We will talk about energy markets another time. I have something else I need to share with you.
Today, we honor those who have made the supreme sacrifice to allow the rest of us to live the kind of lives we do.
For me, personally, this is a very tough time of the year. And it is all coming back to me this morning.
It's prompted me to think about my time on the front lines of the Cold War and its aftermath, while walking in what these days feel like another guy's shoes.
I was then playing "The Great Game" of geopolitical conflict as a profession; a game with some very high stakes. A game that helped make me who I am.
Thinking about those days brought back the faces of people who helped shape me. I owe them my life. For a few, that debt is a very literal one.
And that, you see, is what makes this time of year so difficult for me. Because this week, May 31, marks a bittersweet anniversary.
It is one of two dates on which I should have died...
The Great Game Charges a Steep Price
On both occasions, somebody else did instead.
But what makes May 31 the more poignant is the victim. He was a fellow player in "The Great Game," a close friend, and I put him there.
It was during a still-classified operation that had gone very sour, compounded by the part of the world we were in. There was little in the way of a support structure to fall back on. I made a mistake that didn't help matters any, and the op started unraveling.
What happened next is something that will stay with me forever. He simply jumped into the line of fire and took a spray of bullets.
How do you "acknowledge" somebody for having done that? I couldn't later when I met with his widow and their two daughters back home.
Can't do it now.
That I received two of my medals for the affair simply added to the irony and the pain. For his part, the man whose sacrifice let me keep on breathing received a star on a wall in Northern Virginia. It does not even bear his name, because the assignment is still classified.
He gave his life to save mine and even now his name cannot be mentioned.
I have never been able to shake the feeling of living on borrowed time. It is something that will be with me always.
As one of my mentors used to say, "If you live long enough in this business, you end up walking with ghosts."
Nobody told me at the time that some of those ghosts are more personal than others.
But if this life given to me by others has taught anything, it is this. You need to stand for something; you need to make other people's sacrifices - spouses, parents, family, friends, countrymen - worth the effort.
It is the only way each of us can shoulder the legacy, the gift, the responsibility.
Especially these days. Conflict is a major part of what is experienced all around us. In fact, it has been the norm for some time. Peace seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
In Oil & Energy Investor, we can't deal with the bigger issues. Yet I can at least offset how some implications of conflict affect your financial security.
The next six to 12 months will be a major period of volatility for the energy sector. We are again reaching one of those times where decisions will have massive consequences, there will be winners and losers, and life will have changed a bit once it is all over.
I intend to help you stay on the plus side in all of this, as part of the way to honor those who got me through earlier tough times.
Consider it my own version of paying it forward.
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About the Author
Dr. Kent Moors is an internationally recognized expert in oil and natural gas policy, risk assessment, and emerging market economic development. He serves as an advisor to many U.S. governors and foreign governments. Kent details his latest global travels in his free Oil & Energy Investor e-letter. He makes specific investment recommendations in his newsletter, the Energy Advantage. For more active investors, he issues shorter-term trades in his Energy Inner Circle.
God bless you and keep you and Thank You for your courageous service that you gave to keep me and my family safe. I feel it every second.
I too am an ex soldier but luckily my wars were of the internal security type in the Far East. I thank you for your excellent briefings and efforts to get me to invest. I am still really keen to do so but the money is not there. My wife and I are tied up in several properties and took a bath in Forex trading. I am hoping on a financial injection in the not too distant future and assure you, pyou Kent will be the first to manage my money.
It's not quite daybreak, and I sit here in the twilight. Coming from a family with a long military tradition and having served for a career, I know what you mean. God bless and Gig'em????????
Thank you for your service, Dr. Moor. You are fortunate to have lived and worked with men that you trusted completely and who would give their life for yours, just as you would do. It is a rare and priceless gift that most humans can not comprehend. – An Air Force brat
Dr. Moors,
First I would like to give you my most heartfelt and sincere thanks. For all of your years of service and the many obviously extreme sacrifices you have endured for all of us.
Second, please know my thoughts and prayers are with you and the other people. That have had the courage, to do the hard work, necessary to protect this country and peace loving people everywhere.
May we achieve peace, sooner rather than later.
Very Sincerely,
Philip G Bergeron
Having served during the Vietnam War and retired in 1993, I recognize the sacrifices made by fellow comrades like yourself. I'm now in the Philippines with other retired veterans and as members of the Fleet Reserve association we take time to remember our fallen comrades. God bless you and God bless America.
I, like many others,never fought physically in either the military or in private fisti-cuffs. I paid a price for standing up for what was, and still is, right in the national struggle for civil rights in the '60's. There are honored warriors who carried guns and those who carried only the Bible. All "fought" for the honorable peace peace, whether against foreign or domestic enemies of our Constitution.
Long live the honor of all who would not just stand by when our country was in peril.
Thanks so much for including this story for your readers. I am ever grateful for all the sacrifices of sung and unsung heros that give us this land unblemished with warriors from other countries damage. The mental, emotional and physical toll on all of us who acknowledge our participation – none the less is enormous.
My constant prayer is for peace – individual, family, community, ever reaching to include the whole world.