Risk Management Magazine

While in Afghanistan on my fourth deployment, I was stationed at Forward Operating Base Findlay-Shields, which was one of the safest locations I’d been over the past 10 years. The FOB was just across the street from Jalalabad, and nothing much happened there during my entire stay — except for that one day.

It was 3 a.m. on a Sunday when I received a call from the brigade staff duty NCO. As a company first sergeant, you dread the middle-of-the-night phone call because the news is never good. 

Back in flight school, they told us it would happen. They also said it would likely occur right away, before we had a chance to settle in to our new careers.