Robert D Leigh

Robert D. Leigh grew up in Baltimore County, Maryland, where he came to faith in Christ as a teenager. After high school, he spent some time in the enlisted ranks of the US Army, active and Guard components, till graduation from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1989. He served five years in the Army Nurse Corps and served on active duty in Hawaii and the Republic of Korea. Eventually returning to the Army Reserves in Fresno, California, where he served in a field hospital unit, later transferring to an Army Reserve Hospital unit in Fairbanks, Alaska. In his commissioned career, Bob completed the Army Medical Department’s Officer Basic Course, the Advanced Officer Course and the first half of the Army Command and General Staff College. He retired as a Major in 2006 after being activated briefly in support of Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom. After a few public sector nursing positions, Bob, as his friends and family call him, began a twelve-year career in the Veteran’s Administration Tucson Medical Center as a psychiatric nurse in their inpatient mental health/addictions unit. After retiring from the VA in 2020, Bob has now turned to a full-time writing career. Bob draws on his faith, his life experiences and his lifetime of reading to bring Jack’s world to life. Whether being an enlisted medical soldier, combat pistol team member, NCO course instructor, actor, writer, director, nurse officer with additional duties, clinical nursing instructor for the psychiatric nursing student rotation of a major nursing school; subject-matter expert for de-escalating or restraining out-of-control patients, Bob completed a thirty-year nursing career, caring mostly for military and Veteran patients. Twenty of those years were spent with the inpatient psychiatric and substance abuse populations. When one works in psychiatry, much of the care of the patient centers on talking with them. In such an up-close and personal environment with military people, one can pick up on what life is like for those on ‘the tip of the spear,’ the combat-arms folks and those that support them. Bob took the opportunity to learn from veterans and active service members that served in every war from World War II to the latest bouts of the War on Terror, both soldiers and intelligence officers; wars big and small, well-documented and not talked about. He also reads extensively on the military, politics, history, America’s founding, the culture wars, current events, classical and popular literature, fiction and biography, short stories and essays. Out of this lifetime of experience springs Jack Claiborne. If the Lord allows, Jack will be back for three more adventures, till his story is finished at the end of history.