My parents sued me for the four point seven million dollars my grandmother left me, and to prove I was unstable their own attorney subpoenaed my service record and put it in front of the judge himself. He had read two pages of a hundred and forty. That is how my family found out what I do for a living.

And my father said, out loud, in a courtroom, in front of nine people:

Major of what?

PART 2

I am a major in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Eleven years, this June.

I have a commission, two decorations, and a law degree my parents paid nothing toward and were not invited to the ceremony for, which was my decision and which I do not regret.

For four of those eleven years I was at the legal assistance office at Fort Weyland.

I want to explain what that work is, because it is the whole hinge of this and almost nobody outside knows it exists.

A soldier who is about to deploy needs a will. A twenty-year-old with a wife and a baby and a deployment date needs a will, a power of attorney, and somebody to sit down and explain what those two things are and what they are not.