Support ALL of Our Troops

Hey, readers of my Troubleshooters and Tall, Dark & Dangerous military romance series.

Things have been kinda noisy out there lately, and I have a few thoughts about the disrespect of military service-members through swiftboating. It’s long past time for that to stop.

It’s time to stand up and loudly support ALL of our troops and just say no to this kind of underhanded, untruthful, disrespectful attack. (Thank you if you are already doing so!)

Honestly, I would’ve thought all of my long-time readers, regardless of political affiliation, would know better than to trash-talk and amplify lies about Governor Tim Walz, a man who gave twenty-four years of his life to military service, a man who did his twenty,¹ but reenlisted anyway after 9/11, a man who rose to the extremely admirable and hard-to-reach rank of E-9.

E-freaking-9, people! Come on! You don’t slip and slide and fumble your way into an E-9 rank. O-9 maybe, (MAYbe!) but that doesn’t happen on the enlisted side!!

In the SEALs, in the Navy, an E-9 would be a master chief, which is a step above senior chief.

And maybe you read my military romances super-casually, without knowing much about the Navy, which is absolutely okay, but rank and rating are confusing to you so you need a reminder:²

Daryl “Harvard” Becker from Harvard’s Education, and Stan Wolchonok from Over the Edge are both senior chiefs, which makes them E-8s. They are the calm, decisive, enlisted voices in their teams, they are steadily there for their fellow enlisteds, and they always, always get the job done.

I do believe that in my books I hammered home the fact that the chiefs run the U.S. Navy. Likewise, the sergeants run the Army and the National Guard.

But since the Navy is where I’ve done the bulk of my research, let’s focus on that for a moment, shall we? I learned through years of writing about Navy SEALs that it’s the rare enlisted who has what it takes to become a chief, even more rare the senior chiefs, and as for master chiefs at E-9...? Hoo-yah. That’s damn hard to achieve.

You know, I never wrote a book about an E-9, because that rank signifies a lotta years in service. (And back when I was actively writing both my Tall, Dark & Dangerous series about SEAL Team Ten and my Troubleshooters series about SEAL Team Sixteen, the romance genre wasn’t very welcoming to heroes who were in their forties or older. Thankfully, that’s now changed!)

Anyway, if you stop, take a breath, and truly look at Tim Walz—the candidate that MAGA and the GOP are shitting on with their attempted lies and swiftboating, their making light of his twenty-four years of military service—you’ll see that he shares many of the same qualities and values as both my beloved senior chief characters, Harvard and Stan.

If you’re one of the people who are helping to spread lies and disrespect about Governor Walz’s service, please stop and think about what you’re doing. Especially those of you who come from military families yourselves. Why would you shit-talk another servicemember’s service? IMO, the expression “stolen value” can apply to what you are doing, besmirching a man who served so honorably for so many years. (Seriously. Think. Do you believe Harvard and Stan made their way to their senior chief E-8 rank without hard work and dedication? Likewise, do you honestly think that Tim’s E-9 was handed to him without his hard work and dedication? Honestly?)

And if, right now, you’re pivoting and attempting to point out that Governor Walz never served in a war zone so that makes him less-than in some way, well, let me tell you a story.

My own father served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. It was a bloody, bitter conflict. (Perhaps you’ve seen MASH? It was that war. And it was a hot, deadly mess.)

My dad was a very young man who’d just married my also-very-young mother whom he’d met and fallen madly in love with while they both attended Wagner College in Staten Island, New York. Dad was drafted after graduation and said goodbye to his young bride (the love of his life!) and went off to boot camp in El Paso, Texas, fully expecting to go from there to Korea. (My mother went to her mother’s in New Jersey and got a job as a teacher and worried about him. A lot.)

My mom and dad as they head to their honeymoon after their wedding!

While at boot camp, Dad volunteered for and got into a special leadership program—fully expecting that doing so would guarantee he’d be shipped to the front lines. But he recognized that he had leadership qualities and he felt it was the right thing to do as part of his service to his country—again, fully expecting to be sent to Korea.

Yeah, they got his name wrong. Middle name J. and Brockmann with two Ns. (sigh)

When our service-members sign up to serve—when they run toward the danger and reenlist immediately after events like the attacks of 9/11, even after a full twenty years of service the way Tim Walz did—they fully expect to be sent to war. (Again, please note that most military careers end at twenty years. In the Navy, in fact, if you’re enlisted you must retire after twenty years unless you become a chief, which isn’t easy to do.)

The hindsight with which we view the past (we here in 2024 know exactly how the story ends) makes it hard to remember that in 1955, when my father served, or in 2001 when Governor Walz reenlisted, both men did this fully expecting to be sent to war.

How, I ask, can you belittle and disrespect that?

Just because they didn’t see literal action, does that make their willingness to serve less courageous?

Does it make my mother’s anxiety during those years somehow “not count?” (How coldhearted must you be to believe that! And you’re a romance reader, so I know that you can’t be entirely coldhearted!! So come on. Snap out of this spell you’re under and be a fellow human being for a hot minute!!)

I know from my research as a military romance author that in the Army and Marines and yes, even Naval Special Operations/SEALs, there are far more people in positions of support than there are on the front lines. Those support jobs, while often (but not always) less dangerous, are absolutely necessary so that the service-members like the SEALs can achieve their important missions.

My father always joked that instead of sending him overseas, the Army sent him to New Jersey—to defend the George Washington Bridge from the North Koreans. And yeah, that story always made everyone laugh.

But the reality is that someone had to stay, and yes, defend our military bases in the U.S.

Just because we were at war overseas didn’t mean that we abandoned our bases at home. Someone had to stay. And my dad got lucky.

He didn’t ask for it—but New Jersey was where he was assigned. So he said, “Sir, yes, sir,” and went back north for the remainder of his service.

But here’s the thing: in the decades before he died at age 92, whenever Dad told this story, he and my mother would exchange a heartfelt look and a smile. Yes, it’s a good joke now, but at the time (scroll up and look at those hopeful, young, so-in-love faces again!), they both believed that he would go to war.

They both knew that he might not come home.

I’ve spent over thirty years writing military romance, with heroes and heroines who serve. I’ve learned—not just through research but through interacting with the anxious, harried, sometimes completely overwhelmed military spouses who attended my booksignings—that military service is not something you do all by yourself. When you serve in the military, you bring your entire family into service with you. They serve, too, by months or even years spent managing to live without you, supporting you from afar.

Holidays, special occasions, the births of new babies—important moments get missed when families serve. We in America share pictures of happy faces around the Thanksgiving table—in military families there is often an empty seat. And sometimes—at any moment, without warning—that seat could become empty forever.

And then visiting your parent or child means a trip to Arlington National Cemetery.

For regular, middle-class folks like my dad and Tim Walz who didn’t have wealthy and influential fathers to get them out of their service, it’s often the luck of the draw, the flip of a coin, as to who gets sent to the front and who fills a safer supporting role.

It was sheer luck that sent my father to New Jersey and Tim Walz to Italy to serve in their supporting roles during wartime. (Ditto, for JD Vance, who also served in a supporting role during his time in the military. There’s not much I like about the guy, but I do wish it to be known that I believe he deserves my thanks for his years of military service.) (See how easy that is to do?)

But while they served—twenty-four years for Governor Walz, and far fewer for my dad—there was never a guarantee that new orders might not come down and send them to the front.

This is a truth that holds for anyone who has ever put on a uniform for the United States military in its long history. Those courageous people, of all political beliefs, who step forward to serve do so with clear eyes, full hearts, and the expectation that they may, at any moment, make the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

So if you’re one of my readers who claims to honor and respect and fully support our troops, it’s time to stop being disrespectful about Tim Walz’s twenty-four years of service.

Just stop it. Knock it off. It’s not okay.

You want to attack Walz for the policies and programs that he’s put in place while congressman or governor, like his free breakfast and lunch program for all children in Minnesota’s public schools? Go for it! (He has compared this expense to paying for the electricity for the schools, something that we all do without disagreement. He doesn’t see the difference—nor do I. One expense keeps the lights on and provides power for all the children and their teachers, the other gives the kids the energy and power they need to be successful learners.)

But yeah, like paying the electricity bill, feeding children costs money. You don’t like paying for that? Let everyone know that you disagree with something that Walz has actually done. Don’t make up or spread cheap and petty lies about his exemplary military service.

In fact, Walz has made it very clear that feeding hungry children is not something he’s going to back down from doing again—and as often as possible.

“Yes, I’m a monster,” he said about his school breakfast and lunch program, with a twinkle in his eye that very much reminds me of the cut-the-bullshit-and-get-the-job-done energy of my (and possibly your) favorite senior chiefs.

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P.S. In case you missed it, here’re my thoughts on the MAGA GOP’s Project 2025:

Okay, that’s it for now! (Hey! Today is my 41st wedding anniversary!! Yay!)

Please never stop fighting for our freedom, for our democracy, for equality, equity, peace, love, hope, and for the rights of ALL of our neighbors both here and around the world,

Suz

1. Most military careers don’t last beyond twenty years for a damn good reason: military life is a young person’s game. It’s rare for anyone to spend more than twenty years in military service. Yes, there are longtime career officers and non-coms, but the vast majority of all military personnel retire at or long before twenty years. Most former military personnel retire because they decide it’s time to move into a new time-and-effort-consuming phase in their life, similar to Tim Walz’s 2005 decision to run for Congress.

2. Military rating and ranks are confusing. There’s been a lot of outrage about people misstating Walz’s rank, but come on. It really comes down to the majority of people not understanding the details of military life and retirement. How do you blame Walz for that?* Here’s a good explanation from Military dot com: “Walz enlisted into the Nebraska Army National Guard in 1981, at the height of the Cold War, as an infantryman, but later went into field artillery. At the time of his retirement, he was a command sergeant major, but because he did not complete the Sergeants Major Academy -- required schooling to hold onto the rank -- he was reverted to the rank of master sergeant when he retired.”

I’ll translate: Walz was promoted to command sergeant major, but the promotion (like that to a chief in the Navy) required a great deal of time and effort, which he decided not to do. Because he didn’t do that schooling and instead chose to retire (as was his right!), when he retired, he was bumped back down to master sergeant, which impacted the amount of his retirement pay. So he was a sergeant major during the end of his service, and had the right to call himself that, but he’s a retired master sergeant for benefit purposes. Do you understand…? And can you also understand how that might be confusing to folks who aren’t in the military and therefore might call him by the wrong rank?

*Yeah I’m footnoting in a footnote, because there’s also this fake-outrage about how Walz didn’t spend every waking moment correcting everyone who called him by the wrong rank/rating. Again, come on. I’m a formerly semi-famous romance author, and I cannot tell you how many times people who wrote or spoke or referenced me got something completely wrong. There’s absolutely no way to police that successfully. You learn to let it go.

And I agree, the campaign should’ve worked harder to get Walz’s rank right the first time. But I’m also the author of a book called The Unsung Hero, in which the original cover art featured the torso of a man in naval dress whites, adorned with medals—medals that apparently dated from the Vietnam war era, which would’ve made the book’s hero sixty years old!! Something that I nor the Ballantine/Random House art department realized: Medals can be “read,” and often pertain to specific events or battles. I take full responsibility for not knowing that, but in my defense there are things in life that you don’t know that you don’t know. So when I look through empathetic, humanizing eyes at that particular fuck-up of misstating Walz’s rank by the Harris campaign, I see people doing their best and making corrections when they get something wrong. When someone who represents you makes a misstatement, you correct it—I think we can all agree on that. (But if someone you don’t know calls you the pope, you don’t book a flight to Rome!)