Barrett was commissioned through Navy ROTC in 2000 and spent four years leading infantry and scout sniper Marines from 2000 to 2004.

When most of his platoon headed to sniper school, he went with them.

It was a “pretty unusual” move for a Marine officer, he told Military Times.

The Marine Corps has since trained its final scout snipers and moved sniper training into reconnaissance and Raider units under Force Design 2030.

After the Marines, Barrett built a business, sold it and started farming. When a friend asked him to join an aid convoy to Ukraine, he had four kids in school and a harvest underway. His first answer was no.

That night, he read about pastors killed and churches destroyed by Russian forces. As a Christian, he wondered how he’d missed it. He made the trip, then kept going back.

Now, despite declaring that he is “not a filmmaker,” Barrett has produced two series on the war in Ukraine: A Faith Under Siege and Faith in War. Within that series is Safe Ground, the story of a Green Beret who removes landmines in Ukraine.

During those trips, Barrett heard about a sniper with the call sign of Lektor, a special forces sniper from the Department of Active Measures with Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence, who, in December 2024, hit a moving Russian soldier at 2,069 meters using a single .338 Lapua Magnum round from a Sako TRG M10. He fired standing in a trench, nearly level with his target, and hit on the first shot.

Lektor is still running missions and only reluctantly agreed to press, Barrett said. Soon, however, Barrett’s time with Lektor will become a short documentary.

Barrett’s crew spent a morning on the range with his unit testing whether American M118 ammunition could match its costly hand-loaded rounds. Lektor said there was “practically no difference,” so the unit stuck with the M118 it already had.

“I was struck by just his humility,” Barrett said.

Lektor, a former gamekeeper, waved off the praise.

“Honestly, I don’t consider myself a super expert,” he told Barrett’s crew in an interview translated from Ukrainian. “This is my job for the duration of the war.”

Before the shot, his team had spent two weeks on the zero line watching for a Russian assault, under orders not to fire. When the situation changed and the team was set to move, Lektor asked for one more chance.

“So I simply begged the commander: give us a day or two for free hunting,” he said.

He spotted a soldier whose gear set him apart from ordinary infantry. The man was walking a tree line at a steady pace and a workable angle. As Lektor prepared to fire, his partner called a wind correction in the wrong direction.

“I managed to shout: recalculate, something’s wrong,” Lektor said. They fixed it in seconds while the target was still moving.

Barrett pointed to the longest confirmed .338 Lapua kill — British Cpl. Craig Harrison’s 2,475-meter shot in Afghanistan in 2009 — which came after several sighting rounds. Shots like that, he said, are “really more like competition shooting.” Lektor is skeptical of the rankings for the same reason.

“Two shots maximum: if you didn’t hit, that’s it,” he said. “That’s how you should compare.”

Within half an hour of the shot, drones were overhead.

“The only thing that saved us was that the enemy didn’t expect a shot from such a distance,” Lektor said. The Russians shelled an area about 500 meters out. His team waited a full day in a dugout before slipping out.

Now, thermal cameras hunt for heat.

“After a shot, a simple suppressor can give you away, because it’s hot, it glows,” Lektor said.

Early in the war, Lektor said, the walk to a firing position was about a kilometer. He now walks eight.

Barrett asked him whether snipers were even relevant anymore. Lektor admitted the role is “a little outdated” but not finished.

“Snipers, in my opinion, are the neurosurgeons,” he said. A sniper team can watch a sector almost continuously, he explained. “Drones have to return to recharge, they get shot down.”

Near Bakhmut, Lektor’s team killed a Russian sniper. A neighboring unit then told them he was the fifth one killed at that position.

“They have absolutely no regard for the lives of their own men,” Lektor said.

Barrett sees Ukraine’s regard for its own people as an advantage, along with its speed in adapting to new technology. Russia, he said, treats the war like a meat grinder: “If I just put so much meat into it, that it breaks the grinder, then we’ll win.”

Lektor’s son enlisted first, and the two have served together most of the war.

“He’s my child, I have to be there,” Lektor said.

Once, while Lektor was hospitalized with wounds, his son was fighting with another team in Chasiv Yar. He was the only one of four men in his group to come out unharmed.

On his own team, Lektor keeps one rule.

“I [am] the first to go in and the last to come out,” he said. “That’s our unwritten rule.”

That is, at least, the proper terminology in this great American age of rebrands, one that has borne witness to such seismic overhauls as the Gulf of Mexico becoming the Gulf of America, Lake Ontario becoming Lake America, and a push to call New Mexico … New America.

U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 29 the term “artificial intelligence” would henceforth be retired in favor of “super intelligence.”

“As these capabilities continue to improve, they increasingly represent not merely artificial intelligence, but a new era of Super Intelligence,” the executive order stated.

The president followed that “SI” declaration up with an Oct. 8 Truth Social post asserting that anyone who uses the previous moniker would be branded “THE ENEMY!”

The U.S. Navy this week became one of the first services to avoid that traitorous designation, cementing the super initiative and calling on “all Navy echelons, commands, activities, and personnel [to] use ‘Super Intelligence’ and ‘SI’ in place of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ and ‘AI,’” a service memo stated.

“This policy applies effective immediately across all official Navy correspondence, flag letters, OPORDs, wargame documentation, instructional material, fleet advisories, public communications, official websites, strategic assessments, congressional reports, and non-statutory internal and external policy documents,” the memo continued.

As part of the super overhaul, echelon II commanders, type commanders and systems commanders will be required to review all “public releases, intranet portals, and external presentations for compliance” no later than 30 days after the release of the super memo. These personnel will then be required to submit a super report on completing the task.

The directive does not require retroactively amending previously published documentation or contracts, the message noted, while existing laws and statutes “will continue to be cited as statutorily required until conforming congressional amendments are enacted.”

A Military Times request for comment from the sea service regarding what consequences might result should “artificial intelligence” be used was not returned as of press time.

On Aug. 1, 1943, Lt. Ernie Poulson co-piloted the Consolidated B-24 Liberator on a low-level bombing run of an oil refinery in Campina — part of the deadly American aerial raid of the Ploesti oil fields, codenamed Operation Tidal Wave. His aircraft was one of 53 lost that day. Paulson and his crew crash-landed on a river bank and were taken captive by the Romanian home guard.

As they awaited their fate in that dank, dark pit, the young American airmen could hear a commotion above them. Suddenly, a trap door opened and a head appeared. A woman’s voice spoke to them in heavily accented English:

“Hello, boys. There are only friends here. Now come up and let us help you.”

Poulson and the others didn’t know it at the time but they had just been saved by a guardian angel. Princess Catherine Caradja, a member of Romanian royalty, was now responsible for their lives as the hell of World War II raged around them in Europe.

That scene is a pivotal moment in Adam Makos’ new book Tidal Wave: The Pilots, the Princess, and the Enemy Ace – A True Story of Courage and Survival in WWII. The bestselling author of World War II books A Higher Call and Spearhead details an amazing account of a little-known side story of the ill-fated mission to destroy “Hitler’s gas station.”

“That’s what the brass thought in 1943 when they sent those bombers into Romania at low level: wipe out Hitler’s refineries in one great raid,” Makos told Military Times.

“They said it would shorten the war by six months. The truth was, Operation Tidal Wave was the opening salvo in a campaign that took an entire year to knock Romania out of the war and deny Hitler its oil. It took more than 67 American missions — and 237 bombers lost — to batter Romania enough to cause regime change,” he added.

At the time, Romania was a reluctant ally of Germany. Ruled by a despotic fascist, the country had joined the Axis powers to fight its archnemesis, the Soviet Union. However, many in Romania were wary of the Nazis and favored the Allies.

One of those who believed the country was on the wrong side of the war was Princess Catherine. When the Chattanooga Choo Choo crashed on her estate, she took an active interest in the welfare of its crew, rescuing them from internment in a Luftwaffe POW camp.

Instead, Poulson and his men went to a safer Romanian prison camp where Princess Catherine could protect them. She even managed to have the camp commander replaced when he became too severe in his handling of the Americans.

Makos was tipped off to the story by Frederick W. Smith, founder of FedEx, who died in 2025. Smith told the author about Poulson and how his crew was aided by the Romanian princess. As the author investigated, he learned the B-24 copilot was still alive

“We found one of the last survivors of the 1,700 men that flew that mission in 1943. I was overjoyed,” says Makos, adding, “Ernie had a sharp mind and was physically fit. At 97, as he was telling me this story, you could tell he was still a tough guy.”

As the war progressed, more and more Romanians were killed in the senseless slaughter of the Eastern Front in Russia. Support for the Nazis weakened and in 1944, the country’s monarch — Michael I, who was king in name only — led a coup against the country’s dictator and flipped sides to join the Allies.

This enabled Romania’s leading fighter ace — Prince Constantin “Buzz” Cantacuzino, who hated the Nazis — to assist Allied airmen held prisoner in his country, including Lt. Col. James Alexander Gunn, the highest-ranking U.S. officer shot down in the Ploesti Raid.

In a Messerschmitt Bf 109 painted with two large American flags on its sides, Cantacuzino flew Gunn to safety in Italy. From there, the colonel helped plan the Operation Reunion rescue of more than 1,000 captured Allied airmen, including Poulson and his crew, in Boeing B-17 bombers converted into troop transports.

Buzz flew escort for the Flying Fortresses in a North American P-51 Mustang.

Like most of Makos’ books, the narrative doesn’t end with the guns falling silent. The author writes about how Princess Catherine and Poulson meet again years later in Europe, where the American learned just how much was at stake for his benefactor if she had been caught.

After the Communists seized control in Romania, Catherine escaped to America, where she lived in Texas with one of the airmen on Poulson’s plane: Richard Britt. Following the Romanian Revolution in 1989, the princess returned to her homeland, where she died at 100 in 1993.

“This is such an amazing story,” Makos says. “We were so lucky that many of the people involved wrote memoirs, so we were able to piece it together and triangulate all the incredible events for accuracy. I interviewed Ernie Poulson in 2018 to get his side of it. He played such a movie-like role in this story.”

Poulson later headed the Atlas missile program for the U.S. Air Force, retiring as a colonel in 1961. He then became a professor of business at the University of Utah. He died in 2020.

Tapping into unreleased family archives, diaries, letters and firsthand accounts, Makos crafts a fast-paced, action-packed narrative that ties together many important individuals and historic events into a personal story about World War II. By presenting this aspect of the Ploesti Raid, he says he is focusing on the brave men who sacrificed so much to stop the Nazi war machine.

“Some 310 of them gave their lives, and they did help bring about an earlier end to the most terrible war in human history. Are we a country that remembers our heroes, those audacious young men who flew into the jaws of hell? Or will they be just a footnote in history?

“That’s why I wrote Tidal Wave: to make sure their names and their story are known.”

Ryan Hendrickson spent 22 years in uniform learning to find the things buried in the dirt that are meant to kill people. When the U.S. left Afghanistan, he discovered he no longer knew who he was without that work.

“I had no identity anymore, because my entire military career had been wrapped up in Afghanistan or Iraq,” the retired Green Beret told Military Times.

That void, and what he eventually filled it with, is at the heart of “Safe Ground: A Green Beret’s Mission to Remove Ukraine’s Landmines,” a documentary now streaming on Prime Video in the U.S. and U.K.

The film debuted Sept. 12, the anniversary of the day in 2010 when Hendrickson stepped on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan while trying to rescue an Afghan soldier.

The Special Forces engineer sergeant recovered and deployed to Afghanistan seven more times.

In 2016, he earned a Silver Star for leading an IED-clearing team through a Taliban ambush in Baghlan Province. After retiring from the 7th Special Forces Group, he went back as a contractor, leaving in July 2021, shortly before the final U.S. withdrawal.

He came home hurt, confused and drinking heavily.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hendrickson felt a pull he couldn’t shake. He had no ties to the country. What he did have was his father’s longtime warning that regret is a miserable way to finish a life.

“I knew if I got to be an old man, and I didn’t at least go and try, I would regret it,” he said.

He flew into Poland in March 2022 with roughly 10 bags of donated humanitarian supplies.

Contacts on a Ukrainian missionary team asked him to bring body armor if he had it, plus two less tactical items: American Reese’s cups and beef jerky. Passing between drivers and safehouses, he reached Kyiv about three days later.

The process felt familiar. Hendrickson compared it to Robin Sage, the final exercise of Special Forces training, set in a fictional country at war.

“Well, everything went back to my training. It’s like, this is Robin Sage,” he said.

Volunteering with the missionary group Youth With A Mission, he was driving a bus into threatened areas the day he arrived, evacuating women, children and the elderly.

After Russian forces pulled back from around Kyiv, the team moved into newly liberated towns such as Bucha with food, medical supplies and shelter materials. He said the work “completely rewired my brain after Afghanistan, and now I had my purpose, and I had an identity back.”

As residents returned home, they began hitting landmines, booby traps and other explosive remnants left in the war’s wake.

Hendrickson started working with Ukrainian territorial defense units, doing what Green Berets do: train, advise and equip. He would fly home, raise money for detectors and safety gear, donate it to a unit and move on to the next one.

In October 2022, that cycle became Tip of the Spear Landmine Removal, a nonprofit he says has since carried him back to Ukraine 13 times.

Along the way, he came to believe the mission could help other veterans, arguing that “a lot of veterans’ mental health revolved around lack of purpose, service, and identity.” He began bringing veterans over as funding allowed.

At the organization’s recent gala, he announced an expansion, the Tip of the Spear Veterans Humanitarian Corps, which is meant to cover everything from mine clearance to reconstruction, agriculture, teaching and medical work.

“In the military we were trained to protect the people of America and our way of life through war. But now, we’re utilizing these same skills, but for saving lives and rebuilding. So you go from killing to healing,” he said.

When producer Colby Barrett, a former Marine captain, first pitched a documentary, Hendrickson said no. They talked for more than a year before he agreed, and Hendrickson said Barrett funded the production himself.

“Safe Ground” is part of Faith in War, a documentary series from the creators of “A Faith Under Siege.”

Hendrickson credits his faith as a huge driving force in his life and his work.

He added that Europeans often tell him he isn’t like a normal American. He pushes back. “I’m extremely normal. I am your normal American,” he said. “There’s Americans that are so much better than I am, and this is what we do as Americans, and this is what we do as veterans.”

The mission also gave him the courage to confront his own wounds. Hendrickson said suicide was once “on the table for me. I had that line in the sand that if things got worse than this, then I had my out.”

He later underwent ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT treatment at a clinic in Mexico, the same psychedelic therapy explored in the veteran documentary “In Waves and War.”

“But the fighting inside myself has stopped,” he said, adding that he isn’t sure whether he has reached a peace agreement with himself or just a cease-fire.

As a Green Beret, Hendrickson said, “I would have a very hard time looking in the mirror because all I would see is failure.” That has changed.

“I’m proud, you know, of the man that’s staring back at me in the mirror,” he said.

Now almost 50, he is exploring similar work in Nigeria and Burma. His final objective is the country where his story began.

“Before I’m finished with my mission, I will be back in Afghanistan, and we will be helping the people of Afghanistan,” he said.

For veterans who have drawn their own line in the sand, his offer is simple: “Let me take you on a mission.”

The cuddly red creature and his Sesame Street buddies have teamed up again with the Department of Defense’s Office of Military Community and Family Policy to continue their work for military preschool-aged children. The Muppets address topics and issues such as deployments, relocation, homecomings, transition to civilian life, stress, grief, the “new normal with a parent with physical or mental injuries,” and others.

All the resources are free and available at SesameStreetforMilitaryFamilies.org.

The new package promotes a whole-family approach to well-being. It includes the “Move with Elmo” game, which features choices at each stage of an animated walk in the park, where children can choose an exercise demonstrated by Elmo along the way, with periodic water breaks.

At each stop, they can choose an exercise and either exercise the entire body or move only their arms. Children get a dose of numbers with each exercise, too. The game provides digital stickers after each activity that children can drag over to their digital coloring pages at the end. Their grown-up can help print their coloring page.

Since its launch in 2006, Sesame Street for Military Families has provided research-based resources especially for military and veteran families.

Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind “Sesame Street,” developed the programs in partnership with DoD and military families. They’ve carefully researched how to relate sometimes complex messages in ways children can understand.

Videos, articles, digital tools, printable activities and provider resources have helped millions of military-connected families navigate the various aspects of military life.

“As we celebrate this milestone, we’re introducing new resources that make it easier for families to stay active, build healthy habits, and spend quality time together,” Rocio Galarza, vice president of U.S. Educational Programs for Sesame Workshop, said in an announcement. “Whether it’s moving with Elmo, trying new family activities, or creating everyday routines, these tools help children grow stronger, healthier and ready for whatever comes next.”

The Sesame Street programs specifically for military children are part of its long-standing educational work for the larger population of young children.

The sarcophagus of Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy, who died in 1389 and is revered by Russian nationalists for defeating the Mongol Golden Horde at the 1380 Battle of Kulikovo, was uncovered this summer during restoration work at Moscow’s Cathedral of the Archangel inside the Kremlin.

Putin personally inspected what experts said were the prince’s well-preserved remains in August, hailing them as “an absolutely unique and marvellous discovery” which reinforced the foundations of Russian history.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which has backed Putin throughout the conflict, said it had dispatched a fragment of Donskoy’s right hand to Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions Putin said he had incorporated into Russia in 2022, a move Kyiv rejected as an illegal land grab.

Referring to Donskoy as “the holy commander,” the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church said part of his remains had been sent to the front to stand invisibly shoulder-to-shoulder with Russian troops.

“A fragment of the Grand Prince’s right hand – the very same right hand with which he wielded his sword on Kulikovo Field – has been sent to the front to strengthen the soldiers’ spirits,” it said in a statement.

The relic, held in a small ornate casket beneath toughened glass, will be shown to Russian combat units along the more than 1,000-km front line, it said.

Donskoy, whose name was given to a Soviet tank column funded by the church in World War Two, was declared a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988.

Patriotic push

The carefully choreographed effort to use his remains in a public relations exercise to boost patriotism and morale comes ahead of a parliamentary election later this month.

Russian military and church officials have presented the discovery as a fortuitous find that could help Russian forces prevail in Ukraine, now in the fifth year of a grinding war.

The tour also comes as Russian forces seek full control of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine and as diplomatic efforts to end the war have yet to yield a breakthrough.

Donskoy’s relics were carried through the streets of Moscow at the weekend in a huge Orthodox procession.

At a ceremony at a World War Two memorial in Donetsk on Tuesday, Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy Kremlin chief of staff, joined military commanders and the Russian-installed regional head in kissing the relic and making the sign of the cross as a priest read a prayer.

“Both our military personnel and the people who live in Donbas need strengthening from above, need God’s help and the blessing of our saints,” Metropolitan Vladimir of Donetsk and Mariupol, a senior Moscow-appointed cleric, said. Donbas is a broader area incorporating Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk which Russia controls almost in its entirety.

Elsewhere, commanders have presented Donskoy’s remains as evidence that God is on Russia’s side.

The Defence Ministry on Wednesday released footage of troops in the Sverdlovsk region attending a church service carrying icons and Orthodox flags, alongside an interview with a commander who said the relics would support Russia’s victory.

Critics, however, have accused the Church of breaking with religious protocol to please the Kremlin. They have also questioned why Donskoy’s remains, whose location was broadly known for decades, were recovered and venerated only now, 38 years after he was declared a saint.

“By the fifth year of war, the Church leadership in Moscow began to wonder what else it could do to show its support for what Russia terms its ‘special military operation’,” Alexander Zanemonets, an Orthodox priest and historian based outside Russia, wrote in a note for the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center whose director Russia has designated a “foreign agent.”

“It had already sent priests to the front lines, instituted mandatory prayers for Russian victory in every church, and flown icons over cities. A state embroiled in war will try to compel all institutions, including religious ones, to participate in it.”

Buzz Bissinger, author of The New York Times bestselling book Friday Night Lights, and its subsequent film’s director, Peter Berg, are teaming up to deliver the true story of The Mosquito Bowl, which saw 65 Marines of the 4th and 29th regiments, 6th Marine Division, facing off on the “gridiron” of Guadalcanal before being shipped off to Okinawa.

Based on Bissinger’s 2022 book The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II, the film follows four of America’s top college football stars, who traded a pigskin for an M1 Garand.

Netflix dropped the official teaser trailer Wednesday, featuring Nicholas Galitzine (The Idea of You) as John McLaughry, Bill Skarsgård (It) as Bob Bauman, Ray Nicholson (Smile 2) as Tony Butkovich and Tom Francis (Broadway’s Sunset Boulevard) as Dave Schreiner.

Berg, who penned the adaptation alongside Mark L. Smith, produced the film with Alex Gayner and Brian Grazer for Imagine Entertainment. Grazer and Imagine Entertainment previously collaborated with Berg on Friday Night Lights. Ezra Emanuel is the executive producer.

As the days of December 1944 passed on Guadalcanal, the island was beset with rumors of where and when the Marines would ship out. It also became the home to some lively trash talk.

Relief from the daily drudgery came over sips of beer and the promise that the “29th would kick the 4th’s ass if there was ever a football game between the two,” writes Bissinger.

That promise swiftly took shape into an all-American sporting event — some thousands of miles from home.

These men were not, according to Bissinger, run-of-the-mill former collegiate football players. Within the 29th alone came an “All-American running back from Purdue who had set a scoring record in the Big Ten; an All-Missouri Valley Conference end; starters from Cornell, Notre Dame, Illinois and Duquesne; and five former captains, including from Notre Dame, Illinois and Purdue.”

The 4th was no slouch when it came to its “roster” either. The unit touted a two-time All-American wide receiver from Wisconsin and another at center from the University of California; an Ivy Leaguer who had started with the New York Giants; and starters from Wisconsin, Michigan State, Fordham, Montana and Ohio Northern, according to Bissinger.

On Dec. 24, 1944, the 65 Marines strode out onto a “field” made up of dirt, pebbles and shards of sharp coral, wearing cut-off dungarees and T-shirts with numbers stenciled on the front. Roughly 1,500 Marines ringed the field with a broadcast on Guadalcanal-based Mosquito Network going out to various Navy and Marine units fighting across the Pacific. The score, according to Bissinger, was occasionally flashed to destroyers at sea.

Tragically, it would be the last game many of the footballers-turned-Marines would play. Fifteen of the 65 players who suited up for The Mosquito Bowl were killed during the Typhoon of Steel.

The film is set to hit theaters on Oct. 30 and premiere on Netflix on Nov. 25.

Carpenter earned the nation’s highest military honor for his actions on Nov. 21, 2010, in Marjah, Afghanistan. When a grenade landed near him and fellow Marine Nick Eufrazio during a firefight, Carpenter threw himself toward the blast to shield his teammate. He was unconscious for five weeks afterward and lost an eye and most of his teeth, along with sustaining numerous other serious injuries.

President Barack Obama presented Carpenter with the Medal of Honor at the White House in 2014, making him the youngest living recipient at the time.

The Valor Pack is the latest entry in a long-running tradition for the Call of Duty Endowment, Activision’s charity dedicated to helping veterans land quality jobs after leaving the service. Proceeds from the bundle will go directly to that mission.

It follows a similar release tied to Black Ops 7, which featured retired NASA astronaut and 9/11-era special operations veteran Chris Cassidy, and comes on the heels of the Endowment’s operator bundle honoring Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient Danielle Green, the first female combat veteran featured as a playable character in the franchise.

Since its founding in 2009, the Call of Duty Endowment has placed more than 150,000 veterans into civilian careers, funded entirely through Activision Blizzard’s overhead support so that all player donations go straight toward job placement.

Modern Warfare 4 launches Oct. 23 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC and Nintendo Switch 2. An open beta for all players runs Aug. 28 through Sept. 1, following a preorder beta already underway.

According to a memorandum that circulated on social media, eligible soldiers in the 9th Engineer Battalion at Fort Stewart who reenlist by Nov. 14 will be authorized a four-day pass that aligns with the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, or GTA 6, at the end of November.

An Army official confirmed that the document, signed by the unit’s commander, Lt. Col. Ryan D. Hodgson, was authentic.

“The battalion has a new career counselor who approached unit leadership with an idea for an updated creative incentives program to reach FY27 reenlistment goals,” said Lt. Col. Angel Tomko, with the 3rd Infantry Division’s public affairs office.

To qualify for the video game spree, soldiers must re-up for at least two years, Tomko said. So far, 20 out of 130 eligible soldiers have given Uncle Sam a few more years in exchange for 96 hours of simulated criminal bliss.

The video game franchise, which allows players to roam through cityscapes as criminal masterminds, has been a cornerstone of gaming culture for decades. The upcoming edition is highly anticipated, and according to the game’s publisher, Rockstar Games, it will feature an Army veteran named Jason Duval who “grew up around grifters and crooks” and has now “found himself in the Keys doing what he knows best, working for local drug runners.”

First reported by Task & Purpose, the July 28 memorandum says the incentive is for eligible soldiers who sign a reenlistment contract between Aug. 1 and Nov. 14.

“This special pass is specifically designated to coincide with the highly anticipated release of the video game Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6),” it reads. Soldiers who acquire the reward will coordinate days off with their individual unit leadership.

Unfortunately for uniformed GTA fans interested in extended carjacking opportunities, the pass cannot be combined with any other passes to give the soldier an absence of more than four days.

The unconventional incentive comes as the Army becomes more selective with traditional reenlistment incentives, with new guidance tying cash bonuses to soldiers’ physical fitness, job proficiency and command assessments.

Elmore has been drawing for as long as he can remember, but growing up in a family with limited means meant his family had to ration paper, he said in a conversation with Fort Knox Public Affairs Office reporter Savannah Baird.

When Elmore was drafted into the Army after graduating with a fine arts degree from Western Kentucky University, the service gave him the resources to hone his craft, he told Baird.

“Once I got assigned, the Army saw my portfolio and realized I could draw just about anything from memory, so they put me on illustration work,” Elmore said in the release.

The Army changed the look of its field manuals in the 1970s to include more illustrations, and Elmore’s talents were put to use. After studying objects, Elmore could retain their images and draw them from memory, including tanks and rifles, he told Baird.

“It was a God-given gift and I used it,” he said.

Elmore went to basic training and was stationed at Fort Knox. During his time there, he developed skills he had not learned in college.

“Illustrations in the ’70s were just line work, pure ink — white and black, no grays — and they didn’t teach you that in college. I developed those skills at Fort Knox,” he said in the release.

After completing his two-year obligation, Elmore decided to stay on as a contractor, Baird reported. Around that time, a new employee joined the staff and introduced the team to Dungeons & Dragons, changing Elmore’s life.

Despite his initial hesitation, he began playing the game with his coworkers and quickly became hooked, calling it “the king of all games.”

Dungeons & Dragons was relatively new at the time, and its art was elementary, Elmore told Baird. He recalled that a fellow artist said he was going to submit his artwork to Tactical Studies Rules, or TSR, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons, because “our art is much better than this.”

Elmore then decided to submit his own portfolio to TSR, which included drawings he had produced for the Army. Soon after, TSR offered to double his salary, hire his wife and move them to Wisconsin, the release stated.

Elmore said he immediately shook the company representative’s hand and told him, “you just bought yourself an artist.”

He went on to create one of the most recognizable images in the game’s history: the cover art for the famous “Red Box” set, which featured a warrior in combat with a red dragon.

After six years at TSR, Elmore decided to move back to Central Kentucky and pursue freelance work for another 40 years, according to the Army’s release.

He recognizes the impact the Army had on his career as an artist.

“I was very lucky,” he said in the release. “Sometimes, I think to be successful you have to be good, but you got to have some of those weird breaks in life — and I got two or three.”