Probably you do not even want Dyer near your military. There is no chance in hell he would pass a drug test. There is no chance in hell he would not, as they say, fraternize. There is every chance he would go awol, since he�s always leaving somewhere to amble (though more anxiously than that sounds) someplace else: France, Italy, Indonesia, Cambodia, Algeria, America. In short, if you have never read Dyer, you should not be imagining an unusually erudite young Tom Cruise. You should be imagining W.G. Sebald in Monty Python, or Montaigne on cocaine.
(When a writers-in-residence program asked if there was a residence in which he might like to write, [Dyer] requested an American aircraft carrier, and wound up on the USS George H.W. Bush, in the middle of the Arabian Sea.)
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird