No Lazy Summer Days

I ended my last post with “I will write again soon”. It’s been two and a half months now…but “soon” is a relative term. Anyway I hope to update you on what I’ve been doing all this time. Needless to say there have been no lazy summer days.

I graduated The Basic School on May 7^th. My parents and Heidi were able to be there. I was given 10 days of leave and I went to western NY to visit my sister Beth, brother Josh, and their baby Allyson Joy. It was a fun weekend and I actually ended up helping Josh and his dad with shearing their Alpacas. We also enjoyed mother’s day at the Rochester Lilac festival. I went home to Columbus after that and ended up seeing many of you. I also participated in a sword arch for a friend getting married in Indiana. After a little rest and relaxation it was straight back to Quantico, VA for me.

The Infantry Officer Course is the next step in my journey, but it didn’t start until yesterday. So I had about 7 weeks to prepare along with the other infantry officers I graduated with. We have spent a lot of time physically preparing. Our training is focused on what we call combat conditioning. It is tough realistic physical training designed to prepare us for the physical demands of combat. This means we spend a lot of time running in our boots and camouflage uniform along with flak jackets (bullet resistant protective equipment). In addition to that we perform exercises focused on strengthening the core muscle groups: abdominals and back. The workouts are usually for time and they force you to push yourself as hard as you can. It has been great but the first couple days the body was pretty sore. In addition to our own conditioning we have been doing a lot of martial arts through the martial arts center the Marine Corps has in Quantico. We spent a few days testing up to the next belt level and we spent another week completing a Combat Conditioning Specialist course designed to educate us how to teach combat conditioning to the Marines we will be leading and how to design a conditioning training schedule. That week was really intense with a variety of workouts about two or three intense ones every day. As infantry officers we can’t just be tough though. It is imperative that we are also smart professionals knowing as much as we can about warfare. I’ve read six different books since graduating. The most interesting was a book by Captain Adolf von Schell called “Battle Leadership”. He was a junior officer in the German Army during World War 1 and shares some observations of good and bad leadership and leadership issues he encountered during “The Great War”. Aside from reading we also spent a week focused on learning FiST leader deconfliction of fires. A FiST leader is a Fire Support Team leader who basically oversees air, artillery, and mortar fire on the battlefield at the company level. His responsibility is to ensure certain constraints and conditions are met and the targets are destroyed. I don’t expect most of you to understand all of that, but that’s just an idea of some of the things I might do later. I have a random anecdote to share. The Marine Corps Commandant (top general in the Marine Corps) recently invited Commandants from other countries with marine type infantries or units to visit Quantico, VA and observe how we train our officer corps. They spent time at OCS and TBS. I had the great opportunity to eat breakfast with all of these commandants along with 20 of my peers. We all sat with different commandants and answered their questions about our training. I was able to have breakfast with the Commandant of the Ukrainian Marines and Naval Infantry. It was a cool experience and I was honored to be asked to participate. It also gave me an opportunity to meet the US Marine Corps Commandant General Conway personally. He’s a giant of a man. I think there is an unwritten rule somewhere that you have to be 7 feet tall to be Commandant.

So that brings me about up to the present time. My Infantry Officer Course is made up of 97 lieutenants from two different Basic School companies: Alpha and Bravo (I was in Alpha). 21 of us are Ground Intelligence officers and the rest of us are Infantry officers. I am the latter. I have begun to see just how small the Marine Corps is. Of those 97 three of us went to Ohio State together and trained together at OSU. Another 6 of us were in the same training company at OCS in 2006. There is even one that has been in the same company as me at OCS in 2004 and 2006 and then TBS and now IOC. We will be spending the next 12 weeks learning, applying, making mistakes, learning from mistakes, and applying again. Infantry Officer Course is respected throughout the Department of Defense as one of the best schools the US Military has to offer. All of our instructors are Infantry captains with a wealth of experience and expertise. I am very excited about this training, but I don’t anticipate keeping on top of these updates. I apologize but I won’t have a lot of time (even less than at TBS). So I don’t know when I will write again but it will probably not be “soon”. I hope you are all well and I would love to hear from any of you.

Embracing the passion,

J