Engineers strengthen proficiency

The event was designed to build unit cohesion, team trust, and confidence in the Soldiers physical abilities through shard mutual hardships.

"Going through mutual hardships is important to building teams," said Kevin Quigely, commander. "As you're going down the road trying to carry a water jug and your buddy comes up and grabs it from you that helps build mutual trust."

Each team dressed in full combat gear hand or litter carried water cans to five testing stations located at the start and turn around point of the two and a half mile course.

Groups were tested on basic sapper skills that included weapons disassembly and reassemble, radio operations, calling a 9-line medical evacuation report, knot tying and basic demolitions knowledge.

"It's really about camaraderie," said Capt. Kevin Quigely, commander. "It's not about who wins because everybody gets the incentives in the end. Really the point is to build teams and learning to trust your battle buddy next to you regardless of (their) rank. Especially since we are preparing to go down range, this is the most important thing."

Quigley continued to say these types of challenges are low impact, high yield activities that help identify training short falls within the platoons, helps tailor training focus, and ultimately increases the company's readiness.