What The Military Teaches Us About Loyalty

When your ears are ringing after the explosion, and your Section Sergeant leans in through the smoke and puts his hand on the side of your helmet to see if you’re alright, that guy is your whole world. You know that he’s the best Section Sergeant in-country.

When you have a full contact football game with 2nd Platoon, they instantly become your sworn enemy, and your 1st Platoon brothers are the only ones you want at your sides as you charge that field.

When you’re competing against Bravo Troop for the fitness cup, or whatever competition that the Battalion Commander devised last weekend, your Alpha Troop comrades are the best group of guys you’ve ever had the honor of fighting alongside as you head into the fray.

When your Battalion redeploys from combat and you run into some 1st Battalion guys in the chow hall, you are honor bound to make the case that your Battalion was the one that single handedly kept Baghdad together for that year. Their Battalion probably should have just stayed home.

When your Brigade is marching across that parade field in front of some General you don’t particularly care about, you notice that your formation is so much tighter, and so much more intimidating than those 3rd Brigade clowns. 

When you talk about how blessed you’ve been in life, you reflect on how fortunate you were to be divinely selected by Branch to become a 101st Airborne trooper instead of being damned to one of those lesser Divisions.

When that Marine, Sailor, Airman, or Coastie talks about their time in uniform, you smile quietly, because of course the Army and all of its dedicated, heroic men and women are clearly the best.

And when some kid, high on misguided ideals, publicly bad mouths a stranger’s military service, you instinctively jump to that veteran's defense because you share an unshakable bond forged through sacrifice and honor, even if it is 40 years removed.

But you both love that kid anyway, because you are both Americans, and your loyalty is to the idea that he is free to publicly believe any idiotic belief he wants, for as long as it takes for him to grow up.

And when you’re flying into some Taliban-controlled village, the helicopter about to land, you draw a deep comfort from the fact that the Afghan commandos to your rear are prepared to lay down their lives for each other, and for you, if you find yourself in a fight. You feel a connection that pierces through every barrier that separates 25-year old Americans from 35-year old Pashtuns. You are all humans who just want peace and security for yourself and your children, and you would fight together until the end.

The military teaches us to have intense loyalty for all of our communities—from the bond of one fighter to another, all the way up to a shared human identity. There is great value in having pride in your town, in your small team at work, in your classroom, or political party, and fierce competition can push us to be our best. But at every level there are problems that can only be solved as a team. The more complex problems—the ones that really hold us back—require larger and larger teams of diverse individuals to come together with a shared loyalty. It’s a lesson we hope others embraced as tightly.