Though Tyson will often shrug off the first four years of his time in the army as ‘basic training’ and the remaining seven years as active service, split as five years training the dogs and then two years on the front line with Sebastian, there are glaring holes in that story for those who know better.
Just basic training generally does not last four years and there are entries in his service record before those four years end. In part, Tyson’s additional time training was spent learning how to train the service dogs which - at most - added a few months, but the primary reason is that Tyson was being trained as a specialist strategist; a mathematical prodigy with calculating tactical mind.
Tyson will comfortably admit that he ‘was doing long-term planning before joining the front lines’, though he always makes it sound as though that purely began during his days in Turkmenistan whilst training the service dogs*. Tyson did spend a lot of time in Turkmenistan doing exactly that, but that still leaves the prior service records unaccounted for.
The truth is that the last two years of his ‘basic training’ alternated between Tyson going through increasingly intense training regimes, participating in multiple wargames, and dropping into active combat zones as an ‘in compound only’ strategist; including the first time he brushed shoulders with Captain Samson, before joining the First Bangalore Pioneers.
During that time, Tyson never went out on patrol and his mathematical abilities were hushed up to keep him as a ‘secret weapon, of sorts’**. This was a role that Tyson would end up taking during his actual years on the front line too, before becoming Moran’s spotter, after which only the extent of his strategical abilities - rather than his entire existence - was considered classified.
* When Tyson would go out with the trained service dogs to get them situated in their active deployments, there was always a reason that Tyson was chosen to go to those particular compounds and Hal to others. Whichever compound Tyson would be handing off dogs to would also be one that he had been working as a strategist for, or was needed as a ‘strategic adviser’ to handle the current situation.
** Any specialised soldier has a target painted on their backs and strategists (alongside doctors) were prime targets to takeout/kidnaps to disrupting efforts/undermind plans on both sides.