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<p><span>This article discusses my university’s creation of first-year-composition courses designed with a learning community or cohort approach for student-veterans, service-members, and cadets desiring this model. </span><span>At my <span>locale</span>, neither the standard sections of Composition I nor II had been created to provide a military population with a common student community, customized readings, flexible attendance policies, and seamless communication with university veteran services that might better facilitate the transition to college for some student-veterans. <span>Thus, as writing program administrator, I piloted linked composition courses for a service-member, veteran, and ROTC learning community, with the latter course also enrolling a nontraditional-student population. In a</span> year-long study, I investigated the impact of enrolling military-affiliated students in linked courses within a traditional classroom to interact under a continuing instructor, engage with military-based readings, and opt to write about their military backgrounds. In presenting patterns that emerged, I argue that these experimental learning-community courses, contingent upon some local factors, <span>supported many military-affiliated students’ engagement with first-year composition, as well as facilitated their transition to academia, through a loosely-structured, cohort model promoting aspects of students’ common but broadly-defined identities. </span></span></p>