Born on Aerilon in a farming town on the Euclid River, Beni Kreskas was born to a sixth generation farming father and his wife. Beni was the youngest of nine children - growing up on the farm meant that as soon as you could walk you were doing chores. Milking cows, slopping pigs, even picking vegetables or helping scrub clothes. He grew up with a fine appreciation for hard work and since he was the apple of his mother's eye, school was insisted on. He passed through elementary school, into middle school and secondary school - already further than his father. He graduated secondary school as the pride of his family - a strapping young man that had graduated high school - albeit it middle of his class. It's hard to be valedictorian when you have an hour commute to and from school and still have chores to do.
Secondary school had done the one thing that had escaped his eight brothers and sisters - given him an idea of what was out there. A world beyond the poor, hard scrabble existence of his family, a world without hand-me-down clothes - a world with options. This world is what brought him to enlist in the Colonial Marines - see the colonies, the recruiter said, and we can teach you valuable skills, start a new life. For the young eighteen year old poor farmer's son, this seemed like a dream come true.
Basic Training was two months of mind-blowing new experiences for the farmer kid. First airplane ride, first airship ride, first space ride. The Crucible was particularly challenging, as was being cut off from his family for the first time - he spent the first month without hearing from them, and barely with any sleep. During his Basic course his aptitude testing indicated an intrinsic capability with the complex technologies involved in the field communicator speciality. AIT was three months and one week long - learning how to use the field radio equipment as well as the field DRADIS equipment, learning to act as a platoon radio specialist.
Graduating the top thirty percent of his class then PFC Kreskas was assigned to an ANGLICO unit - a CMC unit that specialized in close air support coordination, communications and artillery/orbital strikes for special operations units within the CMC. Assigned to Bravo platoon, Charlie company, 3rd Btn he trained on Scorpia for nearly fourteen months - not only learning the new technologies and tactics but having to learn to jump out of an Raptor and Predator - that was pretty darn near terrifying the first several times - and learn how to dive, how to shoot - even better than he did before, how to survive in the jungle, in the desert, SERE training.
In the end, eighteen months after enlisting PFC Kreskas was assigned to his first operational billet. The junior radio operator in FCT Bravo, he joined a captain, a sergeant, and a corporal and another PFC. Part of a larger SALT unit that was designed to work with a battalion sized element, Kreskas found he loved the air. Loved free falling, loved static line jumps, loved humping his ruck and surviving in the wilderness. He volunteered for every bit of training he could get in - maritime training to learn to dive, combat diving, water survival, free fall, HALO, LALO, HAHO. By the time he was promoted to lance corporal six months later he had moved up to radio chief, now teaching a new PFC that took his place.
His two years or so were spent training and learning, and by the time he was promoted to E-4, corporal, he was qualified to move to another team as a radio chief. Two months later when the team chief was transferred, Kriskas was able to take on the role of team chief. He learned he liked leading men into battle - it came naturally to him. As the sort of leader that was first in the door, his men learned the man would not ask them to do anything he hadn't done himself, or wouldn't. When he was promoted to sergeant two years later he was able to see the larger battalion level operations as a team sergeant for a SALT (Supporting Arms Liaison Team. This opened his eyes to large tactical maneuvers - moving around three, four hundred Marines in complex movements and utilizing not the five or six Marines he was used to working with, but many, many more.
By twenty six Kriskas was a salty Marine. Almost a decade in service, he was comfortable throwing himself out of a Raptor at thirty thousand feet, landing in a sea, combat diving to land, patrolling inland with troops and calling in airstrikes - or, as it was becoming more and more common - working at the battalion level coordinating several Firepower Control Teams under a captain. He began to think heavily of going Green to Gold - a deferment program that would let him go Reserve at the end of this second four year hitch, attend college under an ROTC scholarship, and then become an officer. It took six or seven months to coordinate and push through the paperwork, but by his twenty seventh birthday the Marine was on Caprica. A planet he had never been on before, he was attending university - studying engineering.
School was not at all easy for the Marine - in addition to his schoolwork (which tested his abilities, he had to get tutoring from several 'geeks' in school, in return for helping them with bully problems - he had to work weekends with his Reserve unit, and two months a summer. His Reserve unit was an MP unit - an entirely different world and beast - and the Marine was ranked as a 'cadet' - not an officer worthy of respect but referred to as 'Mister Kriskas', and assigned as the 'XO' of the MP platoon he was assigned to.
Four years later Kriskas graduated from university with a solid B average - amazing, considering his past - and his father proudly pinned his gold bars on. Taking command of his first unit - a Marine infantry platoon that was airborne flagged - the ensign was far different then the former commander of this team. Instead of a young eighteen to twenty year old fresh out of the CMC Academy, the platoon received a thirty year old seasoned Marine with twelve years in service - eight of those operational in a forward leaning billet. ENS Kriskas found his own style of leadership. Firm, fair, dedicated, and lead from the front - the far front. He led his unit on jumps, kicked down doors with the best of them, and scrapped it out with the team's hand to hand instructors. His focus, his dedication was to his men, his unit. His father passed a year and a half later during a bad storm on the home planet - right before Kriskas was promoted to lieutenant junior grade and promoted to XO of a sister company.
Now was his chance to watch an older (at least, in grade) officer work. He learned some of the more difficult lessons in leadership - how to discipline a senior gunnery sergeant, how to work the politics at a battalion level. He was the 'old man's go to guy for talking to the troops, negotiating with the NCOs and reaching out to them - the trusted 'the el-tee'.
Four years later he was promoted to full lieutenant and had his own company command now - one hundred and twenty Colonial Marines, all looking to him for leadership, for guidance. His unit functioned both as an airborne unit but also as search and rescue - trained in sea recovery, jungle, land recovery, and tactical recon elements, in additional to their normal rifle platoon taskings. The next four years were great for LT Kriskas - he could educate the young ensigns under him, help prop up the NCOs under him. Luckily he had an XO who thrived on paperwork and organization, this allowed him enough time to semi-regularly take time in the field - jumping, swimming, diving, and so on.
At the end of the four years the 'dark times' came, as he would refer to them. Promotion to Captain - O-4, and the beginning of the staff billets that are so important to a Marine officer's career - or so the personnel office specialist told him. He was tasked first as S-3 - Operations - for the battalion, and after a year and a training accident left the XO billet free he was moved into that spot. While he chafed behind a desk - and at the never ending paperwork and politics - he was able to learn under the major who commanded the unit. The last year he has grown to appreciate these new nuances, even if he feels he never has enough time to do the things he truly loves to do - jump, swim, dive, shoot, operate.
Recently, he heard of a new opportunity - one his major first heard of, and recommended him for. An operational billet, commanding a platoon but serving on battalion staff as well. Very hush hush, but Kriskas has thrown himself into the idea. Working out religiously with men half his age, and rediscovering his joy of static line jumps, time under the chute - he's never been a 'chute time is the price you pay for free fall' guys - and getting his dive and SERE certifications again.