[September 16, 2026] Lying flat on my back, in the dirt, filthy, sweaty, head spinning, with terrible pain in my left shoulder, I thought, “How the heck did I get here?” This time, I knew the answer.
It’s the year 2010: Combat Football.
Sometime in the early morning hours, just at sunrise, often still cool, dusty-smelling, and with little if any breeze, we played our weekly games. We were near the heart of Baghdad, Iraq, in the last days of the war.
A big black Sergeant with a huge smile asked if I was in pain. I still hadn’t got my wits about me. He said, in a booming voice of concern, “Sir, you got tripped up and hit the dirt real hard.”
Just then, the pain came stampeding back, and my shoulder was on fire and sagging in a bizarre way. “Sir, I think you dislocated it.” It wasn’t the pain that bothered me so much as being unable to get up by myself and stand without two big dudes helping me.
One of them volunteered to drive me to the nearby aid station so a doctor could take a look. My bad luck was to find the doctor still asleep, so they went to wake him. It seemed like forever for him to arrive and diagnose what seemed evident by that point: a dislocated shoulder.
We had been playing Combat Football with about 35 or 40 Soldiers and Marines on an open, hard-packed dirt field. A week earlier, one of our Marines got hurt badly with the same injury, plus a broken hand and a concussion. Not surprisingly, our unofficial Engineer motto was, “Work hard, play hard.”
Back at the aid station, the medics seemed intimidated by me. One said, “There are only two kinds of people we get in here this time of day: combat wounded and Engineers.” I was not combat-wounded.
A short, young medic asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee, and I nodded. Then, almost apologetically, she asked for my pistol and spare ammo. Giving up my weapon felt strange. In an active war zone, I was never without my pistol or rifle. I knew the rules, so I handed them over.
“Sir, we never had a Colonel officer in our clinic before,” Another medic said. “You must be an Engineer.“ All I wanted was to get my shoulder fixed, some breakfast, and a way back to work.
After the doctor reset my shoulder and put my arm in a sling, he told me I would be evacuated to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany by military aircraft. This is where U.S. military doctors would review my shoulder to determine whether I could remain in combat.
“Nope, Doc, I ain’t going nowhere; thanks for your help. I’m a senior officer, not a door kicker. I’m going back to work.” Then I got my pistol and ammo, walked out, and went to do exactly that.
That morning, I knew how I got there, and it started with a little boy learning lessons about masculinity.
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Reminds me of my days playing with my Soldiers. They were like family and, yes, we did also play hard, work hard, and (in those days) drink hard. Those were the days.