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I was born in a family with a strong military background, so I chose to be a soldier.

Well, my father was in the Army and we traveled quite a bit when I was growing up, and I thought that I would like to have a military career, although I was drawn more towards the Navy.

If I have got to be a soldier, I must be a good one, anything else is unthinkable.

I am one of the million or more male residents of the United Kingdom, who a year ago had no special yearning towards military life, but who joined the army after war was declared.

A person like myself, born and raised in the inner city of Atlanta, Georgia, to lower-middle-class parents. But I had the opportunity to get an education, to go and earn a commission in the United States Army, to serve for 22 years, to lead men and women in combat.

I became a soldier, not because I had a military vocation initially, but because it was the only way that that young, poor-class child from the provinces could go to the center of the country: through baseball, which was my dream.

I want to be a major force.

I was going to get drafted, but I didn't really want to go into the Army.

My father was career military. He was a veteran, he was a doctor of political science, he taught at West Point and Air Command Staff and lectured at the War College.