Soldier Up (3 page)

John Clayton graduated from Penn State with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science; he wasn’t athletic in High School, never played in any sports, it wasn’t until College that he actually started to jog some and that was mostly stress relief.  He found that he enjoyed running and it gave him the opportunity to think about things.  Eventually his runs became longer and longer running up to fifteen miles at a time.

              There were always all sorts of Military Recruiters on Campus and he never thought much about them until he got closer to graduation.  He had gotten to a point where he wanted to break out of the computer nerd persona he had since High School and really wanted to reinvent himself.  One day he stopped by the US Army recruiting booth and had a talk with a couple of guys there.  He liked the idea of being a Soldier but his family wouldn’t be happy.  No one in his family had ever been in the military that he knew of.  He had gone back several more times to speak to the recruiters before making a decision, everything they told him made it sound so good.

              One day, thirty days from graduation, he decided that he would sign up and he did.  After graduation he would head to Fort Benning Georgia for Officer Candidate School (OCS), he would start OCS the day after his twenty-first birthday.  It was a twelve week course that would teach him everything he would need to know as a brand new 2
nd
Lieutenant, so he thought. 

              He arrived at Ft. Benning with a crowd of other potential OCS candidates they were ushered into a large building told to take seats then all hell broke loose.  Drill Sergeant’s started running around barking orders at them, do this, do that and do it now! Candidates were running all over the place it was chaos.  It seems like it went on the entire twelve weeks and then off to Infantry Basic Officer Leadership Course (IBOLC) also at Benning.  After he completed that it was off to jump school and then pathfinder school also at Benning. 

              While going through pathfinder he was convinced by the cadre and others that he should attend Ranger School while he’s at it, he figured what the hell, he applied and was accepted.  The school was also located at Benning; this by and large would the hardest training he would go through to date.  He felt he was in the best shape in his life and was ready.  Once he graduated from pathfinder, all of three weeks, he moved over to the Ranger School at Camp Rodgers.  It was now going to be nine more weeks of hell and hopefully complete it.

              He unlike many actually enjoyed the challenges that Ranger School at Camp Rogers, well in and around Camp Rogers, brought him.  Of course there were times he thought he wasn’t going to make it, which is for the most part a death warrant to most Officers if they do, but he dug down deep and got it done.  He looked forward to each phase and pushed himself harder and harder to get through them feeling as an Officer he should be setting the example.

              He graduated from Ranger school and was assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment, 2nd Battalion at Fort Lewis Washington as a platoon leader.  At first he loved it there and loved the job, he really learned a lot about Soldiering and he really cared for his Soldiers.  His Platoon Sergeant First Class (SFC) Rodrigo Aliso was Ranger through and through, out of fifteen years in the Army it’s all he knew and ever was.  As a brand new butter bar to the regiment SFC Aliso took him under his wing and taught him what it was to be a leader and helped hone his skills. 

              His first combat tour was to Afghanistan for six months then came back to Ft. Lewis for about three months and they were deployed this time to Iraq for six months.  By the time he finished his second combat tour he had worked with a lot of Special Forces Soldiers and liked their missions, in many cases the SF guys were the spear of the action where the Rangers picked up after them.  As a Second Lieutenant he wouldn’t have been allowed to go to the Q-course (Special Forces Qualification Course).  At the end of his tour in Iraq he would be a First Lieutenant and would be able to go if the regiment let him. 

              Once back in the States he applied and was granted permission to attend the selection course, so off to Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall he went.  The selection course was roughly three months long, three long months ending up with the final exercise, Robin sage, pass that and for the most part you get your long tab and green beret.  In his mind he felt the Q-course was no tougher then Ranger School, but it was at the same time harder, they were just different with a different set of expectations.  After graduation from the Q-course it was off to language school, SERE, and others, once he completed those he would be wrap it up with 18A Detachment Commander School.  This was additional months and months of schools in addition, to the selection course.  Once he completed everything he had been promoted to Captain and was assigned to 5th Special Forces Group, 4th Battalion at Fort Campbell Kentucky.  Once there he became a Detachment Commander for an A-Team, but was there a short time before being sent off to the Free Fall School at Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona.  After that he returned to the team and was sent for his first of several tours in Iraq, from his previous tours overseas and working with SF units as Ranger he had an idea of what to expect so it wasn’t totally foreign to him.

              After that assignment he and his team returned to the states and once back at Campbell he applied to go to the US Army Combat Diver Qualification Course in Key West Florida and was accepted.  About that time he was really wondering if he was just a glutton for punishment.  By and large the Combat Diver Course was the most physical and grueling course he had done to date, at the end of it he was pretty beat down but happy that he had completed it, he vowed no more schools.  Besides, he had pretty much hit most of the been there done that courses, outside of Air Assault and Sapper, if you saw him in uniform he had all the bells and whistles and the t-shirts to prove it.

              He returned to his team and was sent on another tour to Iraq, this repeated itself several times while he was with the 5th. They would return home, then train, train, train for a few more months than head off for another hot spot not always Iraq or Afghanistan.  Then back to Campbell and train, train, train then back to Afghanistan or Iraq.  Even that was getting old after so many years of it.

              He started shopping around for other opportunities, he didn’t want to get out of the Army, he loved it.  He wanted more, but more of what he didn’t really know one day recruiters started showing up for 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta.  He talked to them quite a bit so he thought about it, he did have all of the qualifications, but he swore no more schools, at least voluntarily.   Before he knew it he decided what the fuck and went for it.  He submitted his request to attend the Delta Selection Course and it was approved, so off to Bragg he went, again.

              The selection course is four weeks and it wasn’t that tough so he thought, he was selected to move onto the OTC (Operator Training Course) which would be six months long.  Thinking back through those six months he found that he made some of the best friends in his life, many among the men he was currently with.  He got through the mentally and physically tough OTC within the six months and found himself assigned to a team as team Commander, although rank was seldom used.

              Operators when in the states seldom wore uniforms and grew their hair out and often had facial hair too.  Going onto any Military base in the US sometimes poised problems, when entering through the main gate and showing a military ID, the guards would look at you skeptically.  In some cases there were confrontations with Post Commanders who had strict policies on Army grooming and uniform standards while on “their” base.  In some cases calls were made to DA (Department of the Army) to get rules and regulations clarified regarding SFOD-D personnel.  In every case the Post Commanders lost. 

              It had taken John a long time to get here but he had found his calling, finally. 

Dognillo had come around telling everyone to gear up they were jumping in fifteen mikes (minutes).   Everyone collected their gear and chuted up, they checked and double checked each other, couldn’t be careful enough on night jumps.

              The pilot announced they were over the DZ (drop zone) and it was time to go, green light.  With the ramp down the team exited the aircraft.  They jumped at eighteen thousand feet, each had an oxygen mask and bottled oxygen which gave each man a certain amount of breathable air until they were at a point they no longer needed them.  Chutes would automatically deploy, hopefully, just below radar detection. 

              Everyone hit the drop zone successfully at a little after 0400, they gathered their chutes and buried them in so doing they also tried to make the area where they buried them look as normal as possible in case some goat herder wondered by.  Why a goat herder? Because it always seems to be a goat herder that gets them into trouble.

              They double checked all their gear again and took off at a run to get to their objective a few klicks away.  They still needed to set up some type of road black that wouldn’t look too out-of-place.  The terrain they had to run over wasn’t too bad; it was a forested and mountainous, with lots of hills. 

              It took them thirty minutes to get to the objective, once there they determined a simple tree fall across the road would be easy enough to stop the trucks and they wouldn’t know if it was an act of nature or not without getting out to check.  That task was easily accomplished in ten minutes by two team members, while the rest got into positon.

              Major Clayton got into a position where he could see traffic coming down the road; they were expecting their prey within the next ten minutes or so and seriously hoped that no other vehicles would be on the road at this time of morning.  They didn’t use hand signals to convey messages this time as they were too far apart, each man had a radio type headset which allowed them to talk to each other.  Major Clayton checked on the team status and each man reported that they were five-by-five (ready to go).

              Major Clayton reported to the team that he could see two sets of headlights heading their way, looking through his night vision scope he could see they were trucks and looked like the trucks they had seen a week ago back in the camp.  He put out the word to the team that there were two vehicles headed their way which looked to be the target vehicles and they would be at their location in about five mikes.

              The two trucks passed Major Clayton who was then able to clearly identify the vehicles as the ones they were looking for, he put out the word again and reminded them they needed the trucks, just kill the occupants.  Major Clayton took off from his position to join the rest of the team on the assault on the trucks.

              The two trucks pulled up to the log that had fallen sort of at a weird angle across the road effectively blocking it.  It wasn’t in the road but had fallen across the road and had lodged itself in a boulder on the other side.  There were two men in the cab of each truck and the backs of the trucks were still covered but it was assumed there would be at least one man in the back of each at a minimum.  The two men in the rear truck were taken out by snipers, single shot through the windshield.  The sniper rifles were silenced so the only thing that was really heard was breaking glass.  The two men in the front truck heard the glass and stuck their heads out to look to see what the noise was and were quickly dispatched with shots to the head.

              That now left who ever might be left in the back of the trucks, Major Clayton had arrived when they started to clear the back, as one of the rear flaps was lifted a shot rang out from the back of the rear truck.  Quickly the team members cleared the back killing the occupants in each.  Those men with Geiger’s climbed up to verify that the boxes in the back were still exhibiting signs of some radiological, they did. 

              Master Sergeant Dognillo got a head count when they realized, where was the Major?  The last anyone saw was that he was approaching the rear vehicle, didn’t anyone see him?  You didn’t see anything when you got out of the back of the truck? It was still dark they said and didn’t really think to look. Dognillo chewed out their asses left and right, “You’re Tier One operators! You’re supposed to notice everything!”

              They hurriedly returned to the rear of the last truck and didn’t see anything immediately, “See I told ya.” said Teamster the Weapons Sergeant.  Dognillo looked harder down the road, “Wait, there’s something in the road, bout hundred yards down.”

              “That’s some damn good eyesight there top.” said Blocker the team Executive Officer. 

              They moved cautiously to what was in the road, they couldn’t tell right off whether or not it was a body, which was odd given the fact they did have night vision equipment.  Within seventy-five feet they could plainly see it was a body and that of the Major.

              “Doc!” Dognillo yelled. “Get your ass back here now.”

              Doc grabbed his A-Bag and ran down the road, he found Major Clayton down on his back with a gunshot wound to his upper chest, but he was still alive.  Master Sergeant Dognillo got the rest of the team members moving, they got the trucks backed up and ready to move out to the Rally Point where their ride home was waiting.

              “Doc, can he be moved?” asked Blocker. “Cuz we gotta go.”

              Docs nodded, “Yeah, let’s get him in back of one of the trucks.  He’s stable now.”

              They lifted the Major into the back of the first truck as there was blood all over the back of the second one.  Doc hooked up an IV and checked the bandages he had applied, he was thinking, “C’mon Major you can do it.”