FORT RILEY, Kansas - New "Diehard" leaders with the 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, participated in the Bangalore Blast on March 11 at Fort Riley, Kansas.
The event was used as a team building exercise to bring together new junior officers and noncommissioned officers from different areas of the battalion.
"This was a rite to passage," said Sgt. 1st Class Devin Potts, a new platoon leader with 1st Eng. Bn. "We are being welcomed into a group of Soldiers that's gone before us."
The name Bangalore Blast stems from unit officials wanting an event that identified them as engineers, said Maj. Mitch Taylor, the battalion's executive officer. A Bangalore is used by a combat engineer to clear various obstructions such as mines or barbed wire.
The Bangalore Blast consisted of a 12-mile march with participants carrying at least 30 pounds in their rucksacks and eight different stations, including engineer-specific tasks, Taylor said.
"This gave us the ability to know each other's strengths and weaknesses," said Capt. Donald Verplorten, the commander of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Eng. Bn. "You need to know if you can trust the guy to your left and to your right."
A station leader, 1st Lt. Bruce Merrill, a platoon leader with the 1st Eng. Bn., said he was limited on how much help he could offer. Soldiers had to rely on each other and their knowledge of engineer tasks to overcome each obstacle.
Former participants of the event helped lead stations. Warrant Officer Robert Stroud, intelligence/electronic warfare systems maintenance leader with 1st ABCT, and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Lori Whiteman, a human intelligence collection technician with the 1st Eng. Bn., were amongst those station leaders.
"This shows that we are able to push through adversity," Stroud said. "There's going to be hard points and times when we will have to lean on each other. It's a cultural thing and I like it."
Stroud said the event was tough when he participated, but it allowed him the opportunity to get to know his fellow Soldiers.
"I didn't know a lot of people when I first got here," Whiteman said. "It helped me be part of a bigger picture. It's a great experience. It's fun and it's all about having fun."
Whiteman said the course allowed Soldiers to be better "Big Red One" Soldiers because it taught resiliency and camaraderie.
"We have the best officers, noncommissioned officers and Soldiers," Potts said. "They put them all in the 1st Eng. Bn. So that makes us the best. We train hard and we work together. I had a good time and got to know commissioned and noncommissioned officers that I hadn't met yet within the battalion. We built cohesion of different jobs and diversity. It's good to know how I can support them and how they can support me."
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