Go Tigers!

Today I had lunch with a Princeton ROTC cadet, Wesley "Don't Call Me Jackson" Morgan who got to Iraq essentially the same way I did, by beginning a correspondence with GEN Petraeus. He too started a blog, which I highly recommend. The best section so far:

The other fascinating thing about Maj. Gen. Simmons was that, although he seemed
gruff, harsh, and old fashioned, a throwback to Bradley's Army, he very
specifically talked to all the soldiers he met with about readjustment
difficulties and the psychological problems they might experience in years to
come as a result of having seen combat. The most impressive thing about it was
the way Simmons backed up his advice: instead of talking about redeployment
stress abstractly, he candidly told the troops about his own emotional
difficulties after returning from a difficult Sinai deployment in the 1980s. The
core of the talk he gave to each group of soldiers was this: "Your memories of
the things you saw will fade, but as you grow older, they'll come back again. I
still have nightmares. When I first came home I didn't want to talk about what
I'd seen, and I saw awful, awful things, as bad as any of you. But eventually I
had to. I didn't go running to the chaplain or a shrink, though those are both
the right thing to do – I went to my wife. All of your wives have a right to
know what you went through, so when you get home, stop trying to protect them
from it – one night you have to pick up the remote, turn off the TV, and tell
them what you did over here." The general seemed to make an impression – after
he talked to the engineer awardees over lunch, telling them bluntly that they
would experience redeployment issues and that they had to explain to their wives
and families what they actually went through, he asked for questions and was met
with blank silence until one sergeant, who'd just graduated college, quietly
said, "Thank you for telling us that, sir." I was in awe – Maj. Gen. Simmons was
a whole different kind of officer from the others that I know, so I was
initially wary, but he was enormously impressive. (He also had a sense of humor
– twice during the day he had a Marine photographer shoot pictures of him
surrounded by attractive female soldiers.)

Apparently my boss called Wes a "great American." Yeah, he has a habit of saying that...