Written by My Son

English actor Stephen Fry paraphrased Oscar Wilde when he said, “if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it; that is your punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything.”

“There is a truth to that,” Fry continued. “We are not nouns; we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

I had always wanted to be in the military even from the time I learned to walk. I never had an exact job idea in the military, but I always knew I would join.

I was a junior in high school when I set my final plan in motion. I had finally turned seventeen, and I was so impatient to get out of my parents’ house. The first thing I did was walk over to the Army recruiting station and enlist in the National Guard. I had to have a parent signature, so I had my Mom sign, but other than that, I was on my own. Though I scored high on the ASVAB, the entry test, I chose to be Airborne infantry, because I thought it would be fun, and they had one of the best bonuses – about $20,000! I never looked too deep into the whole career field, I just thought that being able to afford a Ford Mustang would be cool. I was then shipped off to my basic training in Georgia, at Fort Benning.

As soon as I got on the plane, I got super excited thinking about jumping out of a plane like this. I thought I was going to be some high-speed guy. As soon as I got off the plane and onto the bus, I started to get nervous. I expected to get yelled at all day, but that’s not really what happened. My first weeks were spent at something called Indoc, basically a bunch of paperwork, medical exams, and for some, surgical operations, like the removal of wisdom teeth. Our drill sergeants didn’t really yell at us during this time. It was just the embodiment of “hurry up and wait.” This made me even more nervous. During this time, I was issued my M-16 rifle, and that was something of a symbol. It went almost everywhere I went.

On the fourth day of week two, we finally got into the training. Though I was nervous, I was relieved. We started by learning marching. I got it well, but one kid didn’t get anything about it, and because of that, we were getting smoked. Getting smoked is when you do strenuous physical activity as a punishment. We had a lot of that happening to us throughout basic training. Whilst getting smoked this one time, the same kid said something under his breath, and that caused us to get smoked even more. Let’s just say he didn’t get much respect from our fellow recruits. I realized that I had made a mistake; I should’ve gone into the Air Force. My Dad always told me so, but I never listened.

Everything after that kind of subsided, except one thing, the thing I dreaded. The gas chamber. Though we had gas masks, we had to break the seals on them, and recite the Soldier’s Creed. Doesn’t sound that bad, except that you’re breathing in tear gas. It’s not lethal, but very painful. It felt like someone lit my lungs on fire, then poured vodka in them. Nearly every orifice of every person spewed liquid death, except for one drill sergeant, who was unfazed. Everyone in my platoon thought he was built different. I was only thankful after the fact, because it cleared me up. No more allergies for me!

My next major achievement happened during week 11 of 12: the marksmanship phase. During this we used M-4 Carbines, and M-249 SAWs (squad automatic weapons) with red-dot sights – reticle sights specifically. We were aiming at targets shaped like men. I was accurate, and I hit most of my shots with the M-4, but here’s where I got the achievement: I was using the 249 and got three bullseyes in a row on full auto, in front of a drill sergeant, who then told me that he would recommend me for Sniper School after I got through Airborne. Somehow the drill sergeants got ahold of my ASVAB scores. I had scored high enough for sniper; I just didn’t know it. I graduated Basic as an E-2, the second enlisted rank, because I had taken a few college classes. I still hadn’t decided on Sniper School yet.

I returned to my high school to finish out my senior year, and didn’t make much effort, but passed my last class with a C, so I was good. At graduation, I surprised my class when I wore my blues. One girl in my class hated that I looked better than she did and voiced it to me. My friends and I laughed about it, and after graduation I had a little party with my family. Because I wore my Army Blues, my dad kept giving me dirty looks. On my mom’s side of the family though, my grandpa wore his Army Dress Blues, and we had a good time with that.

About a week later I went to Airborne School. Not much was special there, but I was promoted to E-3 before I earned my jump wings. Whilst I was there, I met a few Air Force Tactical Air Control Party (TACP) trainees. And that gave me an idea: I could still make my dad proud by going into the Air Force after my enlistment with the Army ended. The TACP guys were chill, and I soon came to admire them. I ended up wanting to be one of them. That was my next goal. If I wanted to be in the Air Force, I had to be smart, and having the Sniper Tab was the perfect way to show it.

Finally, Sniper School. I was with the best of the best now. No more acting like I didn’t know what I was doing. I knew it was going to be hard. This one I could fail out of. I had to keep my mind right. Training began almost immediately. I had to do a PT test, which I barely passed. And a marksmanship test. I used the M-4 again, but only with iron sights. That one wasn’t as hard. My second week was a different kind of hard. We were split up into pairs. My battle buddy and I were told to get as camouflaged as possible. We were sent into the wilderness and had to stay there for hours. It was boring. The instructors searched for us with high-powered optics. If I was spotted, I was out. If I moved, I was out. If you were out, you were disqualified from the course. My battle buddy was spotted. I thankfully wasn’t out with him. It felt like torture, ignoring the Georgia heat and all the insects. During week three, we were taught target detection. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Thankfully, I made it through.

Since I enlisted in the National Guard, I could choose my assignment. I had done some thinking, and I wanted to live in Oregon. I got to my home unit, which was the 41st Infantry Battalion, A Troop, out of Albany, Oregon. I knew infantry was going to suck, but it was worth it to be Air Force TACP eventually. I got to my home unit two years into my enlistment – that’s how long the initial training lasted. I was living just off base, without a car still so I had to walk everywhere. And this is when the chaos started to happen.

China had decided to surround Taiwan, and things were heating up. The U.S. wasn’t involved yet, and infantry isn’t the greatest in battle – they’re really just bullet sponges. Soon, our regular field training exercises started to mirror the Taiwan situation. This is when I knew I needed a change. I decided that as soon as my Army enlistment ended, I would become TACP without a break in between.

I requested an honorable discharge from the Army and went straight to the Air Force recruiting office. I enlisted and soon went to Air Force basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. It was super easy. I never really had a challenge except keeping up my physical fitness. I ended up doing my exercising in the latrines at night. I had a two-week leave from basic training graduation to my first Air Force school, my so-called “A” School, and immediately went to my family and informed them of the situation: China was going to invade Taiwan, and I was probably going to be sent to help against China.

Next was the schools, I was already Airborne qualified, so I got to skip that, and the Special Warfare Indoc because I had already been prepared by the Army. So, first up was Air Control School. If I was going to direct Close Air Support (CAS), I needed to learn how to call in an attack run. This school was mentally challenging, but I got through.

Next was SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) school. This one was mentally challenging, because of the “torture” we endured. All they did was blast Anti-America propaganda into our jail cells. It wasn’t bad at all, at least not at first, but after we learned resistance, we learned how to survive the weather. Mind you, this is the middle of winter in Washington state. That means it was cold … and wet. We had to learn how to stay dry. I remembered how by using an acronym, COLD. C stands for clean clothes. If you have muddy clothes, you aren’t going to be as warm – spoken from firsthand experience. Next was O, which stands for avoided overheating. You don’t feel like doing anything when you’re hot, right? Two words: Heat exhaustion. L stands for loose layers. You need room for heat to circulate. That’s how our atmosphere works. D means stay dry. When you’re wet, cold air is going to stick to you, like when you’re getting out of a pool.

As soon as I finished up SERE school and graduated from the TACP pipeline, I got stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, where my grandpa was stationed when he was in the Army. I was part of the 9th Air Support Operations Squadron. Part of the Army again. It was just a bunch of Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (JTACs), and TACP, like me. Like before, the exercises mirrored the Taiwan crisis.

I also met my wife there; she was a waitress at a local mom and pop restaurant. I was a regular there and got to know her well and we hit it off. We ended up moving in together and getting married, and life was good for about a year after. And we had a son.

As predicted, China invaded Taiwan, so we were soon deployed. When I left, the tears on my son’s face were so heartbreaking that I decided that as soon as this deployment ended, I'd be done with the military.

I was sent to Fort Carson, in Colorado, for pre-deployment training. I went to high school around there, and it was nostalgic. I entered the main unit mess hall because I was hungry and met one of my friends, I’d made in Airborne school. He had made it all the way and became a Green Beret. We were going to ship off to Taiwan together.

Leadership let me into the armory and let me customize my firearm that I would bring into combat. I chose the trusty M-4, but I put the Mk 18 barrel, along with a suppressor, a foregrip, and an ACOG.

As we were waiting for the plane, I made one last call to my wife, who told me, “They need your support more than I do, now go kick some a**.”

My son pleaded with me on the phone not to go, but I told him that I would bring something home for him. This gave me a lot of motivation, which I desperately needed. I had a lot of anxiety, because if I messed up, I could get the whole team killed. My Airborne friend reassured me that I would be ok.

I was part of Operation Silverback. I was deployed with some Green Berets out of the 10th Special Forces Group. I was just an Air Force asset stationed with the Army. We were tasked with spearheading the airborne landings after the Marines took the beach – just like D-Day.

We were about to do a HALO jump out of a C-130. Halo stands for High Altitude Low Opening, where you jump from super high, fall through the radar so as not to trigger anything, and open your parachute at a low altitude. We dropped on the east side of the island.

I got the signal from the Jumpmaster, and I was the first to jump. The cold air burned my face as I fell. I got to the opening altitude, and pulled my main chute, but it got all tangled up. I had to think quickly and pulled my reserve chute. Luckily that one opened properly and I floated down. And then got stuck in a tree. I ended up just leaving the parachute there, which was a bad idea.

We continued into a small village, where Chinese soldiers were hiding. We almost got inside the village square when we heard shuffling behind us. Opposing forces found my parachute. A firefight ensued, but it was easy to get rid of the untrained Chinese infantry. We hid one of the bodies near the parachute to make it look like the soldier died in it.

We got into the village when we were spotted again. Every window lit up with bright orange tracer fire. The loud cracking of the fully automatic QBZ-191’s 5.8-millimeter rounds slammed into the cement around us. We had a marksman nearby, but he was not going to be effective against the nearly 150 soldiers raining Satan’s rain around us.

They started to create a gauntlet, closing in on us. We had only one escape route, but that window was closing fast. We returned fire, and I killed at least three, and injured a fourth, while moving to the escape route. We were told that there were only about 50 insurgents, but that proved to be a lie.

About half of our 10-man team escaped, but I was not one of them. We all knew that we needed air support — and fast. I fumbled around with the radio and managed to get in contact with one of the air assets in the area, but I had to call a “danger close” airstrike. That is when the aircraft’s ordinance detonates close enough to kill you. It is a last resort.

The other four soldiers around me did their best to keep me safe while I made the call and gave the pilot the last four numbers of my social security number. We were told that we needed to wait two minutes for the F-16 Fighting Falcon. For us, two minutes was like two hours.

The other five who had escaped tried to kill some of the insurgents from a distance, but to no avail.

The rain of Satan got closer and closer, until we heard the roar of the F-16’s Pratt and Whitney F-100 turbofan engine. The enemy fire stopped for a minute as if to try to figure out what was going on. About five seconds later, we heard the high pitch of the M-61 Vulcan cannon from the F-16. As soon as the high pitch ended, I saw two 1,000-pound bombs bury themselves into the pavement below me. It was like a scene from a movie.

They exploded half a second later, and I felt a very sharp pain in my right leg.

Only two of the insurgents remained. Wrists heavy, I picked up my Mk. 18 and picked them both off as the soldiers around me roiled in pain. I remembered that I promised to bring something home to my son, so I found a few of the spent shell casings from my M-4. Though not legally supposed to take war trophies from the battlefield, I figured that if I was going to be discharged anyway, I wanted to go out as a legend.

I called a nine-line in. A nine-line is when you call in the pararescue to get you out of there. Two friendly helicopters soon arrived, and PJs (Pararescue) brought the injured and the heroes aboard. A hero is someone who died in combat. We had two heroes that day, as well as four injured. Everyone was loaded up and brought to a forward-operating base, where the injured were treated. Apparently, my right leg, from the ankle down, was still at the small village, and the rest of my leg had to be amputated.

I was sent home with a purple heart, and a medical discharge and a tattoo I got along the way. I had to go to the hospital for my amputation. My wife and son came to see me and to help me. My son kept crying because he thought I was going to die. I was not, I just had to do physical therapy. Man did that suck. Walking on one leg and a stick. It was a prosthetic, but it was a stick with a shoe on it.

Once I had finished physical therapy for my leg, I decided to move to a small town. I had the perfect one in mind. Vernonia, Oregon. My son had just started preschool, and I enrolled him in Vernonia Preschool. I had decided to open a firearms shop. I had plenty of experience. And I had plenty of money to keep the shop in good shape, and plenty of stock. The Vernonia Police Department had started buying from me, not just because I was the only shop within 50 miles, but because I was really good at repairing their firearms. I had made good friends with the Chief and had soon started to host marksmanship competitions. Some local high schoolers would always come down and watch. The local school had me come in and do seminars every year, and I had always attended their Veterans Day celebrations. It was mostly for the food. I also joined the chamber of commerce. Five of us local veterans had created a bond that could never be broken. Kimber’s Muscle Therapy, Mike Pihl Logging, Keturah Coffee Roasters, Mariolino’s Pizza, and I would host a small business event at the local park, and always had a good turnout.

I lived the rest of my life out there. It was nice and peaceful. Now I was not the brightest guy on two legs – or one leg – but I could hold my own. I met plenty of people and had a good life. People came, stayed and went, but that is always a given. I guess it wasn’t a final plan if it changed along the way.