Goliath

Gunnar is thankful for the busy days, the work helping to keep his mind off alcohol. He had never been much of a drinker, not during his college years, and never during the Army’s Special Forces training. I will keep my mind and body clean, alert, and strong, for this is my debt to those who depend upon me.

Hooah.

It was only after leaving prison that he had turned to booze.

Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer … if your self-identity should happen to fall … ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall …

A year of living on the streets, a year of waking up in his own piss and vomit. Hitting bottom and lying in it, still full of anger and guilt, he had finally found his way back to his father’s farm. Two months in a treatment center, a lifetime commitment to Alcoholics Anonymous, and a busy schedule had allowed him to piece together an existence, one day at a time. But the hurt was still there, always festering just below the surface.

The irony of his life is something Gunnar Wolfe grapples with daily.

I will live my life, one day at a time …

As a child, Gunnar had always been afraid of challenges. An introvert, he rarely allowed himself to compete in sports, though laboring on his father’s farm had developed his physique beyond those of his peers. While his father encouraged his only child to follow in his footsteps, his mother pushed him to get more out of life. She encouraged him to read, and bought him a steady supply of inspiring adventure stories. She drove him to a gym and hired a trainer. She enrolled him in karate and pushed him to play high school sports, where he earned All-State honors in football and basketball.

Slowly but surely, the blossoming adolescent began to come out of his shell.

It was the tragedy of his mother’s death that ultimately changed Gunnar’s life. Two weeks after the funeral, the eighteen-year-old Penn State freshman announced that he was switching majors, from agriculture to engineering. Harlan Wolfe, upon learning of his son’s “blasphemous” decision, threatened to cut off all tuition money, prompting Gunnar to join Penn State’s ROTC program, affording him the opportunity to live on campus.

In Gunnar’s sophomore year, his old high school coach urged him to try out for football, the lonely teen surprising everyone by earning a spot as a fourth-string tight end. By his junior year, he had moved up to second string, his last-minute touchdown catch against Michigan State helping the Nittany Lions to another bowl appearance.

It was also during his junior year that Gunnar attended the U.S. Army’s Airborne School. ROTC training was nothing compared to his first taste of true Army discipline. For three long weeks he endured hours of seemingly endless running and calisthenics, the grueling exercises sandwiched between the finest parachute training on the planet.

Gunnar hated heights. Static-line jumping from a C-141 into eleven hundred feet of total blackness was more frightening beforehand than fearsome in the doing. His relief after the fifth and last jump was almost embarrassing.

By summer football camp of his senior year, Gunnar was a different person. Gone was the last trace of the timid farm boy, in its place—a focused athlete with a warrior’s mentality. The coaches noticed, too, promoting the two-hundred-and-forty pound walk-on to the first-team, awarding him a full scholarship. Though Penn State would fall short of a repeat Rose Bowl appearance, Gunnar would receive second-team all-American honors, and was considered by many pro football scouts as a second- or third-round draft pick.

The NFL would have to wait.

Four years after his mother’s death, Gunnar Wolfe stood in uniform at his graduation, prepared in body and mind to attend the sixteen-week Infantry Officer Basic Course (IOBC, Second Battalion, Eleventh Infantry Regiment) at Fort Benning, Georgia. Coach Joe Paterno filled in for Gunnar’s estranged father, Harlan, who stubbornly refused to attend the ceremony.

The Infantry Officer Basic Course is designed to produce the world’s best infantry lieutenants. In essence, it is a war-fighting course, every aspect of training intended to prepare the newly commissioned officer for combat. IOBC training has zero tolerance for anything less than a total physical and mental commitment to excellence.

“Wolfe, you can’t coast through life-and-death decisions! Shit or get off the pot! Is that understood?”

“Roger, Sergeant Gardner!”