The urge to serve something larger than myself drew me into the military, and serving for nine years has taught me a few things. But service in the military isn't the only way to go. Now that I'm out of uniform, I see that my deployments were only the beginning, a workup for whatever the rest of my years call me to do. You can serve your family, and put their needs in front of yours. You can do the same thing in your community, your town, and your city. I think all of us who serve- in any type of uniform- can arrive at this broader view of service faster than most other people, because of what we go through. Service is selflessness- the opposite of the lifestyle that we see so much of in America today. The things that entertain us don't often lift us up, or show us as the people we can rise up to become. The people who appear in this book- and others who did things I can't talk about- are my role models. They quietly live out the idea expressed in the Bible (John 15:13): Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.