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soldier’s wife is more difficult still. It’s a team effort if you are to succeed; both must believe in the profession and believe that it will always take care of you. You overlook the bad—the loneliness, the cramped quarters, the mediocre hospitals, and the lousy pay—because you believe in the greater good of what you are doing. You call yourselves patriots—and Debbie was as much a patriot as I ever was. You trust that your comrades will always be that, comrades, and that they will be there if and when you ever need them. That was the army my father told me about; that was the
army Debbie and I believed in and sacrificed for.
    In the first ten years of our marriage we moved seven times, living in everything from roach-infested apartments to incredibly cramped military quarters. I remember the two of us laughing on the front lawn of our quarters in Savannah, Georgia, when we had every inch of floor space covered with furniture and half of the house was still on the truck. Have you ever tried to put a family of five in less than a thousand square feet of living space? It’s a challenge.
    I was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry on April 16, 1979, and immediately entered active duty. Debbie and my father pinned the lieutenant’s bars on my epaulets. I wept at the pride in my father’s eyes. Because of my success as a cadet I was granted a regular army commission and designated a Distinguished Military Graduate. I won the General George C. Marshall Award, given to the top graduating cadet of the university. I was also chosen by a national review board to be the recipient of the national Dr. Ralph D. Mershon Award, which is given to the number one cadet among the 2,500 officers who receive regular army commissions. In retrospect, none of that was worth the price of a soda, but it seemed to be setting the stage for me.
    From the beginning it was clear that my father had trained me well. Maybe success comes from simply following one’s destiny. I graduated from the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1979, and was the Honor Graduate of my class. While we awaited orders to our first duty station, I attended the army Pathfinder school, again becoming the Dis tinguished Honor Graduate. I finished my basic officer professional instruction with the Infantry Mortar Platoon Leaders Course, and then Debbie, little Michael, and I reported to my initial assignment in the Republic of Panama, in November 1979.
    During our first tour of duty, I served in a myriad of leadership positions. I was a mortar platoon leader, a company executive officer, an airborne rifle platoon leader, and finally, aide-de-camp for two different commanding generals.
I attended the army scuba school in 1980, and in 1981 the army jumpmaster school, where I was the Distinguished Honor Graduate of my class. As a first lieutenant, I was selected to command the army’s only separate airborne rifle company—Alpha Company (Airborne), 3rd Battalion, 5th Infantry, located at Fort Kobbe, Panama—a position formerly held only by senior captains. I barely outranked those I was commanding.
    We were young and the train moved fast. Debbie learned to counsel the wives of my- subordinates in everything from finances to marriage. She was a natural. She worked as hard as I did, and harder. We raised our children to think of the army first.
    One thing becomes clear after the newness of the army wears off: you are simply a number, and expendable. I guess I knew this, and it was certainly clear to Debbie. We just wouldn’t let ourselves dwell on it. We kept busy with the business of being a soldier and a soldier’s family. As the years wore on it became increasingly clear that sacrifices didn’t matter, that your belief in the profession was expected, not appreciated. You were manipulated, and you were expected to manipulate; how else could you get over two hundred men to do what no normal