No Ordinary Life: Short Personal Essays

My life had already been eventful when, in Quantico in 1974, the blinding barracks lights and shrill commands of Platoon Gunnery Sergeant D.L. Bennett shocked me and forty-nine other total strangers from an already short, tense sleep that first early morning of Marine Corps officer candidate school. All hell broke loose and life, as it had been, changed in an instant. This first military experience occurred shortly after I had cheated certain death by miraculously pulling myself from an icy...