The constant turns remind me of a joke about the poor conditions of the roads in Ukraine, especially due to the mud during the rainier seasons.

Giant potholes — pits, really — litter the path ahead, especially in the eastern parts of the country closer to the frontlines

Here's the joke, relayed by a friend:

“Usually you drive straight when you’re sober… And you swerve when you drive drunk.

But in Ukraine, you drive straight when you’re drunk – and swerve when you drive sober!”

Here's the joke, relayed by a friend:

“Usually you drive straight when you’re sober… And you swerve when you drive drunk.

But in Ukraine, you drive straight when you’re drunk – and swerve when you drive sober!”

Being in West Virginia brings back a lot of memories for me. I spent close to five years as a combat medic in the West Virginia Army National Guard.

State motto: “Mountaineers are always free.”

It didn’t always feel especially free to me! I remember it as a difficult, taxing experience.

There was a time when I was working FT at NPR, spending weekends/summer drilling in WV – while writing a book about the NRA and volunteering for COVID testing in Washington, D.C.

The second song is ‘Wagon Wheel,’ by Old Crow Medicine Show. And that’s more of a painful memory.

My favorite lines of the song are its opening: “Headin' down south to the land of the pines / I'm thumbin' my way into North Caroline.”

I found myself belting out those lines every time without fail.

The reason it has unfortunate undertones is that I had joined the Army to become a Green Beret, a Special Forces soldier.

WV is home to troops from the 19th Special Forces Group, which I had aspired to be a member of.

I never did become a Green Beret.

And it's something I regret to this day.

On a brighter note, I wanted to tell you a story about why we charge eight dollars per month for paid subscribers.

A few weeks ago, when it became clear I’d need to start looking for a new way to support my journalism, I reached out to a reader in California

This reader was a twitter.com/hashtag/DogsofWar superfan. She was an avid ‘Kyiv Remains In Ukrainian Hands’ stan.

This past winter, when it was freezing in Ukraine, she took the effort to personally knit me a hat – “green, so you won’t be shot by Russian snipers!” came the explanation.

And subsequently it occurred to me…

…That while I never did earn an upper-case Green Beret, our reader had knitted me her own version — a green beret I really, really treasured. And maybe this was the green beret best suited for me.