The well-shined boots, the perfect marches, the fittest figure. Staff Sgt. Michael F. Johnston is the U.S. Army’s new standard bearer. The Lincoln Pius X High School graduate was recently named 2009 Drill Sergeant of the Year after a week of exhausting competition against six other drill sergeants. “And, of course, I was just ecstatic,” said his mother, Joan Johnston, of Lincoln. Her son has been to Afghanistan twice, but he spent the last year and a half teaching recruits the ups and downs of combat. Sometimes he has to yell, he said in a phone interview from Fort Benning,...