Background

The US Army ROTC is an elective curriculum students take along with their required college classes. It prepares students with the tools, training and experiences that will help them succeed in any competitive environment. Along with great leadership training, Army ROTC can pay college tuition and students have a normal college student experience like everyone else on campus, but when they graduate, they will be US Army Officers.

The University of London OTC operates an exchange program with the ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps), the US Army’s equivalent university based officer training program. In summer 2007, ULOTC sent 18 cadets to Fort Lewis in Washington State to take part in the Leadership Development and Assessment Course (LDAC); this is one of the necessary components for US cadets before commissioning into the US Army. The purpose of the exchange program is to allow ULOTC cadets to develop leadership skills and to gain an insight into the US Army’s ethos, training and personnel through interaction with the ROTC.

ROTC: http://www.goarmy.com/rotc/

US Army:
http://www.army.mil/

ULOTC - ROTC Exchange 2007, Ex Warrior Forge, 15 July – 15 August 2007

In the early light of dawn, 18 London cadets embarked on what would be a long month of training with the ROTC. There was some reprieve from the rigours of travel, as we were allowed a 3 day recovery period in which we sampled the delights of American shopping malls, diners and bowling alleys. We also collected our Vietnam-era equipment - here apparently the antiquated equipment is not due to budgetary concerns but to challenge the cadets and help them grow as leaders. After this resting phase we were transferred to 11th Regiment, where the 18 of us would be distributed between its 2 companies, each with 4 platoons.

Now the real training had begun, the first morning with 11th regiment began with a 3km march to our training area. Today we would take part in an assault course, a set of command tasks, the first part of the confidence course and rappel training, which started from the very basics and stepped up from a sloped wall to a 17’ and then a 37’ tower. The next three days consisted of first aid training, individual tactical training, cultural training and NBC training. Individual tactical training was where we learned how to move forward on objectives through use of cover, concealment and fire. The lanes stepped up in progressive levels of difficulty ending with a 300m lane with enemy paintball fire. The first aid training lasted one and a half days of both learning skills and then being tested both as an individual and as a squad. Cultural training was a half day spent learning about house searches, and being briefed on the cultural attitudes of the enemy we would be facing later on in the 10 day field exercise. However the best bit of these three days was the NBC training; here we were taught how to recognise nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, what to do if attacked and finally there was an NBC assault course and CS gas chamber. The gas chamber (sometimes referred to as NBC confidence chamber, or respirator test facility) was where we found out what CS gas tastes like!

The next day consisted of hand grenade training, first we were taught the different positions from which to throw a grenade and were also instructed on IED recognition. The following phase was to a hand grenade assault course, where we pushed along a 300m course throwing training grenades at assorted enemy positions. Finally we moved to the live grenade range where we each threw two live grenades.

With all this training done we had a half day off to prepare ourselves for the field exercise and conduct helicopter training. Then we deployed to the training area, known in the exercise as Palomas. Ex Warrior Forge has a comprehensive scenario behind it, and as such US (and UK) forces were acting as peacekeepers in Palomas. Once deployed we conducted squad level missions for 4 days assaulting bunkers, dealing with the media, setting up ambushes, collecting POWs and other various tasks. Then we marched to the forward operating base, some 10k away for a day of rest and a subsequent day of patrol training. For the last three days we conducted patrols with similar but longer missions than the first phase in a two squad strong grouping. On one of the patrol missions we were lifted by Chinook helicopters to a new area of operations, however the flight was much longer than necessary as the Chinook flew along canyon bottoms and high over the forests on a half hour tour of the Fort Lewis area. We were especially glad of the helicopter lift as the woodlands of Washington state were generously christened ‘Jurassic Park’ due to the thickness of vegetation, making progress through the ‘jungle’ difficult at best. In addition there was the size and aggression of the local mosquito population!

The point of LDAC is to test the cadets and asses them for their future in the US Army, thus leadership positions within the squads and patrol would be rotated. Us Brits would also get in on the leadership rotation and the American cadets would love our accents, tactics, lingo and the bags of aggression we brought to any firefight. Somehow we often were placed in the civilian liaison team within a patrol as we were more successful when dealing with civilians on the battlefield than some of the more aggressive American troops.

After returning from the field on our victory march we were granted a respite of a whole day of rest, this was greatly appreciated as after ten days of limited sleep and combat we felt like the living dead. However the following day training resumed with water confidence training. Water confidence training encompassed a log walk and rope drop, the slide for life and the Zodiac assault course. The log walk and rope drop was where you would walk along a 15’ high beam and then up to a 25’ rope from which you crawl, then hang off, where you shout your name, your university and branch of the US Army you will join before dropping into the water below. The slide for life is a 57’ high zip line into the water below. Finally the Zodiac assault course is where each squad races a self propelled dinghy around the course, along the way you must perform a capsize drill and also hit a beach and run 50m to launch the boat again. The next day would be our last day of training where we conducted combatives training (unarmed combat). This entailed various techniques for holding and adjusting holds, choking and finished with several rounds of wrestling, which seemed to have no real rules at all. The next two days were made up of excessive amounts of barracks cleaning, rehearsals and then the actual graduation ceremony from LDAC.

Having graduated from LDAC the US cadets were then released to go home, however we had better plans. For three and a half days we moved off Fort Lewis to a motel in Tacoma. From this base we visited Seattle, went up the Space Needle, looked around the famous fish market and watched the Seattle Mariners beat the Minnesota Twins at baseball. We also visited more shopping malls, and Mt. Rainier national park. However more importantly we caught up each others’ war stories over a few beers.

This trip was both a brilliant training experience in which we all developed in our abilities as leaders and also was a huge learning experience for us. I would recommend it to anybody as it is a once in a life time experience. Feel free to contact me if you have questions about last summers trip, or eligibility for next summer.

JUO MacDonald

Email me at rotc@ulotc.co.uk

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