ABSTRACT
It has been 26 years since I got off a bus in the darkness and cool air of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I was a young 18-year-old kid from New Orleans, Louisiana trying to grow up and become a man. I had made the decision several months before to enlist in the US Army. Many of my friends did the same. I am sure I joined the Army to be like my father; he was in the Army in the 1950s and he always said it was the thing for a young man to do. I wanted to be like my father so much that if he said I ought to do it, then I was going to do it. I was not sure what my experience was going to be like. I was excited about being in the Army, but I had no idea what being a soldier meant or felt like.
