From 2004 to 2007, US Army General George W. Casey Jr. was commander of the multinational force in Iraq, living in a combat zone “during all the bad stuff,” as he wryly puts it. In 2007, General David Petraeus succeeded him, and Casey was named Army chief of staff, in charge of 1.1 million people and an annual budget of more than $200 billion.

In 2011, after 41 years in the Army, the four-star general retired and headed to one of his favorite spots on earth: Scituate. Casey’s father was from Allston, his mother from West Roxbury, and the family spent summers on the South Shore.