CAMP BONDSTEEL, Kosovo - Cadences, soldiers marching in formation and junior enlisted service members leading from the front, this is what Camp Bondsteel can see at the Joint Regional Detachment-East headquarters every Saturday. Soldiers with JRD-E are getting back to the basics with weekend classes covering everything from marching to basic rifle marksmanship skills.
"For the past two weeks we've gone over rest positions at the halt, position of attention, hand salute, all the way up to marching and now we are doing forming and aligning a squad," said U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Robert Summerlin, a platoon sergeant with JRD-E from Richland, Miss. "We've basically started at the beginning and are building the foundation over again because a lot of soldiers have forgotten."
The weekend classes are rolled into an overall course called the Primary Noncommissioned Officer's Course.
U.S. Army 1st Sgt. Shawn Wussow, the JRD-E command sergeant major and a native of Los Angeles explained that PNCOC was replaced by the Primary Leadership Development Course and is known today as the Warrior Leader Course. Using the name PNCOC allowed him to reference going back to the basics without using a course name that is still in use.
"It's an attempt for us to bring our subordinate soldiers the education to prepare them to be NCOs," Summerlin said. He added that it's an aggressive step forward in making sure everyone knows what the standards are. "The audience for the course is all soldiers, but it started with E-4 and up because they are the next in line to get promoted," Summerlin said. "We have E-5's that serve as squad leaders and staff sergeants that serve as platoon sergeants. It's just like WLC."
Wussow said the students are placed in leadership roles like first sergeant, platoon leader and squad leader to give them more leadership experience.
"We don't expect them to [just] know how to do the movements, we expect them teach the movements," Summerlin said. "That's the difference. So the private first class and the sergeant all have the same standard. The end result is that they are able to teach their subordinates in the future how to do the movements correctly."
Summerlin said he didn't understand the need for PNCOC at first, but has changed his opinion since it kicked off a few weeks ago.
"At first I was a little skeptical, like 'really we need to teach soldiers how to march and stuff? I thought we were past that,'" Summerlin said. "But it's apparent these soldiers are learning more."
The feedback from the students and instructors has been very positive, Wussow said. "I've had some NCOs that have been in the military eight or 10 years come up and we talk about it afterwards and they say 'I have never seen that before in my entire career,'" Wussow said. "And that's actually that 'ah-ha' moment you want, not because they didn't know something, but because they learned something [new]. And anybody that is an educator in any kind of aspect wants to see that."
Understanding the course and why they are taking it back to the basics is understood not just by the senior noncommissioned officers, but by the junior enlisted as well.
"When we do become NCOs and we have fresh privates, we can explain what they're doing and not only what they're doing but why and be able to explain it in detail so that anyone can understand it," said U.S. Army Pfc. Patrick White, a JRD-E soldier from Hawkinsville, Ga.
White explained that the weekend classes are broken down into two parts, class day on Saturdays and tests reviewing the previous weekend's lesson on Friday. The week in between class and test days allows soldiers to practice what they've learned.
"My biggest thing is breaking it down step-by-step and trying to explain it," White said. "I usually have problems with that, so this is really helping me get those in-depth details I need to have."
Wussow said the course will run the entire duration of the deployment and grow from the basic squad level drill and ceremony movements to change of command ceremony movements, annual U.S. Army training requirements and job specific tasks.
Wussow said the course will benefit the JRD soldiers in two ways.
"One is we're going to have a good collective group of individuals when we get back [to Fort Bragg]," Wussow said. "Second thing is, if someone else goes to another unit, they're well represented in their [job]."
Summerlin said the Army is in transition right now and this course helps bridge that gap.
"I think what we've noticed is that since we've been an Army at war for so long, we've focused more on combat warrior drills and not the basic standards and it shows because people's uniforms and their basic discipline levels have been lowered," Summerlin said. "So the standard of the soldier needs to increase if we're going to keep people from getting cut out. The future of our Army depends on doing things right."
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