I AM A SOLDIER AGAINST ALL ODDS, and what follows is a genuine and frank account—the good, the very bad, and the very ugly—of my thirty-one years in uniform. Diagnosed at age seven with an acute learning disability and failing first grade that year, I was sent back to repeat it. At age nine, I was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, a crippling bone disease dissolving the bone of my knee that added to my academic challenges and a significant physical disadvantage.

My military career began when I signed up with the National Guard at age seventeen. I continued through more than three decades of national guard and active service to retire at the rank of lieutenant colonel. I was told that none of it would be possible, and there were undoubtedly excellent grounds for that advice. I was not college bound, plain and simple. My story, therefore, is one of perseverance, and a refusal to quit, no matter what, a characteristic gifted to me by my father. Once I did it, everyone asked, “how the hell did you do it?” And many times, I asked myself the same question.