I had taken on many names by the time I turned 25. I’d been “midshipman” at age 17 and “junior officer” at 21. I had been called “Qualified 16-30,” “L.T.,” “intel officer of the watch,” and once, at a NATO headquarters in Kosovo, “that American commander’s deputy.” But after six years with the US Navy, I was about to give up all those names and take on one that sounded unfamiliar and, to be honest, unsettling: “veteran.”
When was the last time you heard a story about a well....