FORT DRUM, N.Y. -- As the sun crested the horizon, 90 Soldiers from across the 10th Mountain Division (LI) and their sponsors flooded the grounds of the Noncommissioned Officer Academy to begin the Warrior Leader Course at Fort Drum.
Before Soldiers advance in rank and become noncommissioned officers they must first be trained on how to lead and what it means to be a leader in the Army.
WLC is a 22-day course that requires Soldiers from combat arms, combat support and combat service support -- regardless of military occupational specialty -- to communicate and work together as a team.
At the end of the course, the Soldiers should develop a better understanding of how each MOS is vital to the combined arms team.
"The Army wants a well-rounded Soldier, and that's what we try to do here -- incorporate everything that the Army expects of its Soldiers and its leaders. We try to instill that professionalism and that level of discipline in the students and leaders coming through here," said Staff Sgt. Nathaniel Scott, a WLC small group leader.
Throughout the course, Soldiers are instructed on all aspects of what it takes to be an effective noncommissioned officer and leader.
"Some of the big things we try to instill here, in addition to the curriculum, are the level of discipline and the level of professionalism that they need to carry with them since they are going to be leading their Soldiers in combat or wherever the Army says they have to go," Scott said.
The course curriculum is taught in three modules -- leadership, training and warfighting.
Throughout each module, the students not only receive classroom instruction, but they also have hands-on practical exercises to demonstrate how to properly execute what they are learning.
The leadership portion of the course includes leading physical readiness training sessions and preparing developmental counseling, Army correspondence and noncommissioned officer evaluation reports.
"Leadership week teaches you the basics of being a leader. It taught me a lot of things that my leadership hasn't already taught me," said Spc. Demetric Bradshaw, a mortarman with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team. "The leadership module taught me how to properly write a counseling and a recommendation for an award, along with so many other things that I will need to know in the future if the situation ever comes up."
While the students may be focused on the administrative portions of the leadership module, Scott, who was named instructor of the cycle, said that learning to properly lead physical readiness training is one of the more important things that they teach these future leaders during this module.
"Everyone in the Army does PRT, so we teach the Soldiers the standards on how to do PRT," he said. "That way, when they get back to their units they can teach the junior enlisted Soldiers, those new privates, even their leadership for that matter, how to properly conduct PRT since it is an Armywide, standard-based event."
Following the leadership module, the Soldiers learn about supply procedures, individual training and the importance of physical readiness training and overall health and fitness.
"Some of the practical hands-on training that we include (during training week) is ITS, which is our individual training session. We give a demonstration and teach the Soldiers how to conduct a proper class according to Army doctrine and Army standards. Then the students go out and give a class to their fellow Soldiers," Scott said.
The Soldiers are also tested on drill and ceremony. Each Soldier must be able to inspect, align and march a squad through a specific set of drills.
Following the testing, each platoon assembles a drill and ceremony team and competes against the other platoons.
The D&C competition is designed to foster teamwork, discipline and esprit de corps. The winning team conducts a demonstration during the graduation ceremony.
The final module of WLC is warfighting. At this point in the course, the Soldiers have learned the basics of how to lead and use those skills as they fill leadership positions during an overnight situational training exercise. During the STX, the Soldiers are graded on their leadership performance in a combat environment.
"Since I'm infantry, I will definitely be able to use a lot of the things we learned during the warfighting module," Bradshaw said. "There was a part where we learned how to put together and brief an operations order. I had never done that ... and I will definitely be using that later on in my career."
The Soldiers assumed leadership positions throughout the WLC, ranging from first sergeant to team leader. In each position, they were graded on how well they were able to lead the Soldiers and how they fulfilled the responsibilities of those positions.
"Holding leadership positions during WLC allows us to see a little bit of what our higher peers go through," Bradshaw said. "If you haven't been a team leader or squad leader before, you get a glimpse of what they deal with and all the things that they go through."
Although everything taught during the course is designed to make the Soldiers better leaders, Scott also believes that the knowledge gained by the students has a bigger role to play in their careers.
"They need to understand that the knowledge they're getting here isn't just for them," Scott said. "The knowledge they get from here, it isn't theirs. They need to go back to their units and spread that knowledge to their Soldiers, so that their Soldiers are better prepared -- one, to attend WLC in the future, but also just to be more well-rounded Soldiers."
As the course came to an end Aug. 25, the NCOA grounds was once again flooded with Soldiers. Instead of being filled with students unsure of what the future held for them, it was filled with 82 trained leaders, surrounded by their peers, leadership and Families -- prepared to take the knowledge they have gained to become the leaders of tomorrow.
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