Nate,

To be honest, I try to prepare with everything we do. An important mentor of mine once said “everything is training,” so I look at it just like that. I stress every opportunity to learn to grow and to correlate what we (my unit) are doing to our war time mission. We are currently preparing to move out to Fort Lewis to train and assist with policing operations. Yes, that means we can practice our tangible tasks that have associated TEOs, battle drills, etc. However I also stress the intangibles.

The items that ARNG/USAR Soldiers don’t get a lot of training or experience on, items like personal accountability/discipline, letting someone know where you’re going, looking out for your buddy when you’re off duty. Another is team cohesion; everyone has to know the strengths and weaknesses of each other and themselves and want to be part of their team/squad/platoon/company, and not just part of their little clique. The proficiency in these things are lacking in many leaders and Soldiers simply because it takes more than 2 days a month to learn them. Yes, we can say “take care of your buddy/Soldiers,” “you’re part of the team,” and “guard everything within the limits of my post,” all we want, but like any battle drill it takes a while to build that muscle memory. As I saw from my last deployment, MOB Station isn’t the place to start trying to instill the things that to be honest, made my platoon a success. It has to be done well in advance. But of course the tangibles are absolutely important.

As I said before, everything we do I make sure to brief how it correlates with our war-time mission and why (insert tedious task) is important. Tell a Soldier/NCO/Jr. Officer “WHY” they are doing something and why that task is important in a larger picture, and they will understand their place and be more inclined to take it seriously, learn from it, and come out better off then when they started. All Soldiers want to participate in some complicated hard knock operation, learn to do flying somersaults while throwing knives, and be the door gunner on the space-shuttle; but that’s not what we need in an MP, Infantry, Cav or Transpo Company. We need people who know their basic Soldier tasks and drills for their MOS, and who has the personal discipline to stand a post, day in and day out, for months, and not miss anything.  Take the time to get the basics right, and everything else will fall into place.

A grizzled old 1SG I had when I was a PFC told me once, “SF isn’t bad a** because they do highspeed stuff. They’re bad a** because they do the basic stuff, really, really well.”