It Was a Cold, Cold, Week in the Field

Week 2 of the field is now over. And what a week it was. I was extremely apprehensive about this week mainly because I have heard absolute horror stories about the leadership in the field evaluations. Not only can they be difficult, but failure of this particular task recycles you all the way back to day one. An extra 12 weeks of OCS to me sounds tragic, so I wanted to do as well as I could.

After the long 4 day weekend last week, we all met up at 5 and hopped a school bus to our site. We got there in the dead, cold night after a long drive. It was hard to make out details but it seemed a little more inviting than the sleeping bag in a hole setup we had last week. This week, we live on a FOB with tents containing cots. The tents are even heated! That was definitely a perk considering that it was very cold this week. I froze my butt off the entire week, so it was nice to have heated shelter at night. Of course, eventually you had to leave the heated shelter and that was never any fun.

Tuesday was basically a “day off” for third platoon. Our only tasks were to defend the FOB from the “insurgents” operating in our area and pull CQ. If you weren’t doing either of those things that took up only about 2 hours out of your 24 hour day, you were chillin. Many people were very nervous about their evaluations, so we spent a lot of the day running battle drills and briefing operation orders at each other. It was a very relaxing day.

Wednesday and Friday were our lane evaluations. You were evaluated on two points: operation order planning and executions. The OPORD is the bread and butter of the Army officer’s life. It is in a standard 5 paragraph format that lays out exactly how a unit will conduct an operation. In recent years these things have become very detailed. (Example: the OPORD for D-day was only 8 pages long. The OPORD for last year’s 15th MI Bn holiday ball was at least 20 pages.) Execution required the leader to simply execute the plan. Sound easy? Well, it can be very hard. You are usually given an azimuth and a distance that you have to dead reckon over intense terrain. If you fall off your azimuth and never make it to your objective, you automatically fail your evaluation. What makes this even harder is that since you are taking up the squad leader position, the compass and pace men are two different people in the squad. So basically, if your compass man has a brain fart, you are a failure. To add to it, you had to react to indirect artillery fire that can throw you off azimuth and react to any dangers that the cadre might decide to throw your way like injuring one of your men and you have to find a way to transport him and still complete your objective. Mine was a simple squad attack. We arrived on our objective early, attacked, and killed everyone there in a nice, violent, and efficient Army fashion. I got a GO in execution. On Friday I was evaluated on my OPORD and got a GO on that too. Money. Next week is platoon lanes. Even though each lane will evaluate 7 people at a time, they are planning to evaluate the NO GOs and those they feel are struggling first. I’m pretty sure I’m not on the struggling list, so I don’t see me being evaluated more than once. Even if I get a NO GO on that evaluation, I still stay in the course because you have to have a 50 percent GO to keep going. They would have to evaluate me three times and give me a NO GO each time for me to fail now. I feel very relaxed right now. Bring on that 10 mile ruck march.

Now before I depart, I have to bring up an interesting thing. One day out of the week (it was Thursday for us) you have OPFOR (opposing forces) duty where you are the objective that gets attacked by those being evaluated. Tuesday, one of our platoons somehow missed the fact that 5 people were missing at 2000 hours. It turned out that they were one OPFOR team that was forgotten. Lucky for them, they built a fire otherwise they might have been in big trouble. I think it was down into the 20s that day. The part I didn’t like was this one incident led the student leadership to conduct accountability formations about three times an evening for the rest of the week. OCS would be a fantastic place if it wasn’t for the student leaders. Now, they get their jobs done, but so many of them are so inexperienced at Army ways that they seem to think that formations are the only means of getting accountability (that’s why we have team leaders, squad leaders, and platoon sergeants), putting out information (again, those pesky team leaders are good at that too), and just saying “hello” sometimes. I think we have one formation a day in a typical Army unit. At OCS, thanks to the student leadership, we have about 14. I hate formations. Especially in the cold.

Ok, next week. Week three in the field. The highs are expected to be in the 70s with lows in the 50s. Cake baby, cake. Of course, the sweat will now likely add to the grime. MMMM, grime. Yeah, I was pretty dirty. But platoon lanes should be pretty easy after this week I think. Next week ends in a 10 mile road march. I’ve heard it’s pretty easy just because you are very motivated to get it done. Hopefully, we get to take items out of our 85 pound ruck. Anyway, I am off to enjoy my 30 hours off. Will write again next week.

SOC Sharp