Why I Joined the Military, and Why I Left - A Note to the Prospective Service Member
Every veteran has a story, and every decision for a free man must be made by him alone - what you must know about the decision of a lifetime
I come from a long line of United States Army officers. My father was the first, having joined the service in 1962 before graduating Officer Candidate School at what was then called Fort Benning, Georgia, on November 6, 1963. Two siblings came next, both joining in the 1980s, and both attack helicopter pilots. The younger of the two, David, retired in 2018 after a highly decorated 31-year career and achievement of the very rare rank of Chief Warrant Officer 5, and both served concurrently with Dad as he was wrapping things up as a Lieutenant Colonel.
Our family “travels” have taken us to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Kuwait, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Korea, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, and many other nations and overseas duty stations. Marking that big red “x” in November 1963, just weeks before the Kennedy assassination, in which our military adventures began, and drawing a line to the present day, in which my nephew (David’s son) still serves as a Major bearing my father’s name (Donald), my career is symbolized by just a blip – 5 years, 6 months of active service, another 6 months of Reserve duty, and then the final 2 years of inactive Reserve duty, for a total of 8 years between 2008 and 2016. I have now been out nearly twice as long as I was on active duty, and would be making Lieutenant Colonel this year, if I hadn’t already, had I continued my career instead of punching out.
In my political world, I am asked frequently a question that goes like this:
If you had an 18-year-old son, and he was itching to join the military, what would you tell him?
Usually, these questions are posed by anxious mothers, and they usually stem from great concern over the quality of military leadership, the military’s trajectory and fitness as a fighting force, or more recently, compulsory vaccination for COVID-19.
I do not believe I would possess half the skill and instincts I have today had I not served. There is no leadership crucible out there like that found in military leadership, especially under pressure or under fire when your unit is short on manpower, equipment, and other resources. I am thankful I served in the military when I did; however, I would not follow the same path if given the opportunity to relive it all over again here in the third decade of this new century.
But I thought you were glad you served? Isn’t that what gave you the ability to dig deep, tap into areas of strength, and delegate effectively? To survive?
Time marches only forward. No amount of revision will undo the things I’ve gained or remove the tools from my tool kit that have been placed there. Just like no amount of reassessing a failed marriage will take away the beautiful kids that came from it – there are no do-overs – only lessons learned, and wisdom applied. Every veteran has a story, and if that veteran is honest with himself and others, only then can he help others decide what they must do to assess whether or not he or she should don the uniform.
Military service was the furthest thing from my mind when I was turning into a teenager. I was a huge kid, over 6 feet tall in eighth grade, but knew absolutely nothing about eating right, possessed little by way of physical or mental toughness, and as such, excelled only in academics, where I could empty the contents of my head on paper without fear of being seen as less than by the other boys, who were more confident, athletic, and brazen than I was. The military, I thought, was for the standouts and folks with that hotshot aura to them, like my brother. My lack of significant athletic achievement turned out to be permanent, although some of my best memories and future prep came from my work as a baseball statistician in both high school and college. I did play football, and it turns out I took as many NFL snaps as every single kid I ever played with or against – precisely zero.
I first remember being deeply engaged in civics and full of love of country after the 9/11 attacks. I was a junior in high school at the time, and living at home with a proud Vietnam veteran and having another brother still in uniform made me hyper-vigilant about the world that was emerging around us. David was part of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and survived a crash landing on the first night of the war before turning into a war machine that punished the enemy at every turn.
College changed me for the better. I was never a big drinker (and am still not), and Ole Miss didn’t get me started. While most of the kids going to school there began a physical decline from their high school days, I went in reverse. Gradually, I grew stronger by going to the gym, which grew not only my body, but my confidence. Preston Walker, a future Marine officer and still one of my best friends, began to feel the call to push himself to the next level and started to train for Officer Candidate School in 2005. My dad never pushed me to consider the military because he believed the poor condition of my right ear, which is now almost fully deaf, would disqualify me from service. It was peer pressure from Preston that made me kick the tires on first pushing myself to my max, and then suiting up myself.
Ole Miss Army ROTC offered a class, which I took in Fall 2005, called Ranger Challenge. It was almost entirely physical fitness based, with some military tasks included that were practiced during weekly “labs.” I failed my first PT test miserably, running two miles in 18:12 when I needed to get across the finish line in no less than 15:54. That would turn out to be the last PT test I would ever fail, because by the time I was 21, I was sick of settling for less than I thought I could be once I got my first taste of what a positive attitude can do for results. I eventually tried to contract with the Air Force ROTC upstairs at Barnard Hall but was turned away for my hearing loss just as that service was reducing the size of its force by almost any means necessary.
In Summer 2006, Dad questioned me if I still had any desire to go into the military. He made it a point to tell me that we had two wars going on, and that the Army always needed bodies to fill the unit hierarchies. One day, in August 2006, I decided to pay the Army ROTC a visit, and a few weeks later, was issued a waiver for my hearing loss and offered a contract that would turn me into a Second Lieutenant in less than two years if I could satisfy all the program’s commissioning requirements. In very short order, I became one of the program’s hardest working cadets and most highly regarded. Watching Preston put himself to the test pushed me to seek to better myself, and since I didn’t have any interest in pushing paper after college with my business degree, and no viable pathway to work in professional baseball would materialize, I had no reason not to follow in the family tradition of military officership.
For the first time in my life, I felt like my Dad was proud of me. He went from riding my ass over my grades in college to investing time in developing skills and abilities in me he thought I would need to forge a satisfying and meaningful career. In another story for another day, I’ll write about how it was probably Dad who saved my career when it was on the ropes during a medical board in 2008 for that dreaded right ear. It took me more than two decades to obtain, but finally, it felt good to be approved of by my Dad, and the last four years of his life left a greater impact on me than the first 21 years I was with him.
Ultimately, these three things led me to join the military in that first decade of the new millennium:
1) Desire to earn my father’s approval.
2) Love of country and the perceived need to demonstrate it by serving in the military.
3) Push for self-improvement to prove myself and make up for the years I wasted by believing I couldn’t be as good or better than my peers in personal performance.
I was up, up, and away by June 2008 when I entered active duty, and exactly two years later, I landed in Afghanistan as a First Lieutenant of Military Intelligence, forced to oversee the section because my boss, a Captain, was stranded at home for a personal matter for three months. Dad died when I was on that tour, and I was allowed a brief leave for his memorial service in Mississippi but was unable to attend his interment at Arlington National Cemetery in January 2011.
I became an expert in what I was supposed to be doing according to the Military Intelligence creed – finding, knowing, and never losing the enemy. After many hard knocks in the first few months of my tour, I became a well-oiled machine and excelled at briefing senior officers and successfully answering their challenges, digs, and questions with actionable information. That skill has remained with me today in abundance. One night, while killing time on a slow shift, my career took its first step toward derailment as I read Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare by Carter Malkasian and Daniel Marston, which is a must-read for anyone reading this article and wondering if military service is what you need. With example after example, that book made it painfully clear to me that there would be no winning in either Afghanistan or Iraq, and that I could expect to be a regular visitor throughout my 20s and 30s if I decided to make a career out of service. As if I were watching The Truman Show, my mind became open to the possibility that the military industrial complex was real and preyed upon the hearts and minds of fiercely pro-American young people who felt serving in uniform was the most appropriate way to demonstrate love of country.
I eventually returned, and like a blur, was on the move again, first to Arizona for more training and professional education, and then off to Alaska for what turned out to be my final assignment on active duty. I was assigned as the S2 (intelligence officer) of an armored Cavalry Squadron in the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division – the “Arctic Wolves” – stationed at Fort Wainwright, just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Artic Circle. My oldest child, Eden, had been born in Arizona and is pictured with me below while I was on duty in Alaska:
I had hoped that my new unit would stick to its stated mission of being a rapid response force for the Pacific Command, which would require training with allies and ensuring maximus readiness in the event of a conflict in that region, especially with tensions rising in the South China Sea. I felt, after reading the aforementioned book by Malkasian and Marston, that this would be a mission more suited for a modern army than playing police force among warlords. In December 2012, my Squadron did a week-long training exercise in which all members qualified all weapons in the sub-zero temperatures, which plunged down to -20 at night. I was going through a phase in which I was reading material for edification rather than enjoyment, and I was working on Liberty Defined by Ron Paul, which is another excellent read for breaking up the ebb and flow of a polarized political brain. Just like those wee hours in Afghanistan in which I arrived at the conclusion we would never win because such a conflict simply could not be won short of annihilating the entire population and starting over, I suddenly recognized that I was investing my youth into something I could no longer support if I truly believed in the causes of freedom and liberty that I espoused – unjust warfare.
Shortly thereafter, the brigade began juggling its training and mission focus between Pacific-related objectives and in preparing for a return to Afghanistan. I made the decision to part ways with my military career instead. I had lost my belief in the mission once I realized that we were being used as pawns to fight in contrived conflicts or to settle ancient tribal disputes at the cost of personal peace and the well-being of families.
Ultimately, these three things led me to exit the military in that second decade of the new millennium:
1) Loss of belief that the current missions were just or sincere.
2) Belief that our missions were not only unjust, but unwinnable.
3) Desire to preserve things I was losing or may lose in the future that may cause irreparable personal damage.
Eight Points for the Free Man and Prospective Service Member