Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters by Lt Col Mark Weber, Robin Williams Read Free Book Online

counselor was fairly blunt: “College is not for you. I don’t even think any college will take you. You should startthinking about what you want to do for a living.” That high school counselor’s words were a wake-up call:
I need to start thinking more and working harder
.
    *   *   *
    When the time came to meet with an army recruiter, the choice seemed as natural as picking out something for dinner. And it wasn’t all “duty, honor, and country.”
    Joining the Minnesota Army National Guard paid for half of my tuition, provided several hundred dollars of income per month, and would help establish a career if I decided to stick with it after graduation from college. Even my choice of army profession (military police) was based on finances—a two-thousand-dollar bonus.
    Moving from Minnesota to Alabama for basic training was as shocking as being thrown into ice-cold water. Our open sleeping bays were a close-quarters stewpot of personalities, cultures, and social backgrounds from all over the country, not to mention a total surrender of comfort and familiarity. I knew how to march, shoot, map-read, and recite leadership principles better than most of my drill sergeants, but this wasn’t high school, and these were not underclassmen.
    The pace and style of the drill sergeants made my dad’s roughness seem quaint. All my hair was cut off, all my freedoms stripped, and every decision made for me. We weren’t even allowed to pee without permission.
    Eating took place as a necessary provision of life, period. No socializing. Failure to follow instructions resulted in a tongue-lashing. And the daily rituals often included at least one “Kobayashi Maru” (no-win scenario), where the
intent
was to be unfair.
    I later learned there was a purpose to the entire approach: nothing goes according to plan in combat. Chaos reigns supreme. If a person can’t survive the scripted unfairness and sillinessof life in a training environment, there is no reason to believe he or she is capable of doing so anywhere else. But knowing it was scripted never made things much easier.
    I was a virtual expert in basic military etiquette, but I knew very little about how to actually function under stress. Our very first lesson was learning to stand at attention, which was child’s play for me. But stress turned the task into quantum physics. My heart raced, and I inadvertently tightened my hands into a fist instead of keeping them loose and slightly curled as I’d mastered years earlier. One of the instructors caught sight and bit hard. “Hey, lookie this one, Drill Sergeant!” he screamed to his partner in a deep Southern drawl. “He look like he gonna knock someone out! Unclench doze fists, Private, and get inta da proppa position of attention!”
    My seventeen weeks of basic training and MP school were filled with noteworthy experiences, but in sum it is best described as an immersion in life without convenience, comfort, or familiarity.
    The entire experience redefined my understanding of adversity and hardship.
    At home, going to Sunday Mass had always felt like a chore; in the army, it was an oasis. At home, I could just walk away from or ignore the people who bothered me; in the army, I had to learn how to work with them—and I saw that I could. At home, I didn’t think I could function if I didn’t get eight hours of sleep; in the army, I realized my body and mind were capable of far more output on half the sleep. In essence, I found perspective, and experiencing it in such an intense way inspired me to seek it out later in life—whether I was in combat in Iraq or in combat with my own body.
    Ultimately, I learned how true and valuable it is to actually live one day at a time. It was the mantra I recited to myself over and over when I was alone with my thoughts in the shower after a grueling session of physical training, in my bunk after a difficultday, or lying under the stars during field training exercises. It worked