I was fortunate to have a good education before I joined the U.S. Army. I enlisted and I was eventually assigned to a Patriot unit in West Germany where we watched the skies for a Soviet air armada that never came. When my enlistment expired I returned to the United States to earn my B.A. in History, having learned to love it in Texas and the BRD. I attended the Reserve Officer Training Corps and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Air Defense Artillery; when I was at Fort Bliss I was accessed for active duty just in time to deploy to Operation Desert Shield. After Desert Storm I had a brief stint on the General Staff as the Assistant SGS, then back to university to earn an M.A. in History. Afterwards I did museum work while assigned to the National Guard, but was recalled to active duty due to shortages in my branch and grade. 9-11 occurred while I was in command of a battery in New Mexico. When the Global War on Terror began it seemed pretty clear that ADA types were not going to be needed to defeat al-Qaeda I went into the Public Affairs functional area after attending the Defense Information School. I have been working in this capacity since then, with assignments in Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait and Guantanamo Bay. I retired in 2022.Read more about this authorRead less about this author