The time I met a SEAL turned Army Cadet

Be me, circa 2015-2016, getting voluntold to be medical coverage for a cadet exercise on Fort Hood (Benavidez).

Here I was, a senior specialist, mad at the world that I needed to do this stupid 2 week exercise in the field in the summer, but little did I realize it was actually going to be a blast, and that I'd meet some cool people along the way.

I'm not super familiar with what it is cadets do, or what their ranks mean, so some of the details may be a bit fuzzy/incorrect, but I'll do my best to be as accurate as possible. This was a yearly event where a bunch of cadets (maybe 40-60 or so) got together for this exercise. They were split into two groups (year 1/2 and year 3/4) with the younglings being Blufor and the seniors being Opfor.

I get assigned to be the Opfor medic, and get bussed out to their TAA. Upon arriving, im immediately told to take my ACU jacket off, and handed a rubber ducky RPG-7. This is immediately a great start. The OC in charge of the cadets told me that I would be embedded with them in order to be available if anyone got hurt, and to just play along as an opfor to have some fun. Then he handed me a paintball gun.

The week or so we're a blast of shooting paintball guns at cadets and running around pretending to be an insurgent. Nobody got hurt so I never needed to do any medic stuff, just got to have fun living in a connex city for a bit.

While I was doing this exercise though, I spied a cadet who was different from the majority. A bit older, a bit more reserved, and usually hanging in the back when nothing was going on, keeping to himself. About halfway through the exercise I saw him with his ACU top on and saw he had a 5 stack.

Now, I know cadets get the opportunity to go to some schools, but this definitely piqued my interest. Upon closer inspection I saw probably the most impressive tab, an eagle and trident.

Later on that night while we were enjoying our MRE dinners, I took the opportunity to ask about it. He told me that he had been a SEAL for 10 years and then got out to spend more time with his family and go back to school. He said while he was in school, he decided that throwing 10 years of his life away wasn't worth it to him, so he decided to go into ROTC so he could commission and keep his retirement. He didn't talk much about his time as a SEAL, and I didn't really ask more, but he was a really cool, down to earth guy.

I never saw him again after the training exercise, but I still think about him from time to time, hoping he ended up getting a cool job doing what he wants. The army deserves more officers like him.

That's it, just a rare story about a cool guy I met while having fun on what could have been a miserable time.

I'll take a 10 piece with some fries.