Hard to couch this not sounding self-selecting, but I had some leaders bummed I was getting out (originally a lifer).

They didn’t know a ton — let’s face it, we were all like 22 yo — but they were committed.

Then, the E6 lifers, just hated our guts. Feared is really not an overstatement.

Remember meeting a 2lt who was a 2yr lt by then, West Point, and he’d said his goal was to keep me in, and I said, “Sir, talk to me in two years.”

Like manna from God, we meet by chance at the Yongsan PX, shopping.

Both he and his WP-wife were getting out. I love everyone who stayed in … one or two years earlier, that woulda been me.

Never had a single leader try to talk me into staying. Had a bunch of limp dicks convince me to get out, inadvertently.