SFA ROTC gains leadership, training experiences

Members of the ROTC program traveled to Fort Polk, La., this past weekend for their annual field training exercises.

Fifty-five cadets and eight staff members were taken by bus to the training exercise location, that was exclusively for SFA military science participants.

The purpose of this trip was to teach the cadets valuable leadership skills which will help them in their careers. It's also preparation for the spring exercise training at Gibbs Ranch in Huntsville.

Both training trips are especially crucial for juniors, who travel to Washington to take the LDAC (Leadership, Development Assessment Course). Doing well on the LDAC determines a cadet's ranking and his or her job.

Ryan Tompkins, company commander and Nacogdoches senior, and Phillip Hirsch, first platoon leader and Richardson senior, were responsible for putting the exercise scenarios together, for the cadets like Justin Rapp, Tomball junior.

"Seniors did a good job preparing it. I enhanced my interpersonal skills and how to develop my military leadership," Rapp said.

The cadets got to work as soon as they arrived in Louisiana by participating in a tactical road march and responding quickly to an "ED explosion." Tompkins said the purpose of that was to get them in a tactical mindset. They went through a nighttime navigation drill to become familiar with maps and compasses.

During the weekend they stayed at patrol bases and ended Friday night planning for the next day's events and restoring supplies.

With artillery simulators waking cadets up in the wee hours of the morning, Saturday brought about new drills to endure, starting with a day land navigation drill, a situational training exercise, a 12-minute obstacle courses with smoke grenades and machine gun fire going off in the background and night operations.

The night operations consisted of three missions: a madrassa (a school for Muslim poverty-stricken males who are often recruited as terrorists,) a radio tower and an ambush.

The weekend ended with a cordon and a final mission, which included capturing a terrorist and searching the madrassa, which gave the cadets something to worry about as far as cultural differences were concerned.

Once the final mission was complete, the cadets were suppose to tally up the casualties from the other side, pack up and return to the University.