Army ROTC teaches hard lessons
By: Kyle Phillips
Crouching in a clump of weeds in a field scattered with trees, Cadet Gary Adams tightly grips his rifle, waiting for orders from his commanding officer.
“Enemy bunker,” his squad leaders says, “everyone keep quiet and keep your head down.”
Adams lifts his head, trying to sight the bunker he and his squad are ready to assault.
“Adams, keep your head down!” his squad leader says. But it is too late.
“Adams, you have been hit by a sniper - you are dead.”
Shaking his head as he sets down his rifle, Adams lies down, pretending to be dead, leaving the rest of the squad to assault the makeshift bunker without him.
Although, Adams and the two other casualties in his squad that were “killed” walked away, it is with a lesson learned. In these lessons the cadets in NT’s Army ROTC learn to be effective leaders in the chaos of war.
Aside from their normal school schedule and other activities required for the program, the cadets spend one day a week participating in simulated combat situations lead by Maj. Herman Troy, who runs the NT program.
“Our combat training, which is done in our leadership lab, is primarily based around basic Army tactics.” Troy said. “Basically, we are instructing cadets on the basic skills of Army movement and small unit movement techniques.”
Based on a mandate of actual Army training objectives for all soldiers, the training is broken down into component parts that are well-suited for the cadets at the university level.
“The basics are small unit tactics, an example would be what we call movement to contact,” Troy said. “You take a squad, which is normally six to 10 solders, and train them to move from a safe secure base environment into an area that might not be so secure ready to engage the enemy.”
While the cadets are required to run the combat exercises on their own, Troy and Sgt. 1st Class Jeremy Link are close by to make sure it is done correctly.
“My job is to make sure that they are executing the battle drill correctly,” Link said. “But what I am really looking for is their ability to make decisions when you hit stress and timelines and everything starts to go wrong. I want to see how well they can react and come up with new ideas.”
Although the combat exercises are not the main part of the program, it can be seen as one of the most important to the ROTC.
They use the training to prepare cadets that might be shipped into combat zones when they complete their training.
“Most importantly, we use the terminology we train as we fight,” Troy said, “hence, we train these individuals so that they will be trained and ready to go into combat if that is necessary upon completion of the ROTC program.”
