Soldier Up

by Unknown

  Now that his career path was all but blocked he wasn’t going to be allowed to return to operational duties and regardless of where he went he was going to have to become a staff weenie. He had some thinking to do; inside he knew this day was coming if he wanted to stay in the Army. He just didn’t realize he was coming so quickly.

  Did he really want to go through all of the advance training that would be required for field grade officers, he didn’t know. He wanted to stay with the team, but the Army was all about move up or move out. He didn’t want to be some Colonel’s or General’s dog robber he wasn’t built that way. Over the next four days he thought about what the Colonel said and returned to work on Monday.

  When he returned to work there were all sorts of welcome backs, great job, glad you made it, all John heard was blah, blah, blah and then more blah, blah, blah. He checked in at the team room everyone one was there. He sat down with them for an hour or so and they explained what happened after he was hit. The also went on to explain what was in the boxes, two rather large nasty dirty bombs that could have easily taken down New York City or Los Angeles.

  After getting caught up and hearing the rest of the details about the mission he was told to report to the Colonel. He took his time getting over to the Colonels office, there was no direction that stated it was urgent, so he got some coffee, said hi to a few more friends and finally arrived at the Colonels office.

  As informal as they were around the detachment area he was never really sure how he was supposed to report to a Senior Officer still even though he had been there two years. His Officer and Ranger Training screamed at him to follow military protocols and this is generally what he fell back on. He rapped on the door until he heard “Enter”, he pushed the door open took several strides and came to attention at the front of the Colonels desk and saluted, “Sir, Major Clayton Reports as ordered.”

  The Colonel returned the salute, “At ease Major.” If the Colonel was surprised by the formal report he didn’t show it. “Welcome back I hope you enjoyed your four days off?”

  “I did Sir thank you.”

  “Ready to get back to work?”

  “Yes Sir.”

  “Alright then you’re going to be moved over to operations.”

  “Sir does that mean no more missions?”

  “For the foreseeable future it does.”

  “Sir may I ask what does this really mean?”

  The Colonel looked hard at Major Clayton, “It means Major that your butt will be in a chair for a very long time to come.”

  John knew when he was about to cross a line so he stopped, “Yes Sir.”

  The Colonel told him to head down to operations and that they were expecting him. They would show him his desk and bring him up to speed on his new duties. John came to attention, saluted and did an about face and exited the Colonels office. He headed down the main corridor and up a couple of flight of stairs and into operations. He looked around a bit and found the office of the OIC who happened to be another Major, Major MacCoy.

  John knocked on the door, “Enter.” Major MacCoy said.

  John walked into the room and stood in front of the Majors desk, Major MacCoy looked at him, “Is that the way you report?”

  John looked at him, “It is when it’s another Major I do.” John said indignantly.

  Major MacCoy looked at Major Clayton for a moment, he got up out of his chair and walked over and shut the door. “Why don’t you have a seat Major.”

  Major MacCoy returned to his desk and sat; John went ahead and sat in the plastic chair in front of the desk.

  “How long have you been a Major?” asked Major MacCoy.

  “Three months or so.” replied Major Clayton.

  “I have been one for over three years so I out rank you by time served as a Major.”

  John couldn’t argue with that it was true if he had really been a Major for three years.

  “Look.” Said Major MacCoy. “We can get into a pissing contest about Major this and Major that and I really don’t want to. I am the OIC of this Department so unless that changes and I hope to God it does soon, I apologize for how I came off I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

  John respected a person who stood up for their own faults and owned them, “No problem I get it, this caught me by surprise this morning, I was hoping to join my old team.”

  “To be honest we don’t get many operators here, it’s not their thing. They might check in for a few days and are out of here as soon as they can.”

  “Where do they go?” John was curious.

  “Depends, we get both Officer and Enlisted. They either find a job they like back where they came from such as Group or Rangers, or they resign or retire.”

  “What would my duties be here?”

  “Honestly not much right now, your butt on a chair eight hours a day. You would review reports from the field, find out what the teams need and back fill them with materials or personnel. “

  “Sounds pretty low speed low drag.” Said Major Clayton.

  Major MacCoy smiled; he had heard the same phrase a hundred times from the operators who came through here. “Yeah it is, when we leave here look around, look at the uniforms of the men and woman here. There all jump qualified to be sure and maybe air assault but not much more. Their MOS’s are such that they are doing the job they signed up for, but what you used to do, no way, not even close to being comparable.”

  John sat there he didn’t really understand the medical hold, he felt great, he had no physical or mental problems he was aware of. He was running his five miles a day and spending a couple of hours a day at the gym. The Army shrink said that he was fine, no mental imbalances other than wanting to still be on SFOD-D.

  Major MacCoy showed him to his desk which was far removed from the others who were mostly Senior NCOs and Company Grade Officers. He looked around and did what Major MacCoy suggested and he was right. There were no tabs at all, but everyone was jump qualified with a smattering of air assault here and there. Major MacCoy gave him a bunch of binders to read through, he also told him if he lasted over a week then he would try to get him his own office. He didn’t really want to ask why a week, he surmised that’s probably how long the other operators lasted before heading out if not earlier.

  He read through all of the binders by the end of the day, he felt brain dead after it. He wondered why they didn’t have all this crap online. It was after 1700 and he saw that Major MacCoy was still in his office. He walked over and knocked on the door jamb because the door was actually open.

  “You know you don’t have to really do that if the door is open you can come in, we’re both Majors after all.” Said MacCoy smiling.

  John chuckled to himself, “I finished reading everything in the binders, that’s some pretty dry stuff.”

  “Really, you’re done? You actually read it?” MacCoy was surprised.

  “Yeah I read it, why isn’t it all online or in some app?” asked John.

  “Wow, I’m really impressed I don’t know the last time anyone read it, the other operators refused to even crack them open. Well….the reason they aren’t online or an app is because we don’t have the resources to do it and you know the Army, if its ass backwards we like it!”

  “Do you mind if I give it a shot? Since I have to be here.”

  Major MacCoy was confused, “I’m sorry give what a shot?”

  John laughed, “Put the stuff on line.”

  “You can do that?”

  John laughed again, “Yeah sure it’s no problem.”

  “No seriously, you can do it?”

  “Yes I can do it; I have Computer Science Degree from Penn State. Before I got all gung-ho I was the biggest computer nerd. I used to do this type of stuff for fun.”

  “Well yeah, go ahead and knock yourself out.”

  “Can I take the binders home so I can work on it? I need an IDE like Visual Studios or Eclipse to do it depending on the language. Do you have a preference online or
desktop app? And I would need to work on it with my own laptop, is that ok?” John was really into it.

  “Honestly Major I have no idea what you just said, but yeah you can take the binders home and yeah use your own laptop I don’t think it will be an issue, the binders aren’t classified. We can get you a pass to bring your laptop in and out.”

  John smiled, “Great, well let me grab them then I’m going to head out, ok?”

  “Yeah sure, of course.” Major MacCoy wondered what the hell just happened.

  Chapter Eight

  John got home and made a couple of telephone calls to the SFOD-D IT Department Help Desk. He was told he would need to talk to some government guy, Gerald Smith with regards to his plan. John left his number with the help line and asked that Gerald call him back as soon as he could.

  John got out of his uniform and changed clothes then grabbed a beer. His cell phone rang; it was the tune, Highway to Hell. He answered, “Yeah?”

  “I’m looking for a Major Clayton.” The caller said.

  “Speaking, who is this?”

  “I’m Gerald Smith Director of IT for SFOD-D.”

  “Yeah, hey! great! Thanks for calling me back so quick.”

  “We have specific directives that we are to return op’s guys calls ASAP. We so seldom get any I thought this had to be a joke.”

  “Nope, no joke I’m for real.” John went on to tell him what was going on and what he wanted to do. Gerald was surprised to say the least; he thought all of the Delta guys were nothing but knuckle draggers. John gave him some of his High School and College background and Gerald could tell he knew what he was talking about.

  Gerald told John that he had a couple of guys that could get him a server and everything else he needed and asked when he needed it by. Of course John answered tonight if possible. Gerald thought about it, sure why not he thought not every day a team guy like this came along, let’s see what he can do. He told John that one of the system engineers would be giving him a call soon with everything he needed. He then added that he would love to see the final results when he had it done. John assured him that would be no problem at all; in fact he would love to show it off.

  Gerald and John talked some more then moved on and hung up. John grabbed his laptop and sat down at the kitchen table and started knocking out some code, he had a very good idea what he wanted to do.

  An hour later a systems engineer from the IT Department called and gave him everything that he needed and also gave him is contact number. It seemed the entire IT Department was aware that some Delta Operator was going to develop some website; the thought went out that this should be worth a few laughs.

  John worked all night on the project, hammering out code and scanning all of the documents from the binders. He didn’t sleep a wink and ended up going into operations at 0500; he got to his desk and went right back to work. He ran into a couple of database issues later on in the morning and called the contact number. The systems engineer wasn’t able to help with it but they had a Database developer who could answer some questions.

  Twenty minutes later the Database guy was on the phone listening to the problem and his attempt to solve it. The Database developer was truly impressed, so he said, he went on to say a lot of the developers he worked with didn’t have insight and technical know how he did. John told him he wasn’t a developer and didn’t work for IT but Gerald was giving him a hand. When the call ended John had the final piece he was looking for and spent the rest of the day working on it.

  Major MacCoy came by a couple of times to see how he was doing during the day. Even brought him some lunch and tried to engage in some small talk but he could see John was totally engrossed in what he was doing. By 1700 he packed it all up and headed home, once there he washed up, ate some chow and grabbed some rack time – just for a couple of hours. Then he was back up and at it the rest of the night.

  Like the day before he went into work at 0500 and started right back into it, but by noon he believed he was done. He couldn’t remember the last time he really enjoyed doing something like this, it was still fun even after all this time. He approached Major MacCoy and asked him if he could demo what he had done. MacCoy who had been watching much of what Major Clayton had been doing was actually excited to see. They walked back over to his desk and for the next fifteen minutes Major Clayton showed him how it worked and what the program could do. This was far and above cool, far more then Major Clayton had said he was going to do. He explained that he had talked to a couple of people in the office and asked them if they had a wish for something to be automated what would that be.

  He took some of their ideas and spoke with Gerald about it who gave him the resources he needed and off he went. The program had already been deployed onto one of the IT servers but since it was a government network, even though it was an unclassified network, he still needed the Colonel’s and Gerald’s buy off on it. Major MacCoy said he would get it set up, hopefully for later on this afternoon.

  When Major MacCoy called the Colonel he thought it was a joke Major Clayton one of his top operators if not the top one had created a computer program in just days to help in some of the day-to-day operations in Operations. Major MacCoy assured him it was no joke and that the SFOD-D Director of IT was going to be at the demo today at 1600 and if the Colonel could please clear his schedule at that time they would all be grateful. The Colonel had to see this he felt, this was a first for him, generally any operator he sent was dead weight to Major MacCoy and they made and exit as soon as they could. The Colonel said he would be there.

  At 1600 in the main conference room Major Clayton had set up for his presentation, present were the Colonel and his aide, Squadron Commanders, Gerald and some of his people which included a couple of the people who helped him. Also, were his old teammates he thought that was unusual but he was happy to see them.

  The presentation kicked off with a short slide show where Major Clayton explained the ins-and-outs of the local unclassified network system, how the program he created was deployed and where it resided. He also went on to explain all the features and functionality of the program, along with that he explained how he came up with all of the ideas for the software which was basically Op’s wish list. After that he demonstrated the software for the next thirty minutes running it through the paces.

  By the time he was done everyone in the room was very impressed, not so much that a Tier One Delta operator had done this but anyone, even a very well-seasoned software developer had done this and in so short of a time. Everyone in the room thought, especially the IT guys, that the program was awesome; it was just “WOW” great.

  Major Clayton was thankful for all of the praise, as he was packing up his stuff he noticed everyone broken into two groups talking, Major MacCoy and the other military types were talking to the Colonel and Gerald was talking to all of IT Engineers and the Government types that had come with him. His guess that everyone was looking to see if the knuckle dragger was going to make a fool of himself. Then as he as leaving the conference room he saw Gerald and the Colonel talking, he wasn’t sure that was good or bad.

  He returned to his desk, sat down and relaxed a bit then his desk phone rang, it was the Colonels Aide who asked him to come down to his office, now. John thought to himself, “Shit this can’t be good.”

  He walked out of Op’s back down the hall, then down the stairs and down the hall the other way, arriving at the Colonels door where he knocked, “Enter.” He heard. He opened the door, strode to the front of the Colonels desk came to attention and saluted, “Sir, Major Clayton reports as ordered.”

  The Colonel returned the salute, “Have a seat Major.” He sat down in the chair near the Colonels desk.

  “That was quite some presentation there Major. You impressed quite a few people outside of the teams.”

  “Thanks Sir. I appreciate it.” a simple reply by the Major.

  The Colonel looked at Major Clayton for a few moments not saying a word, then �
��Major let me be blunt for a moment. Your medical eval’s our good, possibly even great and nothing wrong with your psych eval’s either. You’re a Major now and that means more responsibility at a higher level and also means odds are you’re going to be working some staff positions to get you ready for Commands larger than your team. That’s the way the Army works, at this time I don’t see you returning as a team leader again. How’s that sit with you?”

  Major Clayton thought for a moment and considered how he wanted to answer, “It sucks Sir, I loved what I was doing with the team. With that said though I knew in the back of my mind it was coming sooner or later. I’m not really sure how I feel about it.”

  “C’mon Major level with me, you know how you feel about it.”

  “Sir what are you driving at? What aren’t you saying?”

  “Major MacCoy said he watched you doing all of this and he said you looked like you were having the time of your life. I’m just wondering now if the Army is where you really want to be. That Director of IT, Gerald, was very impressed by what you did. He told me that if you went civilian you could easily be pulling down six figures a year.”

  Major Clayton thought about that too, he did have a lot of fun building the website; it made him rethink why he came into the Army and why he pushed himself so hard. The entire idea was to break out of the nerd persona that he had built up for so long. He did that and more, he knew he didn’t have anything to prove to anyone anymore. He wasn’t keen on sitting at some desk for the Army anymore, not really, if he couldn’t be on a team anymore then why stay?

  Chapter Nine

  Over the last few months he had been working with Gerald and the IT Department, but after five months he grew bored. Gerald had told him he had out grown the position he was doing for them and strongly urged him to go to work for a civilian company that could challenge him. It didn’t take much convincing; he resigned his commission and was headhunted by a fortune 50 Company in Silicon Valley California. He sold a lot of the what he had, it was junk anyway, and loaded the rest in his 1967 Jeep CJ5 which he had painfully restored over the past several years, he loved that car. He had left the Army thirty days ago; he stopped off in his hometown of Azura Colorado. He hadn’t been back in years, it was a small town and not much had changed. No one recognized him, the last time anyone saw him he was still pretty scrawny nerd that had changed dramatically, it’s what Ranger, SF and Delta did to you or for you.