, and the tubular part is a vestibule with doors on the front and on the side. Our tents are blue nylon with several Jamboree logos. Setting up the tent takes three poles, and about 35 pegs! It took Demi and me over an hour to set up our two tents, and we had help from one of our British teammates. One question to be answered is what to do with the tent when the Jamboree ends. The tents are actually not too large when packed, and I may send mine home.

We unpacked our gear, laid out our sleeping bags, and headed to the very large dining tent for dinner. The dining tent is probably two hundred feet long and fifty feet wide. It’s a rigid wall tent with aluminum support structure and a wooded floor. Eight thousand support staff personnel are to eat here. The food turned out to be quite good with many selections, including a vegetarian selection, several salad choices, cold and hot drinks, and breads and deserts. Behind the dining hall are other large canopy style tents. There is a large tent where people can buy drinks, including beer and wine, there’s a smaller snack bar selling sandwiches, baked goods, etc. As time goes by, other things will open, including several stores, a post office, and an Internet café.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

After breakfast we headed to the amateur radio site in the central program area. It’s about 20 minutes from our campsite. One of the British radio clubs had brought two large antennas for us to use, and we had to assemble them, along with several smaller antennas. The large antennas are on trailers, but need to be raised, and need to have guy wires/ropes attached. It’s quite an operation as the largest of the antennas is about 100 feet in height. We set up one of the antennas and two other poles to support long wire dipole antennas. The actual radio operations will be in another big rectangular canopy. We actually had a lot of work to do, and took most of the day working on the equipment.

At dinner, we had an amazing conversation with a 73-year old woman about what it was like when she was a young child during the Second World War. She had been sent off to live in the countryside for safety along with many city children. The family that accepted her got paid some money to support her, and at some point in her stay, the money did not arrive. She said it was a Friday when her host father told her “no money, no food.” By Sunday, after not eating for three days, she ran away, and wound up at the door of a neighbor. She knocked on the door, an older lady answered, and as the door opened, the little girl fell face first into the house. The woman knew immediately what was wrong, and fed and cared for her. Her family was called and the little girl convinced them to bring her home where her adventures with the bombing began. She talked to us for at least an hour. It was just fascinating.

On the way back to the campsite after dinner, Demos and I ran into Michael Feigenbaum, a friend of mine from my early days in the Boy Scouts back in the Bronx. Michael was perhaps 13 or 14 when we first met as part of Ranachqua Lodge of the Order of the Arrow. I was a lodge officer and Michael was one of our key people making Indian regalia. Michael also joined a group of scouts from my troop who took a summer trip around the country. Meeting him here at the Jamboree was a delight. Michael has had quite a life in Scouting and in commercial art. I was embarrassed when Michael gushed to Demi about what a “fantastic” scouter I am.

Monday, July 23, 2007

There was less to do today at the amateur radio site as we were missing some hardware and we were waiting for electrical power. So, after lunch, I caught the shuttle van into Chelmsford. My goal was to familiarize my self with the town so that when I have to catch the train after the Jamboree, I would be set. The shuttle van stopped at the bus station only a block from the train station. I decided that I would stay in Chelmsford for the night before I have to catch the train; the people in the local tourist information office helped me find and make a reservation at a small bed and breakfast not too far from the train station. After accomplishing my main tasks, I wandered into the center of town to explore and to see if I could find a flash drive for my computer. I bought one to use it to transfer files from my laptop to computers at Internet cafes. Then I went to the local public library to check my email and send a message home.

I waited for the shuttle bus to return to the Jamboree site for more than two hours. Another scouter walked by, and I asked him if he knew when the return shuttle would be by. He told me that I was at the wrong spot, even though the shuttle drive told me this would be the spot to wait. The other scouter offered to give me a ride in his car back to the Jamboree, but he had to make a few stops on the way back to buy things for his section. I was glad to get the ride.

It started to rain just as we got to the Jamboree, and it rained continuously for most of the evening and night. The earth is saturated, and with all the foot traffic, there was mud everywhere. I have the right foot wear, and rain gear, and my tent stayed dry. England is suffering some of the wettest weather it’s had in a long time. Many towns and cities are experiencing serious flooding and loss of drinking water and power. I hope it clears up by the time the scouts get here.

At dinner this evening we met and talked with another fascinating scouter, Jack Glisson, from Lexington, Virginia. Jack is 77 years old, and he told us stories about his life as an engineer for the Navy, and as an active scouter. He worked with Will Scarlett at several National Jamborees in the Boy’s Life Wood Carving exhibit.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

We set up the rest of the antennas today, and had some time to walk around the Jamboree grounds. Things are still soggy and muddy. I found a corner in one of the construction tents to work on this journal again, and plan to go into town tomorrow to send part one home.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

The morning started with a large meeting of the “daily programs” groups as most people on staff have arrived by now. Our amateur radio section is filling out with people from all over the world. We still don’t have electrical power or tables, so after a long discussion of what was yet to be done, we had the rest of the day off.

I headed back to catch the shuttle into Chelmford, but discovered the shuttle would not be running until after the Jamboree started officially in two days. However, there is a commercial bus into Chelmsford about 15minutes further down the road. So off I went. Actually, I am glad to have discovered this route, just in case the free shuttle is not running when I need to leave the Jamboree site.

Philip Sternberg
Scoutmaster, Troop 1131