(2/5) “I was assigned to my father’s platoon. He worried that...

(2/5) “I was assigned to my father’s platoon. He worried that people would think I was getting preferential treatment so he put on a serious show. I got volunteered and ‘voluntold’ to do everything. He’d make me clean the shitters and the slop sinks and then at night we’d ride home together. I saw a new side of him. I’d always known him as my father. But now I was seeing him in a leadership position where he was respected by a large group of people. While we were training, he always told us to be ready for war, but we thought: ‘whatever.’ The running joke was that the Cub Scouts would get deployed before the National Guard. But in 04’ we got our deployment notice for Iraq. They told my father that he couldn’t come with us because he’d just turned sixty. It really killed him. He begged the colonel, and then the general, but everyone said ‘no.’ He followed us right to the door of the plane, and he was crying his eyes out, and he kept saluting us as the plane pulled away. He stood there until the ground crew made him leave.”