Before my father died he said the worst thing about growing old was that other men stopped seeing you as dangerous. I always remembered that, how being dangerous was sacred, a badge of honor. You live your life by a code, an ethos. Every man does. It’s your shoreline. Its what guides you home. And trust me you’re always trying to get home.
Your father was a reader. Churchill of course but also Faulkner and books about Tecumseh. He liked artists that painted people with bodies that look like boxes. I’d give him hell about that. He’d just say you gotta look harder.
Look harder, your father would say. I always knew he wasn’t just talking about those boxy, abstract paintings. There’s threats everywhere and the world is draped in camouflage.
Your father’s grandfather gave up his life flying a B-24 in World War II. He kept the Liberator aloft just long enough for everyone to jump, then he went down with the plane. That’s the blood that courses in your veins.
Your father was my boss, and I was his Chief. What we knew about each other’s strength and our bond as operators, there was a brotherhood between us and we depended on each other more than a family. Tecumseh said although a single twig will break, a bundle of twigs is strong.
Our platoon was headed downrange.
We had Weimy, our sniper. He grew up in the middle of the Mojave desert. The most excitement he had as a kid was bowling frozen turkeys down the aisle at the grocery store.
Ray, our comms guy, our radioman, he grew up in East LA gangland. He has a silver star for pulling a wounded teammate out of the fray.
Sonny, he was made of granite. This guy didn’t even do pushups because he was afraid his chest was going to get too big.
Ajay joined the team in his late thirties. He has been a Mai-thai fighter all of his life. Before that he grew up dirt poor in Trinidad.
Mikey has twenty years in the teams but as humble as he was you would never know it. He kept a picture of his wife in his pocket and a lock of her hair in his helmet. Quiet as the breeze.
Finally, there’s Senior Chief. I couldn’t really tell you much about him other than I’d rather bring a knife to a gunfight than be interrogated by him.
That last night at home you think about how you could have been a better dad, a better husband. That bedtime story you should have read or that aniversary you forgot. You don’t expect your family to understand what you’re doing. You just hope they will except it. When you get home you hope you can pick up right where you left off.
War is a country of will. There’s no room for sympathy. If you’re not willing to give up everything, you’ve already lost.
Your father was a good man. Growing up without him is going to be hard. It’s gonna hurt. You’ll feel alone, out to sea with no shore in sight. You’ll wonder why me? why him? Remember, you have warrior's blood in your veins. The code that made your father who he was is the same code that’ll make you a man he would admire, respect.
Put your pain in a box, lock it down, like those people in the paintings your father liked. We are men made up of boxes, chambers of loss and triumph, of hurt and hope and love. No one is stronger or more dangerous that a man that can harness his emotions, his past. Use it as fuel, as ammunition, as ink to write the most important letter of your life.
Before he died your father asked me to give you this poem by Tecumseh. I told him I’d fold it into a paper airplane. And in a way that’s what I’m doing, sailing it from him to you.
--Chief Dave
Live your life so that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one for his religion. Respect others and their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life. Perfect your life. Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. When your time comes to die be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death-song and die like a hero going home.
--Tecumseh
