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army without having to go overseas?” I asked. “I don’t want to leave Brandi and the kids.”
    â€œAbsolutely,” Russell said. “I can give you the bridge-building position in the continental United States. That means right here on the continent. You wouldn’t even have to go to Hawaii or Alaska.”
    â€œBridge builder sounds good to me.”
    Russell leaned forward over his desk and looked into my eyes. “I can get you a seven-thousand-dollar signing bonus if you pick one of the other two options.”
    I asked for more details. Russell explained that working as an infantryman or as a multiple-launch rocket systems driver would involve combat duty. I made it clear to him that I did not want to leave my country or go into combat.
    â€œThink about it,” he said. “Seven thousand dollars.”
    â€œI don’t have to think anymore on that one, sir. I don’t want to do combat duty. Not even for seven thousand dollars. Tell me more about bridge building.”
    Russell told me that the army employed many men to fix bridges in the continental United States. I would not receive any signing bonus, but the advantage was that I would be allowed to choose to go to a “nondeployable” military base. “Nondeployable,” Russell explained, meant it was a base that did not send men to war.
    When I pressed for more information, Russell said that if I wanted to do bridge building, the closest military base was at Fort Carson, Colorado. I told him I had never heard of it. Russell explained that Fort Carson was in Colorado Springs and was home to a military unit called the 43rd Combat Engineer Company.
    â€œBut that sounds like combat,” I said.
    â€œIt sounds like that, but it isn’t what you think,” Russell said. “It’s a nondeployable base, and you will be put to work building bridges in the United States. It’s called Combat Engineer because you have to blow up bridges, sometimes, before you can build new ones.”
    â€œSo this means I can stay with my family and don’t have to go overseas?” I asked again.
    â€œSoldier, it will be as easy as cheesecake. You’re going to be building bridges from nine to five every day and spending every evening at home with your family.”
    It sounded too good to be true. But Russell promised to write “CONUS,” short for “Continental United States,” right on my contract if it would help put my mind at ease.
    Our conversation ended there, and I felt a little more relaxed about my future in the army.
    A week or two after I first showed up at the recruiting center, Van Houten came to my home and immediately won Brandi over. Life on the military base was secure, he said. We wouldn’t have to worry about violent criminals breaking into our home and hurting our children. We would stay in clean, decent accommodations that any working American would be proud of, he said. The rent would be free on base. (I learned later that this was not true, that about $700 would be docked every month from my paycheck for the rent.)
    The whole family would have access to comprehensive health insurance, he said, and I would be able to get up to $20,000 in tuition for college studies. I told Van Houten that I wanted to get training as a welder, and he said the money could be used for that, and that I could even begin college studies while posted to my military base.
    Over the next several weeks I had to see Van Houten nearly every day to take additional tests and to fill in more paperwork. Every time I came into the recruiting station he offered me something to eat. What is more, he offered to take me along when he went jogging or did weight training in the gym of nearby Tinker Air Force Base. I accepted, joining him some thirty times at the gym. On each trip, he bought me coffee and a sandwich. Van Houten offered up a little information about himself. He was married and had three