Curt's Newsletter

December 2006

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

Mercedes-Benz m-class earns top safety pick for 2007
MONTVALE, NJ - The Mercedes-Benz M-Class SUV earned a TOP SAFETY PICK award for 2007 from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.  This award recognizes vehicles that do the best job of protecting occupants in front (off-set), side and rear crashes based on ratings in Institute tests.  Winners must be equipped with electronic stability control (ESC), such as the ESP system pioneered by Mercedes-Benz.

SUV’S Eligible For First Time
The Institute rates vehicles good, acceptable, marginal, or poor based on performance in high-speed front offset and side crash tests plus evaluations of seat/head restraints for protection against neck injuries in rear impacts. The first requirement for a vehicle to become a TOP SAFETY PICK is to earn the top rating of good in all three Institute tests.

In 2006, SUVs weren’t eligible to win because the Institute hadn’t evaluated the side crashworthiness of many of them.  “Many SUVs didn’t earn good ratings in our crash tests, and on the road they were more likely than cars to get in serious single-vehicle crashes, including rollovers, because of their higher centers of gravity. Newer SUVs perform better in crash tests and, when equipped with ESC, are much less likely to roll over. All but one of the seven SUVs that win our 2007 TOP SAFETY PICK have ESC as standard equipment,” said the Institute president Adrian Lund.

Recent Institute research found that ESC reduces the risk of serious crashes involving both SUVs and cars. The largest effect is in single-vehicle crashes, which were reduced 40 percent with the addition of ESC. Fatal single-vehicle crashes went down 56 percent, and fatal rollovers of cars and SUVs were reduced by about 80 percent.

Mercedes-Benz Takes a Holistic Approach to Safety
Continuing the Mercedes-Benz commitment to occupant safety, the 2007 M-Class comes standard with two-stage adaptive air bags for the driver and front passenger, seat-mounted side impact air bags in front and rear, window curtain air bags that stretch from front to rear, active head restraints, belt tensioners, and belt force limiters for front and rear seating positions.  A rollover sensor can activate the belt tensioners and window curtain air bags if the vehicle senses an imminent rollover. 

A Choice of Four High-Torque Engines
For 2007 the new ML320 CDI diesel and ML63 AMG models join the V6-powered ML350 and the V8 ML500.   Under the hood of the ML350 is a new generation 3.5-liter, four-valve-per-cylinder V6 engine delivering 268 horsepower and 258-lb.ft. of torque.  The ML500 is powered by a five-liter V8 engine with 302-horsepower and 339-lb.ft. of torque. The ML63 AMG is the first engine developed entirely by AMG, a 6.3-liter naturally aspirated V8 that produces 503 horsepower and 465 lb.-ft. of torque.  Boasting 215 hp and a whopping 398 lb-ft. of torque, the ML320 CDI features an innovative diesel engine that’s equipped with the latest 3rd generation CDI technology with class leading fuel economy of 27 miles per gallon on the highway and a range of 600 miles.

Due to a recent FCC ruling, analog wireless networks supporting some Tele Aid systems will convert to digital technology after December 31, 2007.  For Mercedes-Benz, this change in general affects all Model Year 2000 to 2004 vehicles, Model Year 2005 M- and G-Class vehicles, and Model Year 2005 and 2006 Maybach and all SLR vehicles.

A Digital Tele Aid Upgrade program for these vehicles is available except for Model Year 2000 cars.  Due to the hardware originally installed in Model Year 2000 cars, these vehicles can NOT be upgraded, and Tele Aid service will terminate December 31, 2007 at the latest.

Starting on November 1, for January 2007 renewals, Tele Aid renewal customers will be notified by the Tele Aid Response Center through a direct mail letter and brochure of the opportunity to upgrade to digital.
3 different service packages are available to the customer NOT INCLUDING INSTALLATION TIME:

1.  Lifetime Package—$1500 MSRP for existing customers and for pre-owned vehicles in inventory.

2.  2-year Package—$1148 MSRP for existing customers only.

3.  1-year package—$824 MSRP for existing customers only.

4.  Maybach and SLR vehicles will be handled as a service campaign, with services provided for the balance of the original 4-year or 50,000 mile warranty.

The Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Hospital is a depressing place.  It shouldn’t be.  It’s state of the art.  The Veterans Administration medical system has gone from being hell on earth as epitomized in “Coming Home,” “Born on the Fourth of July,” and “Article 99,” to being the best in the country.  Their all-electronic medical records system is years ahead of civilian, private medicine, and stands out as an exception to the rule that the government can never do anything right.

It’s not perfect.  The waiting list for a colonoscopy is 3.5 years.  The lab where blood is drawn has about a 4 hour-long waiting room filled at 0830.  There’s always a shortage of money when the government is concerned.  Vets aren’t a particularly high priority to politicians, especially ones too feeble to vote.  You know the ones that saved us from Hitler.

It is hard to go there without being depressed.  Unless you stand in a 1-hour line for free valet parking, you’ll have to park 500 yards away and walk.  You’ll walk past cars with “-DV” or “PH” on their license plates.  The handicapped parking spots are full, and people are waiting for them.  Several vehicles have attachments for carrying scooters or motorized wheelchairs.  And you’ll see the veterans, old men in wheel chairs or on scooters, some with limbs missing.  They’re wearing their VFW caps with badges all over them or ball caps with unit names or “Combat Veteran” on them.  Few are bare headed.  Some walk with limps.  Some just walk slowly.  Most are old, but one young man accompanied by his young wife had to acquire his membership badge in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Most people see the old, fat guy in the scooter as just an old guy.  They don’t see the man who assaulted Omaha Beach as a teenager or swam with sharks when they sunk the Indianapolis.  Another one is complaining loudly about George W. Bush, but when he was young he didn’t retreat but “attacked in another direction” in the frozen Chosin.  Another old man waiting in Audiology says he didn’t do much, never got shot at.  But he lost his hearing loading bombs onto aircraft on a carrier.  Another one, younger, but old nonetheless, just did his job, but it got a little scary at times.  He was a crew chief on a medevac chopper, and his pilot was a crazy son-of-a-bitch who never refused to go down and pick somebody up.  His crew chief never did anything brave. But he rode on that helicopter for 340 days in 1967-68; choppers actually as two were too shot up to fly again.

Not all are combat soldiers.  There’s a helicopter mechanic.  Helicopters needed a lot of maintenance, 1 to 2 hours for every hour of “blade time.”  They flew from dawn till dark.  So the mechanics worked on them from dark till dawn, and the ones that weren’t ready to go by dawn, they kept working on.  They worked in areas that were really good targets for mortars and rockets.

Anything you do in combat can get you killed or wounded, including doing nothing.

A big, ruddy-faced guy was a lot thinner when he jumped out of a perfectly good airplane a long way from home in Korea.  But he was just doing his job.  The heroes are all buried at national cemeteries.  Those scars on his chest?  No big deal.

There’s a guy in a wheelchair who is barely conscious.  His granddaughter is pushing the chair.  She’s going to be surprised someday when she goes through his things and finds the Navy Cross he’s had since 1945 and never mentioned to any of the family members.

Another man in a wheelchair has a fresher amputation.  He never did anything dangerous in the Air Force, just loaded aircraft.  For six months he loaded “Ranch Hand” aircraft with a harmless defoliant called Agent Orange.  Now diabetes has robbed him of his right leg.  He says he was lucky, though, because one of his buddies got non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and they buried him at Arlington.  One of the many effects of dioxin poisoning is diabetes.  Another is non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Old Uncle Charlie, who always bored the nieces and nephews with funny war stories, is in for a checkup after cancer surgery.  He never told the real war stories, about how bad it smelled lying in a foxhole with his best buddy’s body next to him while he fought off wave after wave of Japanese, and when they stopped coming, the survivors of his 40-man platoon could ride away in a Jeep.  The nightmares of that time never stopped.

A man on an elevator never amounted to much after the war.  He became a worthless drunk, just another crazed Vietnam vet.  He never had a mark on him, so his friends and relatives couldn’t understand.  But when he came home on emergency leave his platoon was wiped out to a man.  But he finally found treatment and hasn’t had a drink in six years.

Another man is being treated for melanoma.  He knows all he has to look forward to is a little more time, maybe enough to see another grandchild born.  Melanoma might not be a service-connected disability, but since he spent a couple of years on the flight line in Than Son Nhut in the blazing sun, maybe it is.

All of these “doddering old fools” were once strong, vibrant young men.  Instead of running from duty they went to it.  Some were drafted.  Some volunteered.  No good deed goes unpunished, and they’re being punished now for the sins of their youth.  Other young men who avoided service are retired now from the jobs some of these men couldn’t get when they came home because they were veterans.  And others didn’t waste 2 or 4 or more years of their lives defending their country while they could be making money.

The department that treats Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is large and experienced.  Far from the screenwriter’s device in bad TV shows to make veterans the bad guy, it’s a natural artifact of combat.  Experience enough combat, and you’ll experience it–if you are human.  The experience of the POWs of Japan is the example.  They came home after the parades and were told to go to work, that they would be fine.  They did for 40 years, and then retired, then it caught up with them.  Who is retiring now?  Vietnam veterans.  They’ve ignored the nightmares for nearly 40 years.  Vietnam vets know well the term, “Bleep it and continue to march.”  They’ve been continuing for nearly 40 years.  Now they’re stopping.  The VA is expecting an onslaught.  So that department has everything from WWII to Iraq.  It’s recognized now, and the military tests for it on exit, way too late for Vietnam vets, who didn’t have PTSD because it hadn’t been invented.  They were just crazed Vietnam vets getting what they deserved for being baby killers.

A nice lady gives directions.  She is wearing a sign saying “Ambassador.”  She looks for men looking lost with papers in their hands and gives them directions.  But she talks to them as if they are in middle stages of Alzheimer’s or four years old.  I’m not sure which.  I’m sure that often that is the correct tone, but it makes a healthy man want to run away.

Fortunately most of the staff treats the patients as if they’re paying retail for their treatment.  It’s free now, but, of course, it’s not free, just prepaid.  They’re paying for it every day, some with physical pain from wounds, some with deeper pain.  Some still feel the pain of losing men they were trying to save, of ordering other men to do things that killed them.  Some feel guilty for killing the enemy, and others worry because they don’t.  Some fear sleep because they have been waking up in a knife fight for 40 years.

Life doesn’t have a happy ending.  No hospital is an upbeat place except maybe at the OB department.  But lives are saved there every day.  Cancers are cut out.  Prosthetic limbs are fitted.  The lame walk.  The blind see.  Many of these men leave in better condition than they arrived, but eventually time catches up with them.  The government will give them a plot in a national cemetery and a $35 headstone.  Some of their relatives will be surprised when a large contingent arrives from the nearest base.  Most veterans get a recorded playing of Taps and a color guard of old men from the DAV or VFW. Some get more.  Relatives at one recently were surprised to see a delegate from the French embassy at the funeral.  That’s when they learned what their grandfather had done in Normandy in 1944. 
These veterans are the ones who won the combat lottery.  They had 40 or 50 or 60 years of borrowed time while their heroes lie in national cemeteries around the world, never living to be old and feeble and forgetful, but never meeting the love of their lives or getting to see their grandchildren born.  The vets know that when they’re gone, no one will remember their heroes.
The hospital plods on 24 hours a day treating these men and women.  Some of the men are grateful.  Some think it’s their due.  It’s probably not.  It is more than their buddies in national cemeteries got.  Life isn’t fair.  If it were fair they would be getting the treatment congressmen get, and congressmen would stand in line.  Vets have not been getting what they deserve since the Revolution.  Most accept it and “continue to march.”