FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Army Maj. Greg Jordan, a twice-divorced functional alcoholic serving as the executive officer of the 39th Special Troops Battalion, is really looking forward to mentoring the two new high-functioning Captains assigned to the unit, sources confirmed today.

“I’ve been watching them, trying to make a careful consideration of where I can be of the most use of a mentor, and I think my job’s going to be easy,” said Jordan over a bottle of Military Special brand scotch in the apartment he never really furnished after his last wife left him.

“Take [Ryan] Cooper. On paper, he looks good. But I just heard him say, ‘this white paper that’s due tomorrow is an 80% solution, but getting it to 100% isn’t possible in the time. I’m going to go home and take the kids for a while so my wife can get a break.’ Yeah. Seriously. I’d still be at work right now. I’ll pull him out of PT tomorrow and talk to him.”

Capts. Cooper and Kelsey Wheatly spoke to reporters about their new rater on a recent interval run they planned after finding the pace on the unit run too slow to be challenging. “He really cares about mentorship,” Wheatly said of the major. “So much that he’ll pull you away from giving clear guidance to your subordinates so that he can tell you a story about when he was a captain.”

Cooper added, laughingly: “It’s fun because sometimes his stories last two hours and have no point to them. We call it ‘torMentorship.”

Jordan is excited to introduce a book list to his unit, mostly consisting of books he’s never read but saw on another list while roughly half are books he was assigned in intermediate-level education Army schoolhouses have long ago moved on from. None of the books are specifically applicable to the work the unit is doing or trying to do, but the mandatory meetings will be scheduled during the company training meetings his captains were planning on supporting.

If all goes well, Jordan plans to expand his mentorship by finding unit time to have the battalion’s toxic sergeant major mentor the highest performing sergeants.

“The Army is full of toxic leaders, but I can control the people I lead,” said Jordan. “You want to hear about toxic leaders, I should tell you about this major I worked for in Grafenwhoer. We were prepping to go out into the field, and..."