Eclectic Skill-sets (Cumberland Saga)

“I got some bad news” Samson Davis told his heavily pregnant wife, Heddy.

She was cleaning up a puddle of vomit left by their Jack Russel puppy. In retrospect, getting a puppy while Heddy was still caring for their two-year-old and had another on the way had not been their best move.

Heddy put down what she was doing, with a sigh. She turned to face him and asked “Tell me what is going on.”

“A mob of "protesters" broke into the Armory” Samson told her. She didn’t need to ask if he meant “his” room in the basement or at the National Guard.

“When did it happen?” Heddy asked.

“Last night. The guards were directed to stand-down and just let the mob take everything they could carry” Samson told her, bitterly. “It was not reported to the press. The police have their hands full and flat-out told us that there would be no effort to retrieve the weapons.”

Samson was one of the Armorers for the North Carolina National Guard*.

Samson left the military after his second deployment. He had planned to make the military his career but "politics" tripped him up.

When deployed forward, he was required to get permission from “upper” every time he pulled his trigger in his role as a designated marksman if the target deviated the slightest bit from the Rule-of-Engagement profiles. During one firefight, Samson dumped every “skinny” who was lugging anything that looked even remotely like it might be supporting the drones overhead. That put the first letter into his file.

Samson was glad that “upper” had never found out about the 2.4GHz radio-activated Claymore mines he and his spotter had used to salt the promontory that was most favored by the drone jockeys. The buzzards ate well that week. Prior preparation and all that.

The second letter occurred when he was back in the Green-Zone and was told to report for the 8-hour, mandatory, weekly, sensitivity-training.

Samson pushed back. He had just received five, beaten up, belt-fed heavy machine-guns that needed rebuild. The only things that kept the Forward Operating Bases from being overrun were area denial fire from M-2s and aggressive sniping by teams that had infiltrated into areas where local troublemakers were known to congregate.

 

Arty was under-resourced and over-subscribed and slow in coming. The Airedales were even slower. The FOBs were reduced to dancing with the ones-they-brung.

The M-2s were rode hard and put away wet. Without spares, his FOBs would be left without interlocking fields of fire if they lost another M-2s. The bad-guys would figure that out soon enough.

While Samson’s commander fully agreed with him, the person walking past the open door did not and she reported it to HR.

BAM! A second letter in the file.

Samson did not re-up.

Dumped into civilian life at 27, he grabbed the first high-paying job that wanted him. It was in construction.

The unit he was in hit a month-long lull in jobs and he was going to get laid off. The site-manager knew Samson would have some time off and also knew, via the grapevine, that Samson could not afford the air-bubble in income due to family responsibilities.

Over coffee, the manager voluntold Samson that there was a place for him in the local National Guard in an Engineering Unit that he, the site-manager, just happened to be responsible for. He needed somebody who could rebuild equipment without just throwing money at it. Oh, yeah, and by-the-way, his skills would be appreciated on the shooting team. Maybe this year they could beat South Carolina. 

 

It was well within the Commander's authority to expedite Samson's application and to coordinate his "stints" with the National Guard and the lay-offs from construction.

Samson was in heaven. The unit’s efficiency rating was in the toilet because they were over-budget and under-equipt. The Pentagon clearly had a bone-up-its-azz with regard to North Carolina and sent them shot-up, end-of-useful-life, obsolete equipment. Spare parts, if they were available, were salvaged from the bone-yard and were only slightly more usable than the ones that were removed.

The officer who recruited him got him into 3-D printing and pointed out several custom foundries who could turn a plastic model into the cast-steel equivalent via investment casting. To a man, the owners of the foundries were patriots who had served their country in the military. They charged the NCNG time-and-materials and billed it as Miscellaneous Training.

Of course, the business owners were not stupid. They pressured their congressmen to have the replacement parts approved as “secondary sources” for the parts. A single trunnion-knuckle for a bogey-wheel on a Electro-Magnetic-warfare carrier could generate $5k in profit and every EM-warfare carrier had 14 bogey-wheels.

The tempo of deployment was hard on the equipment and worn trunnions resulted in thrown tracks. Not only was the EM-warfare package incredibly expensive, but the technology was proprietary and supreme effort was invested in recovering them...or they were demo-ed in-place to prevent the technology from being stolen by the skinnies and traded to Iran, Russian or China.

So when the diligent, intensely focused young man called from the front gate of the foundry, he was given first-class treatment and NCNG projects got high priority.

 

Samson's unit went from RED to BLACK for Readiness, the Maintenance budget went BLACK and the Training budget was fully-utilized.

 

Everybody was happy.

***

“I am not sure why you think that is bad news” Heddy replied.

Samson looked around the house they were leasing. A typical doctor or lawyer would have considered it a “dump” but it was the nicest house Samson and Heddy had ever lived in.

“Mostly because you won’t be delivering in a hospital” Samson said. He had grown up in rural, western Virginia and knew of some home deliveries that had not ended well.

“The second one is easy and the ones after that fall out like a string of sausages” Heddy laughed. “At least that is what Mom always said.”

What Samson could not know was that Alice had been referring to puppies.

Samson left a voice mail with his firm and informed them that he would be taking an indefinite leave-of-absence, No-Reason-Given.

The NCNG didn’t have voice mail. It had a push-button-one-for-menu-in-English system.

Then Samson called his commander on his personal phone and explained that he was resigning from the NCNG in protest of “upper” not committing the resources needed to secure the Arms Locker.

His commander understood.

There was nothing left to do but to pack and to leave.

 

***

 

Hat-tip to Old-NFO and Will C. for suggesting some possibilities. All errors are mine.

 

*My apologies to the North Carolina National Guards for any technical or organizational mistakes I made. It is not my intention to impugn the reputation of the NCNG. I have no doubt that the NCNG upholds the finest traditions of the US Military and is a bastion of world-class fighting men and women struggling to excel in an increasingly hostile world.

 

North Carolina had the misfortune of being well located relative to the fictitious community of Copperhead Cove.

Thank-you to all National Guardsmen, regardless of state.