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The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn't teach me how to deal with killing.

The POW camps of North Vietnam were packed with Air Force and Naval Academy graduates. The six midshipmen in my Naval Academy class of 1968 who served as liaisons between the Marine Corps and the Brigade of Midshipmen later suffered nine Purple Hearts in Vietnam, and one man killed in action.

I learned a great many things in the Marines that helped me as a football coach. The Marines train men hard and to do things the right way, just as a football team must train.

My dad was in the Second World War with General Patton. He won medals for bravery, but he came home quite damaged, so he was a handful. He told us some terrible stories, and I guess you'd say he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

I saw a great many men die afterwards, some suffering horribly, but I do not recall any death that affected me quite so much as that of this first victim in my platoon.

Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat.

Back then I said to myself 'screw football.' Actually I just took part in this camp as there was nothing better for me to do. They also didn't draft me because they thought I was too wild and undisciplined.

I lost a lot of friends at the hands of the British Army. The person who actually introduced me to my wife, Colm Keenan, was murdered by the British Army. He was a member of the IRA, but he was unarmed.

The other thing that happened was my last military assignment - this was in the air force; I had enlisted in order to avoid being drafted as a private, and of course I only practiced medicine or psychiatry in the air force so I was never in any kind of violent combat.

My dad was a Marine. He was one of the Montford Point Marines. Those are the equivalent of the Tuskegee Airmen for Marines. He's a tough, tough guy. When I was 15 we had a fight, and I didn't speak to him for 10 years.