Boot Camp

I enlisted at nineteen and went to boot camp angry — at my father, at my circumstances, at everything. I was not a person who prayed. In week six, during a night exercise in the Georgia woods, I got separated from my unit in the dark. I wandered for two hours. I finally sat down against a tree, genuinely frightened, and said out loud, "Okay. If you're there, I need help." Thirty seconds later I heard my sergeant's voice clearly through the trees, thirty yards away. He had no reason to be in that part of the woods. He said he had felt a sudden urge to check that area. I have never forgotten that moment.