Murphy's Law by Jack Murphy

Author:Jack Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Threshold Editions
Published: 2019-04-23T04:00:00+00:00

PART II

CHAPTER 10

Anything You Do Can Get You Killed, Including Doing Nothing

I DIDN’T SEE ANY future for me in the army.

We stood tall on the parade field out behind our buildings at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The field is lined with small trees, each planted to symbolize a member of 5th Special Forces Group who had been killed in action. Today, the reason for our formation was less solemn: We were receiving deployment awards. I was being awarded the Bronze Star for my work in training ISWAT. Like most Green Berets, I felt that it was an unnecessary award for doing my job; however, it was a nice gesture from my ODA’s leadership to submit my name for recognition.

A burly command sergeant major came down the line of young Green Berets from Alpha Company 4th Battalion and shook our hands as an officer pinned the awards on our fatigues. One by one, he asked what we had planned for the future. Just about every guy said he was getting out of the army. The sergeant major tried to talk us out of it by telling us how great the army had been to him.

I felt that my best days in the army were already behind me. I had gotten to do the cool jobs, being a team leader in Ranger Battalion and a weapons sergeant in Special Forces. I had gotten to go to all the cool schools as well. From here on out, it was going to be training billets, admin slots, and worst of all, becoming a senior NCO who ran around yelling at young soldiers because they weren’t wearing the right type of belt or boots. In the army, you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become a banal midlevel civil servant enforcing army bootlace standards. It is an unappealing future of bureaucracy and backward thinking that doesn’t exactly attract the best and the brightest that this country has to offer. It seemed to me that I had been trained and selected to do a job, and then the very unit to which I was assigned had done its damnedest to make sure we didn’t do that job.

I outprocessed from the army, got my DD 214, packed up my Toyota Tacoma pickup truck, and drove home to New York, about twenty-seven hours of straight driving. I spent the next month doing the stereotypical thing to do when you get out of the military: I lived in my mom’s basement and played video games. I was also working out every day and continuing to figure out how college would work, trying to use my GI Bill to go to school in London, since I wanted to study abroad. Larger in my mind, though, was my plan to travel to Burma and Sudan and deal myself back into the action on my own terms.

All that changed when I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant.

• • •

The idea that I was going to be a father was thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.