Bulleit Proof

4 The Start-Up

1969

BACK IN THE WORLD.

That’s what we call our return.

Few of us call it coming home.

We depart for Vietnam as one person and come back another. Many of us are unrecognizable even to ourselves.

We’ve changed—emotionally, spiritually, physically. We return with broken bodies, smashed spirits, shattered hearts, confused minds. We escape the battlefields of Vietnam, eluding the horror and chaos, only to land in new, unfamiliar chaos, an internal war—back in the world—a world we thought we knew.

For me, to be honest, the military worked. If you could remove the tragedy of war—of course you can’t; but if you could—what remains is a gift. The military changed my life, for the better. I learned discipline, responsibility, and self-confidence. Some of this the military literally drills into you. I left Kentucky a married boy stumbling through life, lacking focus and any real conviction, but having made a promise. I have a goal, vowed to keep my promise, but I don’t have an actual plan. I come back into the world a married man with relentless focus. I feel as if I’m walking through life with a sandstone draped around my neck, a stone of ambition. I am driven, motivated, impatient, uncertain, and scared. In other words, I have matured.

Fear drives me. I fear that I will fail to make a living, that I will struggle to find my place in the “real world,” and most of all, that I will disappoint my parents, especially my father. And I fear that I won’t keep my promise. That ...