Wow! I like it. Who is this Ralph Peters?
"Make no mistake: The anti-war voices long for us to lose any war they cannot prevent"
Ralph Peters
Ralph Peters, 1952—, is a retired United States Army officer, novelist and essayist. He has sometimes written under the nom-de-plume Owen Parry.
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Early life and military career
Peters was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Schuylkill Haven. His father was a coal miner and unsuccessful businessman. Peters has written "I am a miner's son, and my father was a self-made man who unmade himself in my youth."
Peters enlisted in the Army as a private, and spent ten years in Germany working in military intelligence. (During the 2004 Killian documents controversy, Peters pointed out that in his front-line division in 1977, five years after the memos in question were allegedly written, only the general's secretary had an electric typewriter. It was, he says, too primitive to produce the documents in question, and moreover, National Guard units "…got the junk we didn't want.")
Peters attended Officer Candidate School and received his commission, eventually attending the Command and General Staff College and U.S. Army War College. His last assignment was to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. He retired in 1998 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.