The Ballad of the Green Beret
The song lyrics hit home. My father was a green beret, and now I have a brother who is a combat controller and another brother who is 101st airborne and training to become a ranger. I also started down that path but I have diminished lung capacity due to a bout with tuberculosis, so I never could join.<p>There&#x27;s a million things wrong with the lifestyle. Even if you don&#x27;t die, you still do in a sociocultural sense. Divorce rates are near 100%. Nearly all of your job is classified or top secret, so you can&#x27;t discuss it with anybody. Even your psychiatrists have to have top secret clearance just to talk to you. It&#x27;s nearly impossible to have any commitments (social, financial, educational, etc.), because you can be pulled away at any moment, and you can&#x27;t even tell people when you expect to return.  Bankruptcy is extremely common, and nobody has good credit. It&#x27;s nearly impossible to leave and do any other occupation successfully.<p>And yet, even though he left the green berets to become a mostly unsuccessful but still boring CPA, and even though I basically have no relationship with him anymore, I still have this undeniable urge to be a part of it. I read the books, seek out the stories, devour any news of operations, etc. And while my dad paid lip service to how bad it was, he&#x27;s secretly proud of his two special operations sons and he clings on to their lives, trying to relive his own.