There were others at this time in my life. I remember Wayne Rudy, a World War II veteran whom I worked for in the cadet supply room. Mr. Rudy was an intense but loving man who gave me daily lectures on everything under the sun, but mostly about leadership, courage, and the love of service. He often spoke of his son, who was a church missionary. As fate would have it, the son was killed in a car accident less than two months after returning from his mission. Mr. Rudy was devastated, but just when I expected to see everything in him fall apart, he rose up in defiance, understanding, and spirit to such a degree that he cast a positive glow across the entire episode. It was he who gave comfort to the grieving, it was he who explained the reason for the death, and it was he who helped everyone to understand the nature of tragedy and its place in life’s pattern. He was a marvelous man, a man who helped set the stage for what I became.
Then there were my cadet friends, who have surely forgotten me over the years, but to whom I will forever be indebted for their lessons and examples. This was a good time in my life, a time where I felt proud and invincible, and closer to the truth than I’d ever been. These people seemed to bring out the best in me, and I loved being around them. So much was changing, and so quickly.
There was, however, one other inevitability; it was the issue of a mate. I’d bet my father two hundred dollars that I wouldn’t get married until I was twenty-one. I absolutely wasn’t in the market for anything steady.
One of my roommates, a guy by the name of Mike Sea-wright, owed a hometown girl a favor. She had previously arranged a date for him which had gone well, and now it was his turn to reciprocate. He set me up on a blind date with a woman by the name of Debbie Bosch. Reluctantly, I trudged to her dorm, not knowing what to expect. Standing in front of her dorm room, I sighed and knocked. The door opened just enough for a pretty face to peer through the small vertical crack, and smile.
I smiled back, elated that she didn’t have a horn growing from her forehead.
“Debbie?” I asked.
“Debbie will be right out,” the face announced. The pretty head disappeared as the door was quickly closed.
I shook my head. What the hell was I doing this for? I was certain that the scout was now informing an ugly duckling that I was an appropriate mate. I was half turned away when the door opened.
“Hi, I’m Debbie,” said a soft voice.
I turned to see an outstretched hand welcoming me.
“You must be David. Mike told me a lot about you. Won’t you come in? I’d like you to meet my roommates.”
I couldn’t speak. I just nodded like a fool and followed her in. I don’t remember much about her roommates; in fact, I don’t even recall speaking to them. All I saw was Debbie. She was a beautiful brunette, with dark, loving eyes that sparkled with purity. She hailed from rural Worland, Wyoming, where she was homecoming queen, valedictorian of her high school class, and winner of a presidential scholarship to BYU.
I’d never met anyone like her, and from that moment on I followed her like a puppy. I called her every chance I had, sent flowers, even showed up on her doorstep unannounced. I don’t think I’d ever been in love before, so I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on with me. I just knew that this was a very special and exciting woman, and I never wanted to let her out of my sight. I had to do something creative, something drastic—and fast, before I lost her.
One night, three months after meeting Debbie, I called and asked her for a date, a quiet, romantic dinner. I told her to dress nicely, because we were going to one of the finest restaurants Provo had to offer. With the help of four whiting friends, I dragged a cardboard box to her dorm and set it up in the lobby. I covered it with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth and lit two candles for atmosphere. I positioned two chairs on either side of the makeshift table and turned on the cassette player, which shrieked a not-so-good copy of some Neil Diamond ballad. My friends took up their posts to give us some privacy, and I knocked on the door to retrieve Debbie.
She looked radiant, and I was nervous as hell about what I was doing. Naturally she thought I was taking her out for dinner; when I seated her in the lobby and pushed her chair closer to the paper table that had been set for her, the look on her face was priceless. I seated myself as one of my friends appeared in a suit with a white terrycloth towel draped over his arm.
“Some sparkling cider for Madam?” he asked, not waiting for a response and slopping the beverage over the edge of the foam cup and onto the table.
Debbie was tight-lipped, her arms folded tightly across her chest.
“Is everything okay?”
She snapped, “Exactly what are you up to?”
I was off to a slow start and sinking fast. I knew it … so did my buddies. I could see it in their faces. One of them approached us with the menus, which were hand-drawn and listed the preselected bill of fare. Another delivered a dozen red roses while simultaneously turning up the volume on the cassette player. I was gaining ground again … Debbie was smiling.
She stared at the menu I had prepared. “What’s this … spiced beef?”
“It’s a specialty. I hope you like it.” I bit my lip trying not to laugh. I snapped my fingers in the air, and the waiter returned with a folding TV tray and two boxes of C rations. He snapped the tray into position and immediately began wrenching open the cans of vile-smelling military rations. With a fork stolen from the cafeteria he pried out the contents, which fell onto the paper plate like dog food. He mashed it down and presented it to Debbie.
She stared at it for a moment and looked at me, hard. “Do you expect me to eat this?”
“Yes,” I said as my meal was placed in front of me. “It’s good—try it.” She stared at it again, poked at it with her fork, and to my surprise, took a small bite. I knew then that I’d made the right choice in this woman. Anybody who would put up with this was very special indeed.
We “dined” for hours. C ration crackers for bread, canned lima beans for vegetables, and canned fruit cocktail poured over canned maple-nut cake for dessert. We listened to that Neil Diamond tape over and over again. My friends whisked away the paper plates and turned Neil over one last time … and then disappeared.
We held hands talking for a while. Then I took a deep breath and knelt beside her, trying to be composed and romantic. “Debbie,” I said, my voice cracking, “I’ve never done this before … .”
“Of course you haven’t.” She smiled. “You’re only twenty. Unless there’s something I don’t know about you.”
“No, no, I’ve really never done this before. So I don’t know if I’m doing it right … or what you expect.”
It was obvious that I was struggling. “Somehow, David, I think you will always do what I least expect … . But I love you anyway.”
I took a deep breath. “I love you, too. And I want to marry you—that is, if you’ll have me. All I’ll ever be is a soldier, and all I can promise you is that you’ll move every three years, and live in crummy places, and …”
She put her fingers on my lips, “Shhh, it’s okay. Wherever it is, we’ll make it a home.”
The feeling of peace was overwhelming. I was scared, but I was calm. I knew this was right; I just didn’t know how I was going to do it. I’d not given much thought to being a husband before now, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next. I didn’t even have a ring. I couldn’t afford a full tank of gas; how was I supposed to finance a ring? My mind was racing. I took a deep breath, we kissed, and went for a walk in the brisk night air. My friends remained to clean up the mess, grinning in victory. I’ll never forget them.
Debbie and I were married April 22, 1975, in the temple at Manti, Utah. Exactly nine months later, Debbie bore us a beautiful baby boy whom we named Michael. Our lives changed forever on that day. My world was coming together fast. I was a father, and I cherished every second of it. I wasn’t very good at diapers, but I was good at getting up at night, being blanketed with vomit, stuff like that. I loved being a dad, ev
en if I was petrified. There we were, sophomores in college, married and parents. The sacrifices had only just begun.
Debbie was a wonderful army wife, even when I was just a cadet. She supported me in virtually every possible way, which was not the case with all spouses. In the years to come Debbie and I watched as many marriages of many of our friends fell by the wayside because of the stresses and trials of army life. Being a soldier isn’t easy, but being a soldier’s wife is more difficult still. It’s a team effort if you are to succeed; both must believe in the profession and believe that it will always take care of you. You overlook the bad—the loneliness, the cramped quarters, the mediocre hospitals, and the lousy pay—because you believe in the greater good of what you are doing. You call yourselves patriots—and Debbie was as much a patriot as I ever was. You trust that your comrades will always be that, comrades, and that they will be there if and when you ever need them. That was the army my father told me about; that was the army Debbie and I believed in and sacrificed for.
In the first ten years of our marriage we moved seven times, living in everything from roach-infested apartments to incredibly cramped military quarters. I remember the two of us laughing on the front lawn of our quarters in Savannah, Georgia, when we had every inch of floor space covered with furniture and half of the house was still on the truck. Have you ever tried to put a family of five in less than a thousand square feet of living space? It’s a challenge.
I was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry on April 16, 1979, and immediately entered active duty. Debbie and my father pinned the lieutenant’s bars on my epaulets. I wept at the pride in my father’s eyes. Because of my success as a cadet I was granted a regular army commission and designated a Distinguished Military Graduate. I won the General George C. Marshall Award, given to the top graduating cadet of the university. I was also chosen by a national review board to be the recipient of the national Dr. Ralph D. Mershon Award, which is given to the number one cadet among the 2,500 officers who receive regular army commissions. In retrospect, none of that was worth the price of a soda, but it seemed to be setting the stage for me.
From the beginning it was clear that my father had trained me well. Maybe success comes from simply following one’s destiny. I graduated from the Infantry Officer Basic Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1979, and was the Honor Graduate of my class. While we awaited orders to our first duty station, I attended the army Pathfinder school, again becoming the Dis tinguished Honor Graduate. I finished my basic officer professional instruction with the Infantry Mortar Platoon Leaders Course, and then Debbie, little Michael, and I reported to my initial assignment in the Republic of Panama, in November 1979.
During our first tour of duty, I served in a myriad of leadership positions. I was a mortar platoon leader, a company executive officer, an airborne rifle platoon leader, and finally, aide-de-camp for two different commanding generals. I attended the army scuba school in 1980, and in 1981 the army jumpmaster school, where I was the Distinguished Honor Graduate of my class. As a first lieutenant, I was selected to command the army’s only separate airborne rifle company—Alpha Company (Airborne), 3rd Battalion, 5th Infantry, located at Fort Kobbe, Panama—a position formerly held only by senior captains. I barely outranked those I was commanding.
We were young and the train moved fast. Debbie learned to counsel the wives of my- subordinates in everything from finances to marriage. She was a natural. She worked as hard as I did, and harder. We raised our children to think of the army first.
One thing becomes clear after the newness of the army wears off: you are simply a number, and expendable. I guess I knew this, and it was certainly clear to Debbie. We just wouldn’t let ourselves dwell on it. We kept busy with the business of being a soldier and a soldier’s family. As the years wore on it became increasingly clear that sacrifices didn’t matter, that your belief in the profession was expected, not appreciated. You were manipulated, and you were expected to manipulate; how else could you get over two hundred men to do what no normal human being would ever do? An idealist (which is what I was) will tell you that you accomplish that through leadership. A pragmatist will tell you honestly that leadership is a series of overt and covert manipulative acts arranged so as to entice another human being into marching forty miles with a ninety-pound rucksack, into sleeping in the mud at night only to awaken in battle, and into finishing the day by carrying dead friends to a medevac chopper in plastic body bags. Normal men and women are not inspired to act in such a manner, and they don’t do it for love of country or fear of consequences. There is a psychology to it, a psychology I slowly began to be aware of over the years, a psychology that would ultimately be used against me.
Despite the pace of Panama, Debbie and I found time to have two more children, our daughters Mariah and Danielle, who, to their amusement, sport dual citizenship to this day. Finally, after four and a half arduous years, it was time to leave Panama. Good friends remained behind and fond memories came with us. The officers and their wives and children were all family to us. Debbie and the children miss Panama to this day.
After a six-month tour back at Fort Benning for the Infantry Officer Advanced Course, we were off to our next assignment, the prestigious 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, at Hunter Army Airfield, in Savannah, Georgia, in 1984. Life with the Rangers was completely different from anything I’d experienced before. These are hardened and serious men, hell-bent on kicking someone’s ass in battle. I served as a battalion training officer, battalion adjutant, and finally as a Ranger company commander, our second company command. I was better at it the second time around.
The best part of the Rangers was the noncommissioned officers. I stood in awe of these men. Men like Sergeant Major Leon Guerra, First Sergeant Sam Spears, and First Sergeant Peterson, to name only a few of many. They are dedicated, fit professionals who rarely crack a smile and view officers with a doubting and critical eye—that is, until you prove yourself to them. I’m not certain I ever did that—perhaps they were just forgiving in my case—but I counted them as friends. Every day they drew breath, they pushed their troops to the limit, never faltering, never wanting a break. Officers come and go quickly in the Rangers-most of them rarely spend more than a year in any one assignment—but the sergeants were always there, steady and solid. They were an impressive lot, and it was my honor to serve with them.
I’d been in command a little over a year when my company was selected by the regimental commander, Colonel Joseph Stringham, to go to the Kingdom of Jordan for a lengthy desert deployment. It would be the first time in history that the United States military would send a combat command into the kingdom. The situation was highly political and would be scrutinized from every possible angle during pre-deployment and deployment and, of course, upon our return back to home base.
Naturally, we were excited. The company endured long hours of extra training, learning some of the basic language skills, customs, and courtesies of the host country. We began shifting our sleep cycle to match the time change. We even spent time assimilating a handful of Arabic linguists into the company. They, to their chagrin, were on permanent loan from a military intelligence unit at Fort Stewart, Georgia. These guys hated being part of the Rangers. Being unaccustomed to the rigors of our life, they were miserable from about five minutes after they showed up until we released them back to their parent unit several months later. I should say that most of them were miserable. Several of them, including the warrant officer attached to my headquarters, proved to be real troopers.
After seemingly endless training and preparation, the day arrived for our deployment. The families of our troops had been well briefed on the activities of the company, but that never made it easy to say good-bye. We had the standard prayers from the chaplain, prayers to keep our families safe. But the faces of the children saying good-bye to their fathers never changed; they were always guarded and sad. Even though this was a peaceful mission, all was not safe. There had been peace
ful missions before, when young men didn’t come home again. In the Rangers death was always a possibility, and the families lived with that knowledge daily.
I knelt in front of my son, the oldest and most aware of what was happening. “I love you, Michael.”
A single small tear dropped from his eye. “Be careful, Daddy. Don’t get hurt.” He squeezed my neck with his arms, his face pressed beside mine.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I’ll bring you back some desert sand, how’s that?”
His face beamed as he wiped away another tear. “And a big spider?”
I chuckled, giving Debbie a quick glance. “Yeah, and the biggest spider I can find.”
I gave Mariah a tight hug and kissed little Danielle on the cheek before turning to my wife. “You know I’ll miss you.”
“We’ll miss you, too. You do like your son said and stay safe, you hear me?”
“I hear you. I promise I won’t ride any camels. I love you.” I embraced her and turned toward the aircraft to load it. As I walked I could feel her eyes on me and I turned to give her one last glance before disappearing into the belly of the C-141 Starlifter.
TWO
THE BULLET
It seems like a hundred years ago. I slapped a platoon leader on the back, took my position in the order of movement, and crossed the line of departure under the cover of mortar and machine-gun fire. It was the spring of 1987.
I tried to keep my mind on what we were doing, but it kept wandering back home to Debbie and the children. I remember thinking that Debbie and I had had an unusual parting. I didn’t quite understand why this time had been different, but she seemed to have held on a little tighter when we kissed good-bye. The look in her eyes when she let go of me still made me uneasy. I ordered myself not to think about it.
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