The Day I Became a Grown-Up: A Soldier’s Journey

That’s a really easy answer.

It was the day I graduated from Basic Training.

Before that, I’d gone to college. I’d been a Police Officer. I’d been in gunfights. I’d been knocked down and knocked down my share.

But being a grownup or a man?

The men I grew up around had left the farms and went off to serve our country.

They were on ships that fought their way across the Atlantic or to the doorstep of Japan.

They were fighting through France and freezing in the trenches at the Battle of the Bulge and to eventually arrive at the gates of cities in Germany. Others were in places no one had ever heard of like Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima. Still others fought in the stalemate that was Korea or waiting on roads in Europe that would never come.

These men were the yardsticks I measured myself against. And until I wore the uniform of my country, I’d always come up short.

The day I made it through Basic Training was the day I could actually say I was a soldier.

I was twenty-nine years old and the last checkmark on the yardstick had been met.

Not only could I now call myself a grownup.

I could now say I was a man.