Tell My Sons: A Father's Last Letters

by Lt Col Mark Weber

  I attended Cretin High School (yes, that really was its name), an all-boys Catholic school. One of my least favorite events was gym class. I loved the activities, but I hated what came at the end of class: the showers. This was a particularly stressful event for a Catholic boy prone to the kind of guilt and shame about nudity born when Adam and Eve were tossed out of the garden.

  The shower ritual felt like a daily walk on dangerously thin ice. Since we were all cut from the same religious cloth, I presumed we each had an appreciation for the unwritten etiquette: do your business, get out, get dressed, and don’t joke about it.

  But three months into my freshman year, that etiquette was grotesquely violated, and I was the unlucky and random victim of a cruelty that followed me for the next three years.

  Inexplicably, a classmate I didn’t even really know raised his head into the air and shouted to the ceiling, “Hey, anybody notice Weber pop a woody in the shower?” He was just six lockers away from me and in my line of sight. I’ll never forget the cocky grin on his face after he said it.

  I stood there frozen in place, staring at my locker. Do I respond? Do I just stand here? Maybe no one heard him. Maybe I should just ignore him.

  He repeated his taunt, and it was like being poked with an electric cattle prod. Just then, someone else bit, and then other boys joined in the feeding frenzy. I tried making it a joke and said, “Good one, Shane. That’s a funny one.”

  “Whatever, Weber. Don’t play it off, man,” he replied.

  Then he raised his voice to the ceiling again, “Better bring your soap-on-a-rope,” he yelled, “and watch out for Webs in the shower … he’ll sneak up and getcha in the rear.” I felt shock rush through my chest as I darted out of the locker room and prayed to God that was the end of it.

  It was only the beginning.

  The comments and ribbing continued for the remainder of that year and my sophomore year, and then lingered through my junior year after we merged with an all-girls school and became Cretin-Derham Hall.

  It’s hard to describe such an experience without overstating or understating it. I wasn’t grilled constantly by most kids on most days. It was just a drumbeat of ridicule, with the gaps between incidents filled with fear.

  Nothing I said or did—laugh about it, remain silent, reply with “Whatever,” point out that no one else saw it happen, threaten to fight the offender—made the nightmare go away. When verbal taunts didn’t seem to rile me enough, someone etched Woody and Woodman on my locker.

  My mom wanted to get the administration involved, but that brought visions of new taunts, such as “Look who needed his mommy to come fix things for him.”

  Life would never again present me with a social problem quite as painful or unsolvable. Although I never want to repeat the experience, hindsight reveals a welcome consequence: I was practicing skills in conflict management that served me well for the rest of my life.

  Freshman year brought an extraordinary amount of stress at home as well. Mom had had enough of Dad’s drinking and the effect it was having on our family. He wasn’t a mean drunk or a hard drinker, but his drinking was more than a distraction. It was affecting his work, another woman was involved, and there was at least one awkward incident in our driveway that almost brought the police. Mom kicked him out of the house and said the only way he was ever coming back was if he stopped drinking.

  Four months into an ugly separation, we wondered if he would ever be coming back, and I can honestly say I didn’t much care. Though we knew the separation had to do with more than just Dad or the alcohol, it didn’t matter. Routinely seeing Mom quietly crying in a dark corner made us angry and fiercely protective.

  With all of the problems at home and at school, suicide crept into my head as a possible solution. It seemed to be the easy button, and the very thought of pushing it brought me comfort.

  I played out the scenarios in my head in the weeks that followed, and I came to a solid conclusion that suicide actually wouldn’t solve a thing. I didn’t suffer from a mental illness. I was fully capable of facing my difficulties. Given my circumstances, suicide would be a selfish and lazy thing to do, and it would only bring more pain to those I loved. I decided to stick it out.

  * * *

  My life as a soldier began when I was a freshman at Cretin High, which had a military institute tradition dating back a hundred years.

  My early start with army life makes it seem as if this is what I was born to do. It’s difficult to argue against it, but nothing could be further from the truth. Every decision along this twenty-three-year path was a conscious choice, and each evoked a good amount of self-doubt and anxiety.

  Nothing about my adult life will tell you this, but I was very apprehensive about army life during those first eight years, and I was far from a model of discipline and conviction when I first donned the uniform.

  At Cretin, I wasn’t some kid embarking on an army career. I was merely doing what most of the kids from Saint Francis de Sales grade school did. The “military program,” also known as the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC), was voluntary, and I was hesitant to join. My only frame of reference was the 1981 movie Taps, in which the kids took over the high school and started a small war in their town.

  Our program was more like a course in leadership and management. Instructors emphasized citizenship and leadership development. We explored real-world examples of leadership traits such as courage, loyalty, dedication, integrity, initiative, and determination. For many friends and family, there was concern that JROTC would brainwash me into wanting to join the army. They were partly right. I was soon brainwashed, but with exceptionally positive lessons, such as the following:

  • Set the example.

  • Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions.

  • Look out for the welfare of the people under your care.

  • Know yourself and seek self-improvement.

  • Develop a sense of responsibility in your subordinates.

  • As an officer, serve and protect the Constitution, not individual leaders.

  • Don’t ask your subordinates to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.

  Some of these were ideals I had seen or learned at home or at church, but other maxims—“Speak up” and “Disagreement doesn’t equal disrespect”—were altogether new and not exactly welcome with my parents or the church leadership. So this instruction empowered a young upstart like me. It told me I was not only entitled to seek responsibility and speak out, but that it was noble and honorable to learn how to do it respectfully and with competence.

  The meritocracy and hierarchy of the military program brought with it a welcome predictability. We wore the army dress uniform every day, and we were given cadet rank and positions of responsibility.

  Our “work” had limited value in the real world—we had to march and perform drills and we had to maintain the proper appearance, with clean and pressed uniforms, neatly trimmed hair, shined shoes, and correctly placed awards and decorations—but these were very practical ways to demonstrate and evaluate personal responsibility, discipline, and integrity.

  Unfortunately, JROTC aroused certain fears among parents and non-JROTC staff. The sight of a mass of kids marching in uniform and dutifully saluting and carrying out “orders” can send a chill up the spine of even the most reasonable adult, and I heard references to Nazi Germany and the Hitler Youth.

  Our instructors took note. They were all retired army soldiers and veterans of the wars in Vietnam and Korea. Most of them had been wounded in combat. They had seen the horrors of war and were quick to humble any student who expressed romantic thoughts about the life of a soldier.

  I gave all my attention and energy to the JROTC program, and it showed in good ways and bad. I could march a unit like one of Napoleon’s best, recite on demand the meaning of leadership traits and principles, and perform drills with a rifle better than any student in recent memory. But I was an unfocused academic
student with an undisciplined mouth.

  When I was a junior, I told a teacher to shut up when she said something insulting to me. Today I would call that “good initiative, bad judgment.” She was wrong, but telling her to shut up was a too-easy solution with harsh consequences. When the promotion order for lieutenant was published for our class—an important milestone in the program—my name was not listed. I openly wept in front of my friends. It took a few weeks for me to realize the failure was all mine.

  As my time at Cretin came to a close, it dawned on me that my four years had produced some spectacular achievements—of little or no practical value. I earned a 2.25 GPA and a 19 on my ACT. I played no sports, performed no volunteer work, and held no major leadership positions in JROTC.

  My talents included exceptional debate skills, a solid grasp of leadership and management traits, and the ability to recite the eighty-seven counties of Minnesota from memory in under thirty seconds. (About that last one, don’t ask.)

  My high school counselor was fairly blunt: “College is not for you. I don’t even think any college will take you. You should start thinking about what you want to do for a living.” That high school counselor’s words were a wake-up call: I need to start thinking more and working harder.

  * * *

  When the time came to meet with an army recruiter, the choice seemed as natural as picking out something for dinner. And it wasn’t all “duty, honor, and country.”

  Joining the Minnesota Army National Guard paid for half of my tuition, provided several hundred dollars of income per month, and would help establish a career if I decided to stick with it after graduation from college. Even my choice of army profession (military police) was based on finances—a two-thousand-dollar bonus.

  Moving from Minnesota to Alabama for basic training was as shocking as being thrown into ice-cold water. Our open sleeping bays were a close-quarters stewpot of personalities, cultures, and social backgrounds from all over the country, not to mention a total surrender of comfort and familiarity. I knew how to march, shoot, map-read, and recite leadership principles better than most of my drill sergeants, but this wasn’t high school, and these were not underclassmen.

  The pace and style of the drill sergeants made my dad’s roughness seem quaint. All my hair was cut off, all my freedoms stripped, and every decision made for me. We weren’t even allowed to pee without permission.

  Eating took place as a necessary provision of life, period. No socializing. Failure to follow instructions resulted in a tongue-lashing. And the daily rituals often included at least one “Kobayashi Maru” (no-win scenario), where the intent was to be unfair.

  I later learned there was a purpose to the entire approach: nothing goes according to plan in combat. Chaos reigns supreme. If a person can’t survive the scripted unfairness and silliness of life in a training environment, there is no reason to believe he or she is capable of doing so anywhere else. But knowing it was scripted never made things much easier.

  I was a virtual expert in basic military etiquette, but I knew very little about how to actually function under stress. Our very first lesson was learning to stand at attention, which was child’s play for me. But stress turned the task into quantum physics. My heart raced, and I inadvertently tightened my hands into a fist instead of keeping them loose and slightly curled as I’d mastered years earlier. One of the instructors caught sight and bit hard. “Hey, lookie this one, Drill Sergeant!” he screamed to his partner in a deep Southern drawl. “He look like he gonna knock someone out! Unclench doze fists, Private, and get inta da proppa position of attention!”

  My seventeen weeks of basic training and MP school were filled with noteworthy experiences, but in sum it is best described as an immersion in life without convenience, comfort, or familiarity.

  The entire experience redefined my understanding of adversity and hardship.

  At home, going to Sunday Mass had always felt like a chore; in the army, it was an oasis. At home, I could just walk away from or ignore the people who bothered me; in the army, I had to learn how to work with them—and I saw that I could. At home, I didn’t think I could function if I didn’t get eight hours of sleep; in the army, I realized my body and mind were capable of far more output on half the sleep. In essence, I found perspective, and experiencing it in such an intense way inspired me to seek it out later in life—whether I was in combat in Iraq or in combat with my own body.

  Ultimately, I learned how true and valuable it is to actually live one day at a time. It was the mantra I recited to myself over and over when I was alone with my thoughts in the shower after a grueling session of physical training, in my bunk after a difficult day, or lying under the stars during field training exercises. It worked then. It still works now.

  * * *

  Eighteen months before my cancer diagnosis, Kristin watched helplessly as her father battled his prostate cancer during our brief assignment in Minnesota. The cancer had been in remission for years, but it was back, and it seemed to have the upper hand. Faced with uncertainty and an immense feeling of compassion for Kristin, I decided to make a career choice that would cause any career army officer to shudder.

  After sixteen years, I resigned my active duty army commission and joined the full-time Minnesota National Guard so our family could remain near him. For once, I wanted Kristin to come before career, when she needed it most.

  To say the decision didn’t sting would be dishonest. Peers and mentors reacted as if I had committed suicide, and part of me felt as if I had.

  I had enjoyed what many considered to be an improbable string of wild successes: national recognition as one of the best junior officers in the army; early promotion to the rank of major, despite an unorthodox career path; selection to attend a fully funded master’s degree program at Georgetown University; assignment to the personal staff of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; being handpicked by General Petraeus to serve on his personal staff in Iraq; and finally, selection to work in the Office of the Provost Marshal General of the army.

  I knew Minnesota would not challenge me professionally in the same way. Worse, there was a blunt reality to joining such a tiny slice of the army. My unique experiences in places like the Pentagon were of little use in Minnesota. And unlike the regular army, where there were over 8,500 lieutenant colonels, Minnesota had only 17 such positions—and I would be “the new guy.” I was candidly told that any promotion would be dramatically delayed, if it happened at all.

  My decision in light of all this was so unconventional and uncharacteristic that even Kristin was in disbelief until she saw my discharge papers.

  I did feel uncertainty and fear about such a dramatic personal and professional shift, but just one look into Kristin’s eyes brought comfort: I knew it was the right thing to do. And the truth is, looking into Kristin’s eyes is all the comfort I’ve ever needed.

  “I could never do what you have done.”

  Boys, I’ve heard this comment countless times during my time in the army, and even more so during my fight with cancer. I’m always hesitant to challenge such well-intentioned comments, but I can tell you a reply does echo inside my head: “Actually, you can do it; you just don’t want to do it.”

  Everyone has things they don’t want to do—there’s no crime in that. But there’s a big difference between “can’t” and “don’t want to” when it comes to facing the path of comfort or the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge.

  I’ve learned “can’t do” is much easier but requires nothing and produces nothing. “Can do,” however, will often require you to challenge what you thought you knew, to work with others when you don’t want to, to look for perspective where you don’t want to look, to risk being wrong, and to actually experience defeat and humiliation. Each of these represents the price of learning, growing, and living a full and examined life.

  I’m not telling you to run out into the oncoming traffic of every difficulty and challenge. I am proposing that �
�can do” is often just one or two short steps beyond “can’t do,” and the territory in between is fertile ground for personal growth and professional achievement.

  Chapter Two

  … NOT TO SUBSTITUTE WORDS

  FOR ACTIONS.

  January 2009, the Snow Fort (seven months before diagnosis)

  AUGUST 2010

  I open my eyes, and I cannot move. I feel like a piece of dead wood. My head is thick and my vision is foggy. The room is dark with a faint haze of light, just enough so I can make out the various things around me.

  I am on my back in a small room with white walls. A large monitor is up to my right, and a shiny, metallic-looking material is along the ceiling in front of me. I slowly turn my head to the left and can make out a U.S. flag. The noises in the room are as faint as the light.

  “Where am I?”

  I doze off.

  When I open my eyes again, I still don’t know where I am. A rhythmic swooshing sound is followed by a barely audible, repeating beep. The room is otherwise so silent that I can make out the distinct hum of electronic gear all around my head, as if I’m in a cockpit.

  “Where am I?” The disorientation reminds me of waking up during a sleepover at a friend’s house. But back then, I could figure out where I was. Why can’t I figure it out now?

  I doze off again.

  When I open my eyes again, I am immediately aware of a tapping and clicking noise, and it’s happening at a furious rate. I turn my head to the right, and a woman is standing at a console. The light from her monitor gives the room a faint glow. She appears glued to the screen and her task. I ask, “Where am I?” She does not reply. Didn’t she hear me? I ask again. No response.

  I don’t know how much time has passed since I first opened my eyes, but it feels like an hour. Then it hits me. My powers of deductive reasoning have finally kicked in. The monitors, the shimmering Mylar, the American flag, all the electronics and the cockpit feeling.