Your prose is solid and your descriptions of the events are well presented. I'm going to focus on the way you've structured your story, in particular, how you've opened it. Like the adage says, you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. Your first impression, (your first paragraph) has problem. It's not interesting. Well written, to be sure. But you've chosen a moment out of a series of events in which nothing much is going on.

A lot has gone on, which you get to in the second paragraph. But by then, you're into back story. If there's one cardinal rule I try to impress on writers, its this: Stories happen NOW!{/I] What happened earlier is not now, and your reader won't be fooled, no matter how important the events may have been. They have an instinctive sense of where the present moment is in your storyline, and they'll hang in there with you, and keep reading, but they're really just waiting for you to get back to the present moment so the story proper can continue.

It's often a good idea to not start at the beginning, but, rather, pick up the action in the middle of events that are a real attention grabber: a shoot out, a car chase, a pursuit by some unknown assailant. Then, once you have your readers' attention, fill them in on what got your characters to this moment. In your case, The beginning of your story has already happened, and recounting it in flashback deprives the reader of the immediacy that would have given the situation a sense of reality. So in this case, you might want to consider starting at the beginning. It's a great scene, by the way, Craig's missteps with the scout manual, the kind of scene that requires no explanation by the author. The events speak for themselves. After that scene, there's no doubt about who is who and what the essential conflict is. The narrative buffer you now place between those events and the reader is removed and your characters get the opportunity to take center stage and let the events unfold in real time.

This is a quibble. Overall, it's a good job and for the rest of the story you do precisely what I suggest: you stay out of the way and let your characters take charge and tell the story as it happens.

One other point: they explanatory text at the end is unneeded. In the introduction to my Writing Hurts Review Forum, I make the point that the worst possible defense of a story is "But that's what happened!" Truth is, you don't need to explain anything. It just gets in the way. Whatever connection the events have to your own life ends the minute you put it out in the public. There, your words do the job, or they don't. In your case, I'd say they do. Leave it at that.