Against All Odds: A Series on Military Life, Leadership, and Resilience

A brutally honest tale of a soldier's unorthodox life, a rogue career, and an often-maverick character not easily aligned with the military credo.

I am A Soldier Against All Odds, and what follows is a genuine and frank account—the good, the very bad, and the very ugly—of my 31 years in uniform. Diagnosed at age seven with an acute learning disability and failing first grade that year, I was sent back to repeat it. At age nine, I was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, a crippling bone disease dissolving the bone of my knee that added to my academic challenges and a significant physical disadvantage.

With more than three decades of national guard and active service, after starting my military career at 17 and retiring at the rank of lieutenant colonel, I was told that none of it would be possible. For that advice, there were undoubtedly excellent grounds. My story, therefore, is one of survival, perseverance, and a refusal to quit, no matter what, a characteristic gifted to me by my father. Once I did it, everyone asked, "how the hell did you do it?" And many times, I asked myself the same question….

In A Soldier Against All Odds, I show that It is possible, through determination, careful application, and bold strategy, to overcome or compensate for personal humiliation brought about primarily by my own mistakes, being haunted by investigations, academic difficulty, arrests, many ass-chewings, and physical frailty. I did pay the price for being me. This is how I did it, but most importantly, how I survived it.

The chronicle of life will inspire you to wince, cry, and laugh. I hope that the lessons I learned through the course of my life and my military career will be an inspiration to anyone confronting the future from a place of disadvantage.