I’ve never told this story — not to my friends, not to my ex-wife, my kids, not to the troops I’ve worked with, and certainly not publicly to my readers in The Citizen and on Substack. (Thank you, by the way.)

But it’s time.

Because when I came home from Iraq and left Fort Bragg, I was unemployed. For months.

If you had seen me then, you’d have no idea how badly I was struggling. On the surface, everything looked OK. I seemed to have it all together. I kept up appearances, wearing slacks, a dress shirt, and a blazer in public. I looked professional enough to disguise the fact that I had just $322 left in my bank account. “Never let them see you sweat,” right? But inside, I was sweating buckets.

On paper, my military career was off-the-charts successful. I had just returned from two

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