Lost lieutenant finds Jesus

FORT DEVENS, Mass. – A U.S. Army officer has emerged from the woods at the land navigation training site, here, after going missing more than two years ago and credits his survival to an unexpected religious awakening.

U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Marcus Small, a budget analyst with the 99th Readiness Division based out of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, was conducting nighttime land navigation training when he failed to report in after the generous four hours he had to complete the course.

The filthy, odoriferous man was found by Soldiers from the 94th Military Police Company, an Army Reserve unit based out of Londonderry, New Hampshire, near land navigation point 18, not far from the course’s starting point.

“I was checking my azimuth when I saw this dude with long, matted hair and a scruffy beard wandering toward me,” said Pvt. Hillary Gong, a military police officer with the 94th. “At first, I thought he might have been from range control, or something. But as he got closer, I caught a whiff of him and saw he was wearing the old [Army Combat Uniform] pattern and thought he was a veteran, maybe. Either way, he skeeved me out.”

Gong escorted Small to her commander, Maj. Humphrey Dillard, who took control of the situation.

“At first, I was concerned he was some kind of pervert lurking around my female Soldiers,” said Dillard. “But then I saw his nametape and it hit me that he was that jackass who went AWOL a few years ago. That prick’s stunt put a bad blemish of my record which has held me back from promotion. It took everything in my power to resist punching that cocksucker in the face.”

Dillard was a training officer with the 99th two years ago and the range safety officer for the night land navigation training during which Small went missing. He, along with a group of better trained and more competent non-commissioned officers, Fort Devens support staff, and local law enforcement spent nearly two weeks searching for the lost officer before it was eventually called off.

Small’s leadership contacted his next-of-kin in hopes he may have tried to make contact with his wife or parents, but to no avail. After 14 days of no contact or evidence of a body, Dillard told his people to go home and chocked the whole situation up to a “field loss”.

“I remember my senior NCO telling me I can’t field loss a Soldier, but I didn’t give a damn,” said Dillard. “That idiot was a waste of oxygen. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want the guy dead, but I sure as shit didn’t want him in my formation. He was a liability. The Army was better off without him.”

After Small’s reemergence from the woods, he was brought before the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, to be interrogated about his whereabouts the past couple of years.

“I’ll be honest, I had never seen anything like this before,” said Lt. Col. Brandon Hoover, the CID investigator assigned to the case. “When people go AWOL, they don’t typically come back if they’ve been gone for that long. A day or two? A week? Sure, we’ve seen people with cold feet eventually return. But two years? That threw up some serious red flags.”

In his interview with Small, Hoover said the former butter bar claimed he became disoriented and wandered off the training site. After a long night alone, he became dehydrated and stumbled into a makeshift camp where he met someone who he claimed was the resurrected embodiment of the Christian lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

“The bearded white man was so nice to me,” said Small in his interview with CID. “He fed me, bathed me, and gave me shelter. He also said he would stab me if I ever tried to leave, but it was Jesus-fucking-Christ, I trusted him.”

“I wasn’t really a religious man before this, but this whole situation really opened my eyes,” Small continued. “The Jesus of Nazareth was back and he was there, in front of me, offering me food and shelter. He was there to save me, I know it. I didn’t see him turn any water into wine, or anything. Just a lot of recycled piss and human feces for fertilizing his small garden, but faith requires a little suspense of disbelief, doesn’t it?”

Small never disclosed how or why he left the man’s encampment, but upon closer investigation, CID and local police discovered the so-called son of God was actually a man named Phillip Cox, a fugitive wanted for the 1994 murder of Ayer High School senior Bethany Powell.

Cox was arrested and is expected to appear before a judge later next week.

Small was reinstated in the Army Reserve, given a promotion to captain, and put in command of the 99th’s brand new Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) school on Fort Dix, which they also named after him.

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