Glad he got to see this...

Back in the fall of 1991, I was appointed commander of a Military Police Battalion, a position I would hold for four years. That day was a pretty important day for a number of reasons. First, I was following in the footsteps of one of my mentors (Bart); but second, and probably more important than that, was the fact that my dad was there to see it. In the picture above, my dad is in the white coat at the far left of the picture, standing next to my wife, Pam. In the picture below, Bart is on the left, with the Commanding General in the middle of us. The young pup on the right is me.

Even though he didn't know it, my dad was the driving force behind my Army career. He was not one of those career guys or an Academy guy who pounded service into his son's brain. No, he was just a WWII artillery guy who did his job in Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, the Ardennes and Central Europe and then got on with his life. However, shortly after he got out of the service and started his civilian life, he joined the National Guard, like a number of his fellow soldiers, to help make ends meet and to still serve the country he loved.

As a very small child, I used to sit behind the couch in the living room as he would have his section/ squad leaders over to the house during the week on a Wednesday night to plan things for their next drill. I thought these guys were gods, and just hoped I could be like them some day. I didn't know anything about Army, wars, discipline, orders, death -- all I knew was that if my dad did this and these big, strong guys listened to him, then I wanted in. There is an old saying that goes like this: It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. Many years of service later and having gotten a pretty good taste of what he experienced, I still think I did the right thing.

I know he was interested in what I did in the MP business. We talked about it at times, but both of us always seemed to be holding back. I don't think either of us ever got to talk about things or say what we really wanted to -- at least I know I didn't get to really explore that bond we had. I just finished Stephen Ambrose's book, Citizen Soldiers, and traced the battles and movements of the U.S. Army through the European Theater. Knowing his unit was a part of all of that made it more interesting. It further convinced me that Soldiers of that war, while just ordinary Joe's, were never the less something special .

"You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your father was." (Irish Proverb)

Hooah