Fort Jackson Soldiers who stayed on post during Victory Block Leave are honored during a South Carolina Stingrays hockey game Dec. 28, 2014, in North Charleston, S.C. During the holiday break Soldiers were able to attend several sporting events and v...
FORT JACKSON, S.C. (Jan. 8, 2015) -- Fort Jackson's primary mission went on hold for two weeks as thousands of Soldiers in Basic Combat Training went home for the holidays.
Approximately 8,000 Soldiers-in-training left the post during Victory Block Leave, the longest scheduled interruption in training of the year. For some, going home wasn't practical, thanks to the time and expense needed to get there and back over the two-week break.
This meant the post had to find ways to keep almost 200 Soldiers who stayed behind occupied and entertained during the break.
"Each battalion had about 10 Soldiers who didn't go anywhere," said Maj. Daniel Grieve, executive officer for the 1st Battalion, 13th Infantry Regiment. "Because it's still BCT you have to keep them supervised, so they were consolidated here."
The mission of supervising Soldiers during the holiday break is shifted to a different battalion every year, he said. Fort Jackson's Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation office is tasked with providing entertainment.
"We never know how many Soldiers we're going to have each year," said Chuck Stoudemire, recreations delivery programmer for FMWR. "We usually know they day they're starting to arrive at the unit."
The biggest obstacle is getting an accurate head count to vendors in advance of the events planned for Soldiers during VBL, Stoudemire said.
"Until a few days before VBL begins, we really don't know that number," he said. "It kind of makes it challenging."
Soldiers were issued day passes that allowed them to get a closer look at the post than they would otherwise see during BCT, but they also spent a great deal of time traveling the region, Grieve said. Among the activities were trips to see games by the South Carolina Stingrays hockey team, the Charlotte Hornets and the University of South Carolina's men's basketball team. Soldiers also visited Riverbanks Zoo.
"Every day they had some sort of activity arranged," Grieve said. "FMWR did a great job. We were just responsible for (supervising) them."
Spc. Alexander Jabin, 3rd Battallion, 13th Infantry Regiment, was among the Soldiers to stay at Fort Jackson during the break. The California native relocated to Pennsylvania last summer, but said he has invested his future in a career in the Army.
"There's no place else I wanted to go," he said. "I sold my apartment to come here and had no home to go back to during the break."
Jabin said the camaraderie with other Soldiers in his position provided him with the sense of family he needed during VBL.
"I'm not much of a sports fan, but they still made it interesting," he said. "At the hockey game they wanted volunteers for the shoe run where you run barefoot on the ice to your shoes. It was a fun part of the experience. I didn't have much of a family growing up, but I felt bonded to everyone I was with who was staying through VBL. I wouldn't normally have done those activities on my own, but that fact that I did them with everyone made it more of a memory."
Grieve said Soldiers had a lot of free time during the break and were greatly relieved to find out they weren't going to pick up the slack of departing Soldiers.
More than a few were happy for a chance at eating a meal not prepared at one of the post's dining facilities.
"Most of them went to Burger King," Grieve said. "They thought they were going to be doing the worst-of-the-worst details. We still had to have supervision, so the drill sergeants were with them the whole time."
The Soldiers were on a half-day schedule, beginning with PT in the morning, with their assigned tasks wrapping around noon.
"They spent their morning working, then we gave them an on-post pass from noon until about 4:30 so they could use their battalion privileges," Grieve said. "There was a lot of free time for them. The day room was set up for them by FMWR with televisions, video game consoles and board games."
FMWR began moving the entertainment devices to the battalion dayroom two days before the start of VBL.
"Everything (is) already on site and ready for them when they arrive," Stoudemire said. "We have six entire game system cabinets that have widescreen TVs and Xbox and Wii systems that we bring over. We also bring ping pong tables and 50 to 75 different board games."
Xbox is the most popular item, he said.
"Everyone loves the Xbox," he said. "They love the video games, and we bring basketballs, baseballs and footballs, and they enjoy that, too."
The Columbia community also helped to make sure Soldiers weren't bored during the holiday. Grieve said churches and civic groups held several banquets for Soldiers, and there was never a shortage of food.
"One organization brought 170 dozen cookies for the Soldiers who were still here," he said.
Jabin said the afternoons were a good opportunity to reconnect with the outside world.
"It was nice to find out where the library was and the Education Center," Jabin said. "When I had my on-post pass, I'd use the Internet to check current events. My biggest concern was that I might have had a bill or something that needed to be paid, so it was nice to see everything was fine."
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