He Thought She Was Just Another Recruit to Break, Until Four Colonels Arrived to Salute Her!

The morning sun at Fort Meridian was a blistering, unforgiving presence, but it was nothing compared to the heat of Staff Sergeant Derek Voss’s rage. Voss, a six-foot-three mountain of a man known as “The Hammer,” had built a fifteen-year career on the philosophy that soldiers weren’t taught; they were broken. To him, the Advanced Infantry Training Program was a forge, and he was the master smith tasked with pounding away the “softness” of the modern generation.

On this particular Tuesday, his anvil was Private Alexis Kane.

Alexis was an enigma to her fellow recruits in Delta Company. Standing at five-foot-six and barely 130 pounds, she was quiet, unassuming, and surgically precise in everything she did. She didn’t boast when she clocked the fastest time on the obstacle course, and she didn’t celebrate when she posted a perfect score on the firing range. She simply existed in a state of flawless, invisible competence. This invisibility, however, was what drew Voss’s ire. He hated the recruits he couldn’t “read,” and he hated even more the ones who didn’t seem to fear him.