Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts

To John and Martyna Fox

I could have a well-paying job with a company like DuPont, and be home every night. But life is supposed to have meaning. Whenever I’m ready to collapse on the bridge at 3 a.m., I think of the chiefs’ [chief petty officers’] retirement ceremony and the clanging bell that declares, “While others slept, you stood the watch.”

—Navy Ensign Zephyr Riendeau of Colebrook, New Hampshire

A sub[marine]’s not a job; it’s a way of life…. It’s easy to mold a sailor into anything you want him to be, because on a sub he can’t go anywhere. He’s yours.

—Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Anthony Maestas of Salt Lake City

I was embedded with the 1st Battalion of the 32nd Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division, based out of Fort Drum, New York, and fragged out to the 82nd Airborne Division. That’s what I do, that’s my identity. I am an Air Force pilot who serves the Army. Providing CAS [close air support] for the 10th Mountain Division was the defining moment of my life. I befriended and loved people, and saw them killed. I was a new captain and there was this very experienced first lieutenant who would never call me anything other than “sir.” That does something to you. He had been married for a few weeks and then was killed by an IED [improvised explosive device].

—Air Force Capt. Brandon “Custer” Kelly of Cairo, Georgia

I will fortify the moral high ground. People will attack me with stories about Abu Ghraib and the killing of Filipino civilians a hundred years ago by American troops, actions which I cannot defend. And I will respond that my troops can build a school, or fix a little girl’s cleft palate at a MEDCAP [medical civil action program], whereas all the guerrillas of Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah can offer is a suicide vest. I will build my fortress on deeds, because I know that the only force protection I have is the goodwill of civilians. All the guns in the world won’t keep an IED from going off.

—Army Col. Jim Linder of Fort Lawn, South Carolina