Case Study: Revolution

After filing into the classroom, the remaining candidates were instructed to prepare for an air mission brief. The pilots were taken to one corner of the room and the enablers to another. There were only three members of the latter group; Faith, a commo officer, and an enlisted admin specialist. There were 7 or so pilots in the other group. The candidates, Faith noticed, had been narrowed considerably over the last couple of events.

The goal of this particular exercise was to get the enablers and the pilots working together on a project in which they would demonstrate proficiency in their respective skill sets. For the pilots, it was operational mission planning. For the enablers, it was support to that planning. For the most part, Faith enjoyed this exercise. He had always been good at planning, and he was grateful to have the opportunity to demonstrate competence as an intel officer, instead of just as a guy who was kind of good at PT. At one point, though, he found himself alone with Ken. He had noticed that Ken wasn’t really active with the planning, he’d toss a couple of things out every once in a while but wasn’t really providing a lot of useful input. And now, he was distracting Faith.

“What are you doing?” Ken inquired.

“Just trying to wrap up my portion of the AMB,” Faith responded.

“What, like weather and HLZs and stuff?” Ken asked, “I have a crew chief for all of those things. All I really need people like you for is to make sure my clearance is straight and that the radio’s crypto gear is properly secured.” Faith ignored him.

“What is it you’re competing for?” Ken persisted, “Battalion S2? What if I told you that no matter how well you did in this assessment, you’re not going to get picked up for that job?”

Faith stopped what he was doing and turned to face Ken. “Look bro, I don’t know what your problem is, but the only thing stopping me from shoving a pencil through your eye right now is the fact that I’ve got a job to do here. You have been nothing but a complete asshole this entire assessment. That’s fine; that’s on you. But now, you’re affecting everyone else’s chances at getting in the unit. So stop fucking around and go back over there and do… pilot shit or whatever. If you want to find me after this assessment is over, maybe we can go back behind the woodshed and sort things out between us. But for now, fuck off!”

Ken laughed, and Faith was surprised by his reaction. Ken gave Faith an appraising look, and then turned without a word and walked away. Faith went back to his work.
 
While they were able to plan and rehearse as a group, every candidate had to present his or her portion of the air mission brief individually. Faith had never done an AMB before, but briefing was one of his strong points and he was confident he would do well. He had a total of six PowerPoint slides for the briefing, dealing from everything from weather, to flight routes, to helicopter landing zones, to expected enemy forces. As he set up for his briefing, he was informed that he would be briefing the commander of the 16th SAVE, and Faith’s portion of the briefing was to last exactly 16 minutes. Faith was annoyed by the artificial time constraint; he didn’t need 16 minutes to say what he had to say. In fact, he figured he could have it done in five minutes. Whatever, if they wanted him to filibuster for an extra 11 minutes, he could do it. Faith fished the stopwatch out of his pocket and set it on the briefing podium. In front of him were are set if tables arranged in a convex arc from right to left. The two seats at the head of the table were empty, but the rest of the chairs were full. Faith looked at the faces and recognized only one person—Simon Criss. Faith caught his eye and smiled, but Criss didn’t smile back. That, Faith thought, wasn’t a good sign.

“Candidate Faith, what did you just take out of your pocket?” one of the audience members asked.

“A stopwatch,” Faith answered.

“Was a stopwatch part of your packing list for assessment?” the man inquired.

“No,” Faith answered. He wanted to add, “A wristwatch was on the list, but you guys took it away from me on Day One and I haven’t seen it sense,” but wisely kept his mouth closed.

“Put the stopwatch away, Faith, you’re not going to need it for this briefing,” a different cadre member instructed him. Faith knew he wasn’t going to be able to do a briefing that lasted exactly 16 minutes, plus or minus 30 seconds, without some means of telling time. The computer had a clock on it of course, but he couldn’t see it from the podium. Faith recognized that this as another example of being set up for failure deliberately. No matter, Faith would brief the best he could, and let the chips fall where they may.

Faith estimated he had been briefing for about five minutes when the door opened. Well, he had probably been only briefing for one minute, the rest of the time that had elapsed was filled with interruptions, questions, and no small amount of heckling from the assembled audience. Everyone except for Simon Criss, that is. For his part, Simon said absolutely nothing, has face a blank mask. The man who walked in was older, and vaguely familiar. He was dressed in a flight suit, but there were no markings on it whatsoever. Faith was in the middle of answering a question when the newcomer entered. He was cut off when one of the cadre members blurted out, “Ladies and gentlemen, the commander!” and everyone in the room jumped to the feet and rigidly assumed the position of attention.

Faith looked at the newcomer as he directed “Carry on!” and took his seat at the head of the arc of tables. From across the room Faith couldn’t entirely place him. This new guy looked very familiar. He glanced over at Simon Criss, who once again betrayed no reaction.

“Where are we?” the newcomer demanded. One of the cadre members explained that they had just gotten through the weather portion and were about to brief the enemy situation.

“Captain Faith,” the newcomer instructed, “Go forward two slides.” Faith complied. “Now, leave that slide up and give me the rest of your AMB.”

Faith hesitated. This was completely bizarre; someone barges into the briefing, instructs him to cue up some random slide, and tells him to leave it up the rest of the briefing. Fine. Faith put up the slide as instructed, and then gave the rest of the AMB extemporaneously. As before, he was interrupted, questioned, and heckled but he felt like he performed well. When the briefing was over, the man at the head of the table, who by now Faith assumed was the commander of the 16th SAVE, pulled out a sheaf of papers and began reading through them.
 
“So, Captain Faith, how do you think you did during this assessment program?” he asked.

“Well, I think I did pretty-“ Faith began to respond before he was cut off.

“Is it true that you fell asleep in the coffin during the SERE event?”

“Yes sir-“

“And that during the psych eval you figured out a way to sharpen pencils, and then shared it with your entire cohort?”

“Yes sir.”

“And that you and your partner on the land nav course figured out the solution, and shared that with your entire cohort as well?”

“Yes sir.

“And is it true that you told another candidate that you would stick a pencil in his eye if he didn’t stop fucking with you during the practical exercise portion?”

“Well, sir, that’s not exactly-“

“In the peer ratings of all the candidates, who do you think came out #1?”

“The candidate I knew as Shannon,” Faith answered, happy to finally be able to complete a whole sentence again without being cut off.

“And where do you think you came out in the peer evals?”

“I don’t know sir, probably in the top half.”

“You think that highly of yourself?”

Faith didn’t respond.

I see here that one of the events you failed outright was the swim test. Faith felt his heart sink. “One” of the events he failed? That means there must have been others. Which was not good, since he felt like he smoked all of the other events he endured during the assessment.

“So, this guy who gave you so much trouble during the assessment,” another cadre member asked, “What was his name?”

Faith hesitated. After all this time, he still didn’t know.

“I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “We kind of just called him Ken.”

“Ken?”

“Yes, Ken, like Ken & Barbie? Because he was so pretty, and pretentious.”

Several of the men around the table burst out laughing. Faith didn’t think what he said was all that funny.

“Bill, ask my aide to come in here please,” the older man in the unmarked flight suit said to one of the other cadre members.
 
If the older man in the room had an “aide,” then that meant he was a general officer. And if he was a general officer, then he wasn’t the commander of the 16th SAVE. Then it clicked. The man in the flight suit was Lieutenant General Molland, the commander of SOCOM. This was the guy that Faith had called “grandpa” and had thrashed so soundly in racketball a few weeks back. Faith felt a twinge of terror; if Molland was the kind to hold a grudge, and actually remembered who Faith was, then it was extremely unlikely that there was likely to be a happy result for him at the end of this assessment. Maybe he wouldn’t remember they had met before.

“How’s your racketball game these days, Faith?” Molland inquired. Faith felt his throat tighten.

“Fine, sir.”

Molland just grunted.

A second later the door opened and two men walked in. The first to enter was the cadre member who had left to retrieve the general’s aide. The second man was none other than Ken.

Except Ken was now freshly shaved, and dressed in freshly-starched BDUs. This had to be some kind of mistake. If Ken was the general’s aide, then why was he in assessment for the 16th? And if he were legitimately assessing for a position in the 16th, why was he not in his own murder board? Ken smiled and nodded to Faith in acknowledgement. It was DEFINITELY Ken.

“Tim,” said Molland to his aide, “You now have a new nickname, courtesy of Candidate Faith.”

“Oh yeah sir? What is it?” Tim/Ken answered cheerfully.

“Ken,” Molland told him.

“Like the Barbie, Ken?”

“Yes, apparently that’s what all the candidates called you. Because you were… pretty and pretentious, I think is the way you were described.”

The officer formerly known as Tim laughed. “I’m sure they called me worse than that, sir. I’m good with ‘Ken,’ it was about time I got a new nickname anyway.”

“So what did you think of Candidate Faith’s performance?” the general asked him.

“Well, Candidate Faith’s file and his psych profile indicated that he has some anger management issues. So I got close to him a couple of times and tried to push his buttons, to see if he would have a meltdown or lash out in some way. Didn’t happen. In fact, he was so chill throughout most of the assessment, I thought he was a bit of a pussy at first.”

“What changed your mind about that?”

“Well, he threatened to stab me in the eye with a pencil,” Ken said, smiling.
 
“Anything else?” Molland asked.

“Well sir, gentlemen, you already have heard my recommendation for this candidate. I don’t have a lot to add other to what I originally said.”

“Sir,” said another man who had mostly remained silent throughout the murder board, “I re-iterate my objection to your aide’s recommendation.”

General Molland nodded and looked at Faith. “Candidate Faith, have you met Colonel Evans, the commander of the 16th SAVE?”

“No sir, I haven’t.”

“Well, as you can see,” Molland said, “We have some deliberating to do. Will you please excuse us, and wait in the classroom until we come get you?”

Faith did as he was instructed. His mind was utterly awash at this point. Did he pass? If he passed, was he going to get picked up? Was Ken going to make good on his promise to ensure Faith didn’t become the S2 of 2/16th SAVE? As Faith waited, other candidates filed into the room, having survived their own “murder boards” at the hands of 16th cadre. One by one, they were called back out of the room and told the results. Faith could see them through the large plate window as they left the building and walked towards their cars. From their body postures, it was easy to see who got selected and who didn’t. Faith noticed that his truck had been moved here from the place he was first picked up to start his assessment. How long had it been? Four days? Five? Without his watch, he had no sense at all of the time or day or even how many days he had been at it.

Time crawled by. Faith felt an overpowering need to sleep, but the stress of not knowing kept him awake. Eventually, he was the only candidate in the room. The deliberation process was going on a LONG time. Eventually, Faith came to the realization that if there was this much controversy about him getting hired, there was no way he was going to get the job. Therefore, when he was finally summoned to hear the results of his board, he had made peace with himself that he was not going to get a job in the 16th SAVE.
 
Faith reported back in to the board. He noticed that General Molland and Ken were both absent.

“Candidate Faith,” said Colonel Evans, “After considering all of the pertinent information, and based on your performance during the assessment process, the 16th SAVE is unable to offer you a job as the battalion S2 for 2nd Battalion.” Even though he had mentally prepared for this, he felt a lump in his throat. “We are sending you back to the 116th Transportation Brigade. Do you have any questions?”

“No, sir,” was all Faith could manage to say. He felt physically and emotionally wrecked.

“Then you are dismissed,” he heard Colonel Evans say.
 
I had a feeling this would happen after Colonel Evans voiced his objection in front of Faith. It will be interesting to see what he does now - he still can't leave the Army because of the stoploss but I think that despite his failures here he has gained some respect with Tim and the good General. Maybe another door will present itself? I am curious though - since the 116th Trans is slated to go 'bye-bye' will Faith have to start looking for a position in the Big Army?
 
Marauder06 said:
Faith reported back in to the board. He noticed that General Molland and Ken were both absent.

“Candidate Faith,” said Colonel Evans, “After considering all of the pertinent information, and based on your performance during the assessment process, the 16th SAVE is unable to offer you a job as the battalion S2 for 2nd Battalion.” Even though he had mentally prepared for this, he felt a lump in his throat. “We are sending you back to the 116th Transportation Brigade. Do you have any questions?”

“No, sir,” was all Faith could manage to say. He felt physically and emotionally wrecked.

“Then you are dismissed,” he heard Colonel Evans say.
Click to expand...
A-hem, cough,cough.
 

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