Chapter 1

I had just gotten out of hospital, I had resigned my commission, and was ready to get on with living what might be a more normal life. Oh, I was still whole and healthy, but I had seen enough pain, death and destruction to last me several lifetimes. My wounds had not been debilitating at all, and I was not in any way disabled or handicapped, actually I was lucky and only really had a few puncture marks, mostly from flesh wounds, I had been on the very periphery of an explosion, an IED. I had gotten sliced by some shrapnel, and had lost some blood.

My Sergeant had not been so lucky, he and the Corporal with him had taken the brunt of the full force of a kilo of C4 explosive, and the attendant shrapnel. The worst part, is that it was my fault, somehow the extremists had gotten our radio frequencies, and most likely used a garage door opener or maybe some form of an arduino device with frequency-hopping capability; as soon as I (it could have been any officer and his radioman) was within range (probably only a dozen yards) and I used the radio, the IED was set off.

I had just started my sophomore year, tenth grade in high school, the fall when the 9/11 attacks took place, and I had like so many of that particular generation been ready to enlist immediately. My mother and a school counsellor, as well as a Recruiting Sergeant had eventually convinced me to first complete my education.

Mom, a single working mother, was struggling to pay even the most basic of bills. We just did not have the money to spare, and so as soon as I graduated, I enlisted. That took some of the pressure off of mom.

A month after my high school graduation, I was one-third the way through boot camp, I had always liked the idea of being an engineer. Four years later, as a qualified Sapper / Combat Engineer, a Corporal about to be promoted to Sergeant, and having gained some college credits through night school, my break came, there was an opening to attend university. I would have to attend ROTC classes as well as spending my summer vacations with the Army. At the end of four years I graduated as a Bachelor of Science, Civil Engineering, and got to wear my first gold bar as a Second Lieutenant. As a Non-Com, I had already gained my Ranger and Airborne tabs, thus ensuring greater chances of promotion.

It had quickly become apparent that even after spending four years in school, I hadn't missed the war, and there would still be plenty of opportunities to become a HERO. Except that people at home no longer looked at us that way. I went to Iraq. Somehow, with the assistance of a very worldly-wise old Sergeant First Class, I was able to survive. Over the next several years I did tours to Iraq, Afghanistan, I had gotten to spend time in Europe, in Germany and England, and even returned at times back to the States, mostly on training assignments.

I knew that if I persevered, I might even one day make General, but I had had enough of the constant fighting, because it so seldom seemed like it was in defence of the US, but rather ... I just didn't know, and I was unwilling to speculate.

I had retired as a First Lieutenant, a Platoon Leader in an Engineer Company attached to an Airborne Brigade. If I had stayed in, and with my still healthy body, I wasn't disabled, I could have done, I was due for promotion and would have gotten a post as a Captain JS2 (Intelligence Officer) in an Infantry Battalion in a Mechanised Brigade. There had been rumours of tours to Syria, and possibly even Iran.

But I felt that it was time to move on. My degree of course meant that even in the current recession, I would always be able to make myself a new career. Admittedly my high school math, for instance, was a bit rusty, actually a lot rusty! But that might not even be a major concern; the Executive Officer of the Brigade having oversight over my previous unit, had told me of an opportunity that may just be perfect for me; he had actually already recommended me to the faculty. The job opportunity was at a residential school, and I would also be able to stay on the premises. That was convenient as I had no family, never yet married, and mom had died a year ago, a flu vaccine or something like that, that had gone wrong.

I can't say what I was expecting, I mean my XO had even suggested that while I wouldn't get any pay, I might still qualify for time served as an Active Reserve Officer, while at work. My reasoning had me going to a military school, where I would be involved in the training and educating of a bunch of boys. How wrong I was.

It was towards the end of September, and so the school year had already started, on a Tuesday morning that I climbed out of the E-350 bus that had been sent to the airport to collect me. The school's security would never have allowed a normal civilian cab to advance very far up the school's access road. I found out later, that most parental visits were organised beforehand, and for those able to, there was a helicopter landing pad. Otherwise the students were often actually ferried into a number of the closest towns, to be taken home at vacation time; that road really didn't have a lot of traffic at all.