Around four years ago I went to a military recruiter. As a 35 year old guy, with multiple degrees, and a good job the guy that interviewed me was confused. Why was I there? I told him I came from a family of military folks. I can run a 6 minute mile. And if I have to I can shoot somebody in the head from a hundred yards. I might have even said I want to hunt down and kill terrorist. I told him what I thought he wanted to hear.
But that wasn't why I was there.
Instead I felt guilty. My fellow Americans were dying in a far off land and I was sitting in my nice house doing nothing.
That I heard a guy/gal was going back for their second, third, and now even fourth tour just didn't seem right. Maybe I ought to do something.
But when the time came to get serious I was gutless. I couldn't do it.
I found it was easier to talk about projecting force, then actually picking up a gun and doing it myself. This realization made me feel really, really small.
It is something I have only mentioned to one person. Not something I am proud of. But something I won't ever forget about myself.
This little personal rant is cause of the IGTNT from yesterday. One person no longer with us is this man, John P. Pryor:
On September 11, 2001, Pryor rushed to Ground Zero, where he and another doctor managed to save two Port Authority officers who were trapped in debris. Pryor joined the Army Reserve Medical Corps soon afterward, at age 39, despite his family's misgivings. He went to Iraq for the first time in 2006, serving with the 344th Combat Support Hospital in Abu Ghraib. Another trauma surgeon who asked him why he'd joined recalled, "He said he didn't know how he could sit here, eating a hamburger and drinking a beer, when there were kids over there being shot, and he could help them."
He kind of thought what I thought, but a much better man than I am. He put his words to action.