Patriots

Darth Rove has this column in the WSJ about a surgeon whose Marine son died in Iraq and asked the president for waiver so he could join the Navy and serve at age 61. Bush granted the request and this fellow was commissioned as a lieutenant commander in the naval reserve. My Reserve command in Charlotte has a similar story. A local surgeon volunteered for duty at age 55. He served for five years before hitting mandatory removal at age 60, including a year in Iraq at the Coalition hospital in the Green Zone when the Army must have paid him a tenth of what he could have earned in private practice. He was a standout in the local community, well-respected in his profession, good at what he did, and very successful. He could have very easily stayed in his comfortable life. Instead, he vounteered to be a soldier without any chance of staying in long enough to earn a retirement from the Army. We held a farewell for him a few months ago and he told us that serving in uniform was the high point of his career.