FORT SILL, Oklahoma (Oct. 29, 2020) -- Pugil stick training was cut from basic combat training here earlier this year to prevent the spread of COVID-19, but now it’s making a comeback under carefully controlled conditions.
Col. Daniel Blackmon, 434th Field Artillery Brigade commander, said that after testing it with a couple other batteries, the preferred method of training is being validated with A Battery, 1st Battalion, 31st FA.
It should be implemented in other batteries across the brigade over the next 10 weeks, as instructors map out how to fill upcoming training cycles.
“I think it’s awesome. I think it’s great to get to see the young Soldiers out there figuring out how to face it off, and I think it’s an important part of the program,” Blackmon said.
A/1-31st FA trainees in week eight went to the mat Oct. 21 in a mid-sized room inside their battalion’s starship.
Lt. Col. Marcus Franzen, 1-31st FA commander, said the battery spent the day before in a classroom learning rifle fighting techniques and basic move sets they might use to swing their rifles or pugil sticks to try and strike their opponent.
“How do we get the confidence for someone if you’re hit in the face? Let’s just be real. If you get hit in the face, there’s that ‘fight or flight’ technique. Well, we don’t want to hurt our trainees, but at the same time we still have to use something,” said Capt. Aleksandr Pawluk, commander of A/1-31st FA.
The battery broke down the hand-to-hand techniques lesson plan into three separate parts.
Rifle techniques came first; phase two was pugils, the practical exercise for rifle techniques; and last comes the streamer competition, an esprit de corps-building event where each platoon gets to pick its best contender in each weight class and challenge a rival platoon’s combatant.
“We do the pugils mostly as an opportunity for the Soldier to stand one-on-one, face down their fear, look somebody in the eye who has intent to come at them and do something. I won’t say ‘bad’ because we’re all friends here in the end, but it’s at least somebody who wants to hit them with a pugil stick, and they’ve got to be willing to take it and hit back,” Blackmon said.
When COVID-19 began making inroads into the area earlier this year, instructors had to re-examine their programs of instruction and decide what to keep and what to toss out.
Pugil stick training and hand-to-hand combatives were the two big casualties.
Blackmon said combatives had to be eliminated mainly because anytime trainees go hand-to-hand with anybody they’ve got to get inside the 6-foot bubble and there’s a lot of heavy breathing.
“However, what we found was, over time, that we missed a pretty vital aspect of the training. There’s something about the fight-or-flight response getting tested while you’re in basic combat training that is an important thing for a warrior to have, and that’s what we’re training here is warriors. So the idea was to figure out how we could replicate that, bring that back into our instruction so that we could then have something that would provide that stimulus for our trainees,” Blackmon said.
The trainees put on protective equipment for their bouts and engage in friendly competition where the pugil sticks are used as if they were rifles with bayonets, to make hit or kill strikes that would take an enemy down.
A lot has been done to make the environment as safe as possible. The training comes late in the program of instruction so that trainees and drill sergeants have been together an extended period of time, and leadership feels relatively safe about putting them in close proximity without masks. The trainees wear helmets similar to what football players use, pads, and a mouth guard to protect their teeth. Everything they touch, or are going to touch, is sprayed with disinfectant and wiped down.
Part of the brigade’s trial, pugil stick training was conducted outdoors.
Blackmon said it’s a little more controlled indoors because of the mats and trainees are ringed around it in a circle. Also, because it’s indoors they always know what the temperature will be.
Combatives remain off the table, and not just to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
“It’s actually allowing us some more time to do some other training,” the brigade commander noted. “It’s reducing injury. Because if you don’t know how to do some of those things, you could be more susceptible to injury. And we believe that it was such close proximity that it probably was best to just move that to a later time. Most of these young Soldiers will end up getting that training later, because it’s fairly common in the Army. And it’s a much more concise, dedicated program where they can actually be better at it, and they don’t learn bad habits.”
Fresh from a two-minute bout, Pvt. Chanston Kea was panting after removing his pads, helmet, and mouth guard.
“Today we’re learning how to do pugils and the basic movements, and where to strike and how to strike, and how effective you can be in close combat when you’re going to jam,” he said.
Compared with the rifles he practiced on Oct. 20, Kea found the pugil sticks soft, easy to hit with, and very maneuverable, just like a weapon would be. He said he had fun doing it. Kea admitted he got hit a lot because he wasn’t paying attention and he couldn’t breathe as well with the mouth guard in. Trainees could go up to three rounds, and if they won all three, they stopped.
Pugil stick training went on until 1 p.m., and then the battery switched to buddy-team dry fire, where pairs of trainees take turns covering each other while performing combat movements.
Spc. Carmen Salt has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Oakland University, in Rochester Hills, Michigan. After she graduates from basic training in another couple weeks, she’s headed to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, for advanced individual training. For her military occupational specialty of geospatial intelligence imagery analyst, she will learn how to identify potential targets by studying satellite images of objects on the ground.
She said that right now, the pugil stick training is a lot of fun.
“It’s a little sobering when you think that we might actually have to use this out in the (battle) field eventually, but it’s good to learn now, in a fun environment like this. It’s really awesome,” she said. “I lost, but my opponent was very good. She did a very good job. It’s very chaotic, which is definitely something that would be happening in the (battle) field, so I think it’s given a sort of accurate picture of what it would be like.”
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