22 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY october 24-30, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com would ride by and yell, ‘Hi, white McCulloughs!’ And we’d yell, ‘Hi, Black McCulloughs!,” he recalls. In Claremont, they lived on a diverse cul-de-sac, where there were frequent street parties, dinners and potlucks. “None of this divisiveness,” he says. (He prefers to focus on the similarities he and Lahidji share—their military careers, of course, but more so their love of all people.) McCullough describes himself as an ambitious high school student, excelling in his classes and playing “every sport you can think of.” When he was 15, McCullough says he was pinpointed by the U.S. Military Academy West Point with a packet of information about the prestigious school. He was inspired by the call of “duty, honor, country,” and how his family lost many members in World War II. He wanted to defend the country. “I said, ‘I’m going there.’ So right when I turned 16 I went through the process of getting authorized by my congressman,” McCullough says. He applied nowhere else. He had to meet with a committee for an interview, but he had no nice clothes—he wore his father’s shoes with socks stuffed into the toe boxes so they’d fit. He remembers being a cocky teen who lost that cockiness soon after arriving to West Point. “They take that away, right away,” McCullough says. The academy was tough and there was little sleep, he says, but he remembers finding ways to have some mischievous fun even if it meant getting punished later. He graduated with a degree in systems engineering. Those four years made the training he received in the Army, through Sapper Leader Course (elite combat engineer training), Ranger School, Airborne School, Air Assault School and Mountain Warfare School, relatively easy, McCullough says. He later went on to earn two master’s degrees in different areas of engineering, taking classes at night. As a combat engineer, McCullough was deployed to various locations including South Korea and throughout the Middle East, moving 12 times over the years. One day while at a patrol base in the desert with his platoon awaiting the next mission, he received a call on a satellite phone, one used only for emergencies, only to learn there was no emergency—the Army wanted him to come to West Point to teach, not engineering, but psychology. “That’s just the Army,” McCullough says. He had to get a degree first, so he chose the University of Washington since his wife, Julie McCullough, was working in Seattle at the time. He says he had done all the work toward the degree except his dissertation, when the Army called assigning him a new mission in the Middle East during the “global war on terror,” post-9/11. It was a call that changed the trajectory of McCullough’s life. He is not allowed to talk about the mission, other than to say he was severely wounded by explosives. He’s had 30 surgeries since. With his physical disabilities and PTSD, he spends most of his days in bed. He has issues with hearing and lost his ability to read and has recurring seizures. He’s assisted by a sweet service dog, Fergus, originally trained to help people with autism connect with other people, a quality McCullough needs so he doesn’t isolate, he says. McCullough tried to go back to teaching after his initial recovery, but the brain injuries he suffered made it difficult. He came to Pacific Grove in 2005 with his wife and two daughters while still serving the in Army. He finally retired as a decorated major in 2010. That same year, McCullough was named “Veteran of the Year” in Monterey County. On a cold Sunday afternoon in November 1979 I was walking through the day room at Special Forces 5th Group headquarters at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when I saw a dozen of my teammates crowded around a TV set. One of them shouted, “Hey, Changiz, you raghead son of a bitch, come look at your brothers!” “What brothers?” I asked. On the television I saw footage of Iranian student radicals using ladders to climb over the walls of the U.S. Embassy compound in Tehran. The TV announcer reported that rioters had taken control of the embassy and seized more than sixty American hostages. Powerful emotions started to course through my body. “First, I’m not a raghead. I’m Persian. And secondly, these are not my fucking brothers!” “Bullshit,” one of my teammates replied. On TV, a young bearded Iranian spokesman proclaimed that they wouldn’t free the hostages until the U.S. turned over the exiled former Shah, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had fled Iran in July. U.S. President Jimmy Carter had recently granted him permission to come to the United States to treat his advanced malignant lymphoma, thus unleashing a torrent of anti-American hatred from the young supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. My blood turned cold. I’d been watching the Iranian Revolution unfold over the last several months with mixed feelings and trepidation. While growing up in Iran, I’d seen the Shah develop into an increasingly unpopular, Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Full Battle Rattle By Changiz Lahidji and Ralph Pazzullo Excerpt continued on next page McCullough looks on as Lahidji signs copies of Full Battle Rattle. “I could tell he was talking from his inside, his heart. I guess God put him in my way.” - Changiz Lahidji
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