That surprised some people who assumed the truth would send me straight back into a cockpit to reclaim what I’d lost.

But I’d learned something in 8A and in that briefing room, and it wasn’t that I needed to be a warrior again.

It was that I still had something to give, and a better place to give it.

I took a job as a senior flight instructor at a large commercial pilot academy — a room full of young people who wanted to spend their lives doing the one thing I still loved without reservation.

On my first morning I set my old flight helmet on the podium, scuffed and honest, and I watched their eyes light up, all of them waiting for the war stories, the combat, the glory.