Just cleaning up some study space and I ran across a copy of “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith. In Iraq my facility was secure and was jot permitted any “non-military necessity reading materials”. I can not function without reading material laying around, so I bent the rules in what I considered acceptable, willing to take the heat. A quiet, rather backward, Soldier once asked if he could take my copy of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond back to the FOB to read. He had been randomly picking it up for a week, so I let him. A few days later I asked how he liked it and he told me he was going to buy a copy for himself. I told him to keep it, rather impressed based on what little I knew of him that he was interested. This is bad of me to say, but based on my experience with him to this point I wasn’t even sure he could understand half the words in the book.

A week later he stopped me on the FOB going into the CP and handed me a book. It was the only book he had brought with him, and it was one of his favorites. “The Wealth of Nations”. I met him for lunch a few days later and he spoke eloquently and genuinely informed on his subject. He even started discussing Hayek by the end of lunch. When he was in his element, he was on. I was touched that he could open up to me, upset with myself for discounting his abilities based solely on behavior, and wished that other Soldiers in the platoon could look to him as an inspiration, rather as the dumb kid.

Last I heard he had finished an honors program and was on to study engineering at NJIT. Need to find him.