They all walked up the steps of this building wearing a common piece of headgear. It’s the one of legend, earned with blood, sweat, anguish and some inhuman determination. Many attempt the first round toward the gre.en ber.et, most fail. Of those who make the second round, it is most often doctors who send them back to attempt again or to a career without the coveted headpiece. Few will finish.

Those who do serve quietly. They are expected to perform without rampant acclaim and to work where work isn’t supposed to be done. To make the indigenous forces they train the heroes. To enter in darkness, and leave in silence. To be fight, to be scarred, and to walk among the rest of us without notice. To be absolute experts, usually in more than one area and in more than one language. They are highly skilled, highly trained, and unless you know to look for the particulars of the stance, will stand in line next to you in the grocery store and you will never know. But they saw you, and counted every person in the store, every exit, every security device and knew that the man in aisle three was armed.

Today they are uncomfortable in the traditional dress greens or newer blues. Their chests are stiff with awards and qualifications. If I know them, and I do, most of their uniforms could have a few more, they’d just rather not take the trouble or draw the attention. Their boots are polished to a high shine as they awkwardly introduce their families to the others. It took a security key to enter the building, but they walk with ease in the halls that echo with secrets and trainings meant for but a few ears.

                

There are only two rows of them in the small theatre. The shoulders of their uniforms are bare in anticipation. Today they will join less than five hundred in the entire service. Their specialties vary, but from here forward they will be hailed as experts, more skilled, more trained, more deeply relied upon than before. They will go back to the same type of team they were on before with a new moniker and a heavier burden. There are even greater expectations, and an oath to accompany their responsibility.

        

The room is partly full of family, friends and those who hold the title these two rows will now assume. I have the honor of walking to the front and pinning the small silver bands on the shoulders of the one I married. I look him in the eye before I walk away and his face never moves. He is a soldier first. I wonder if my heart could burst out of my chest. It feels like it might try.

                

And then they are seated again, shoulders bearing the bars that tell the newest chapter of their story. More training to come, more mountains to climb, more hurdles to leap. 

                

They look ill at ease as they gather for the perfunctory photo. They aren't photographed often. Their faces are blacked out in the training manuals and press releases. As they stand under the massive image of a revered soldier, I wonder what heroics await these men. There are battles left to fight for all of them - while they are seasoned, they are not finished. None of them will rest in their new position. They will resume their place within the small band of the best soldiers on the planet. They will go into the world and make sure the world does not come into us. They will work in secret and gather the bits and pieces that make up the puzzle for others to follow. They may have a new title, but they still work as they have for years. Just another silent professional whose name and face you will never know. But I will.

"Where do we get such men? There is no finer fighting man on the face of the earth than the American Soldier. And there is no finer American Soldier than our Gre.en Ber.ets."
Lt. Gen. John F. Mullh0lland, commander of the U.S. Army Special 0perations Command.

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
Winston Churchill