A hundred naked young men sat on a concrete floor, my seventeen-year-old self included. A corpsman barked, “Anybody who had asthma as a child stand up.” That category included me. I put my hands on the floor to push myself to a standing position. But then I stopped. I don’t know why. There was no thought process involved. With a marker, the corpsman wrote a big “A” on the chest of those who had stood. They were sent home, their fledgling Navy careers over. For me, three years of life-changing experiences followed that one second of inactivity.
Gary Jenneke was a poor high school student, good Navy radioman, miscast accountant, and is now a novelist (The Red Scare) and history blogger. garyjenneke.substack.com