Fixing Hell Read Free Page B

conditions for very little pay. Of all the places you could train, the military provided the best pay, and it also offered excellent benefits for my family. And on top of that, I liked the idea that I could serve my country while seeing the world. I joined the Navy and trained at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington, D.C., and then my first assignment right out of training was the naval hospital at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, where my years of experience working with prisoners for my dissertation prompted my boss to immediately assign me as the brig psychologist.
    Temporary assignments followed in Guam, Japan, and the Philippines. Though the experience was largely positive, I didn’t reenlist in the Navy when the time came. Instead I became an assistant professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, not far from New Orleans where I always felt at home. While teaching at LSU, I also worked as a consultant at the local prison. The work was satisfying, but I soon felt out of place in the almost entirely white suburb where I lived with other professionals from the university. This was Louisiana, but it wasn’t New Orleans. My wife and son also didn’t feel at home in Baton Rouge, but none of us wanted to complain. The final straw for me came in 1991 when the white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke came in second in the Republican primary for governor. I was dismayed to see that 85 percent of voters in my district had voted for this former Grand Wizard of the KKK. How could I raise my biracial son in this community?
    I was miserable but I didn’t want to uproot my family again after only eighteen months in Louisiana. With great hesitation, I broached the topic of moving from Baton Rouge and was relieved when my wife and son revealed that they, too, hated this place and wanted to go. Was there any chance of moving back to Hawaii? we wondered. I was still a Navy reservist so I looked into going active duty with the Navy again, and found they would be glad to have me back. But the most likely assignment would be Beaufort, South Carolina, or Cherry Point, North Carolina, and I didn’t think that would be much of an improvement for my multiracial family. I was having a drink in a bar one evening, mulling over what to do next, when good fortune walked in wearing an Army uniform and sat down next to me. I was wearing my Navy reserves uniform, so we struck up a conversation and I soon learned he was the chief psychologist for the Army. As we talked and compared notes on our previous tours in Hawaii, he mentioned that he was having a hard time finding qualified psychologists in the Army who were willing to pick up and move to Pearl Harbor. I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
    “Sir, don’t jerk my chain,” I said. “If I could do it, I’d join the Army and take that assignment in Hawaii myself.”
    My new friend made a few calls and soon I was in the Army, headed to Hawaii. I spent eight good years there and then in August 1999 I was reassigned from Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. By then I had established myself as a leading military psychologist and an expert on the psychology of prisoners.
    In the spring of 2002, I had already had a long, interesting career as a military psychologist. A colonel with plenty of experience in the field, I was not going to be at a loss for stories to tell after dinner or having a beer with other veterans and psychologists. I still had several years before retiring from the Army, but my three-year assignment at Walter Reed was winding down. I had about six to eight months left on this tour before my wife and I returned to our quiet life in Hawaii, where I would return to working at Tripler Army Medical Center.
    Until then, the global war on terrorism was ensuring that, as for most people in the military, there was always something to keep me busy. I always loved it when people asked me about my position on the