FORT RILEY, Kan. — Sources report that Maj. Justin Taylor, a staff officer in the Big Red One (1st Infantry Division) G3 (operations and plans) shop, made the mistake of going into his garage and looking at his faded combat gear after PT this morning, reducing him to tears.

“I used to be a soldier,” neighbors reported him muttering over and over again while he clutched a tattered VS-17 panel tied to a rock that he’d used to shift the fire of his M240B machine gun teams on Objective Anvil during the battle for Mosul. He also served as a Bradley platoon leader in the infamous "Thunder Run" to Baghdad during the 2003 Iraq invasion

Taylor, whose job consists primarily of making sure PowerPoint slides are the proper color and font demanded by the latest colonel to take over as the G3, and occasionally making a run to the commissary to buy more K-Cups for the communal machine, was an infantry officer who served two tours in Iraq and three in Afghanistan, before arriving at his current assignment.