Sesay eight days after I read that report.

I am still going.

The other thing that report cost me, indirectly, was the Guard.

I came off that mobilization on emergency leave and then compassionate reassignment, and in the following year I made a decision that I had been avoiding: I moved into a non-deployable position.

State-side, a support slot, no mobilization.

I had nineteen years.

I was tracking for sergeant major and I had been tracking for it since I was thirty-one, and the men and women I came up with wear it now.

I will retire with the rank I have.