I was taken back to my military days in grand style this weekend by a couple of remarkable events. I had the honor of attending the retirement ceremony for Brigadier General Robert Enzenauer, MD and then the annual dinner for the 19th Special Forces Group as his guest, where the featured speaker was SF legend and author of Hunting the Jackal, Sergeant Major Billy Waugh.
“Doc Enz” as he’s known both in life and in the bestselling fiction of his West Point classmate Brian Haig, served our country for 40 years, including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan with the Special Forces. Billy pioneered HALO operations for the Green Berets in Vietnam before continuing his service with the CIA. Two amazing men, who literally wrote pages of American history.
Earlier in the day, while exchanging life stories with my bunkmate at the “Enzenauer B&B,” SF Major Damian Horne told me he had returned to the service after a nearly-twenty-year hiatus “in order to spend time in the shadows of men like Doc Enz.” Looking around the banquet hall at scores of chests bearing even more medals and badges than the movie characters who portray them, I understood the profound wisdom of his unorthodox move. Got me thinking that a corollary to the sage life advice to “be all you can be,” is “surround yourself with the best.”
The world has changed a lot since I wore a green beanie while serving in Soviet Counterintelligence with the 11th SF Group, but last night assured me that the men who wear them have not. Even with all the stress and strain that our politicians and foreign despots have subjected our servicemen and women to over the past couple decades, they’re still gladly giving everything they have, while asking only for a bit of camaraderie, and a nation’s respect. I was humbled to be reminded that they are what we mean, when we say, “America is great.”
