Out Here, War Is a Precious Memory

I was very naïve when I left the military.

I’d spent years concentrating on “leadership,” daydreaming about how I would perform under threat of gunfire and IEDs, scanning the daily news from Iraq, reading Medal of Honor citations, devouring memoirs of young officers in World War I and Vietnam, wondering if, when my time came, enlisted men would see through me as a fake, a coward, someone not worthy of my title. Robert Graves. Ernst Jünger. James Webb. These were my friends and teachers. Their lessons were grand, but my wartime experience and those wartime heroes didn’t prepare me for life at home.