Sergeant Cho
For every day on the road, there was another spent waiting. We called it downtime, but it didn’t feel like rest. It was just space—hours to fill before the next mission. We played cards, threw a football, cleaned our weapons until they gleamed, worked out, read, listened to music. After a while, it all blended together.
Some people got heavier, some got thinner, some just disappeared into the field hospital for a while. A few got weird—talked to themselves, snapped at shadows, or laughed too loud at nothing. The rest of us learned to pretend we didn’t notice.
One day, I got promoted to sergeant. I was twenty-five, cute, and barely knew what I was doing, but I played the game well enough. When they pinned those stripes on, I felt like a fraud in a desert uniform.
They gathered the whole brigade. I stood there, dust in my hair, pretending this was serious business. Then I started talking—about leadership, pride, discipline—like I’d just been elected President of the United States. People actually clapped.
I walked off the platform, looked at my platoon sergeant, and said, “Can you believe they let me do that?” He laughed so hard he nearly dropped his cover.
In hindsight, I knew what I was doing. I was just too young to believe it. I was twenty-five and one of the youngest soldiers in the unit—the one who got promoted the earliest. That alone made me insecure. But in combat, insecurity gets people hurt. You either know your shit or you learn fast, because people depend on your voice, your decisions, your steadiness. And the truth is, even though I was the youngest, I had the strongest leadership in my team. They saw it before I did.
I think that’s when I learned that in the Army, like in life, half of leadership is just convincing people you know what you’re doing until you actually do.
