SCCC 0707

As my time at Fort Gordon and the Signal Captain Career Course comes to a close, I decided to make time in my very busy schedule (playing Assassins Creed, Uncharted, Call of Duty 4 and correcting Amber’s school-work, making up her math work and technology work, beginning my Master’s program, and everything else, EXCEPT Army stuff) to jot down a few things about it.

For this course, there is either too much time, or not enough. If the course is just about “familiarizing” us with the equipment and general concepts it’s too long. If we are supposed to learn and retain all that we are taught, it’s way too short. While I could probably identify most of the things we talked about, if I were to take all the tests again, I probably would pass 50% of them or so.

The worst part about the course was the stupid “GEL” program that we were guinea pigs for. Basically, they took out the good MDMP (Military Decision Making Process) course (arguably the most important part of the entire course) and put in a new fangled “learning model” that taught us a lot, did a lot of good practical exercise and then tested us with a test that we were unprepared for. 95% of the class failed the test.

Another part of the GEL process was the CAX (Combined Arms Exercise). Basically, we are given a Brigade level mission (for us it was Stability Operations in Azerbajain) and told to put everything together. We had to go through the MDMP process (Receive Mission, Analyze Mission, Develop Courses of Action, Wargame a couple of them, decide on one and prepare a brief for the Commander and brief it). We were lucky in that our evaluators were helpful and not crazy. One group had an evaluator that kept them redoing things until 8-10 pm. Just for stupid stuff. The worst part about it was that the GEL people were “observing” us. Like you would monkeys at the zoo. Eventually, we gave ourselves monkey titles (Monkey One, Monkey Two, Blonde Monkey, etc). I think we upset the observer, but what could she do? They weren’t allowed to interact with us at all.

We didn’t really have any “field time” and weren’t even issued gear. The only time I went out to the field at all was during a required “mentoring” session with new LTs who were attending the BOLC (Basic Officer Leader Course). My time was 10pm-12am. When I got there, it was smoky and I was told that there had been a fire out in the forest since the day before caused by a flare. Because it was really smoky, I went out to see how bad it was. It wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small either. When it flared up and was throwing up five foot high flames, I led some of the enlisted NCOs out and we threw sand and dirt on the flames until they died back down. The fire flared up about three times during my couple hours out there. The rest of the time out there I just talked to the LTs and answered any questions they had about the “real” Army.