Photo By Staff Sgt. Richard Wrigley | Col. Scott Jackson, commander, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division,...... read more read more
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FORT STEWART, Ga. -- Thirty-six Soldiers who participated in the Army’s 2020 Physical Demands Study more than a week ago were recognized for their performance by the command team of the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team ‘Spartans,’ as well as the command team of the 3rd Infantry Division, here at the Marne Gardens, March 24.
The awardees consisted of Soldiers of nearly every rank from 2nd Lieutenant to Private, yet all had one thing in common: exemplary service in managing or participating in the PDS.
For the last few months the Company D “Dragons”, 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 2nd ABCT, in conjunction with U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, and the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, have been involved in conducting the Army 2020 PDS. The purpose of the PDS: to determine what the physical requirements are for doing certain tasks related to combat-arms military occupational specialties in the United States Army.
The desired result of gathering this data is to eventually create a test that will be able to gauge a potential Soldier’s physical ability to perform successfully in a combat MOS.
However, all of this is "old" news. The fact that this study has taken place, and what it means for the Army, has been plastered throughout the national media, mostly due to the eventuality it could lead to; namely, the integration of females into combat-arms military occupational specialties, traditionally only open to males.
Despite so many media sources reporting on the PDS, the story told by few reporters, if anyone, was the story of the Soldiers who were actually involved with the study. The story of those who planned it out and executed it. The story of those who gave every ounce of effort they had, voluntarily, to make it successful. It is the story of a company of Soldiers who came together in a short time under the resolute rally cry, “No Slack!” -- The story of the Dragon Company.
The tale begins simply enough. As with all missions undertaken by the Army, the mission had to be assigned to a unit, and this mission was no different. It was given to the 2nd ABCT, who then delegated it to one of their subordinate battalions, the 1-30th IN BN, who in turn informed the Dragon Company they would be spearheading the effort for the Army. All this took place right before the Christmas Holiday of 2013, explained Capt. Jamal Khan, the Dragon Company commander.
“When I heard [that we were being tasked with this] it kind of started my wheels spinning, but none of us really knew all the details until we came back from block leave,” Khan said.
Khan and his team were given the intent of the mission and the parameters of what they had to work with. They had to develop a plan to train a company size element of male and female volunteers over the course of four weeks. The Soldiers were to be trained on 20 different combat-MOS related tasks. The purpose of the train-up being that all the volunteers needed to be familiar with these tasks for when TRADOC and USARIEM came down to officially evaluate and gather data on the Soldiers as they performed said tasks.
While train-up and familiarization was the main effort, it was not the only directive the Dragon Company commander was given.
“The guidance was to [ensure the Soldiers] mastered the task-skills, to build unit cohesion, and to not sustain any injuries,” said Khan.
Two of those directives were deemed easily accomplished, explained Khan.
The task-skills in question were low in technical difficulty, and were really just physically demanding, so ensuring the Soldiers’ mastery of the skills involved with these tasks was considered by the planning team to be pretty easily achieved.
Coupled with this near certainty was the Dragon Company’s commitment to safety. This made them equally certain that injury would be avoided.
This left the Dragons with only one real uncertainty to the plan that they put together: How could they foster unit cohesion between strangers in such a short period of time? Indeed, when the tasking was originally announced to the male Soldiers, a good deal of apprehension was initially expressed, and leadership was not certain how the situation would play out, explained Khan.
The integration of the females within the ranks of the combat-arms males took a slow start. This was probably due to the fact that the males in question had for the most part never been in a situation where they had to work on a professional level with females, explained Sgt. 1st Class William O’Neal, a platoon sergeant within D Company who also served as a platoon sergeant for one of the PDS platoons.
“In the beginning it was a lot like a high school dance; all the guys on one side, all the girls on the other side, and nobody talking,” said O’Neal.
The silence did not last long though.
“It took a couple days, but once they started working together at the squad and team level, they integrated great, and it was very rewarding getting to watch them train and come together as a group,” said Khan. “They even fell into the normal banter that so often accompanies a normal rifle squad or tank crew.”
O’Neal attributes the tight-knit unit cohesion of the volunteers to some invaluable experience he had within his ranks.
“I think the key was the female leadership we had,” said O’Neal. “The female noncommissioned officers that had volunteered for the study had come from being in charge of multi-gender elements already, where as it was foreign to myself and the rest of the males, who didn’t really know how to approach the issue of social acclimation like the females did.”
Sgt. Cristina Oliver, an imagery analyst and team leader for A Company, 2-3 Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd ABCT, agreed with O’Neal’s assessment, as she noted that she had been working side by side with males her entire career, and that the minor speed bump seemed to stem from the males unfamiliarity with the situation.
“After the first week though, we really started to bond, and I think it became natural to everyone,” affirmed Oliver.
Once the beginning jitters were worked out, the PDS Company, under D Company tutelage, truly started to work like a well-oiled machine, and hit the train-up hard and with a purpose.
“These Soldiers simply surpassed my expectations in their willingness to dive into the training and consistently put forth their best effort,” said Khan. “It was really great to see a group of Soldiers come together like they did, and perform with such high morale and motivation with a sustained focus on the training.”
The morale, motivation and focus could indeed be witnessed in the Soldiers, and certainly could be garnered in Oliver’s closing remark.
"As a Soldier and a female NCO I knew it to be my responsibility, my duty to take part in this study … and I would do it all over again if I had the opportunity to do so,” Oliver said.
So in the end the underlying story of what happened with the Army’s 2020 Physical Demands Study, its volunteers, and the Dragon Company, was not a tale of the would-be future opening of the Army’s Combat MOSs to females. It wasn’t even about the successful gathering of great data to further ensure quality and efficiency in Army recruiting, although that did happen.
Ultimately, the story was about the bond that forms when Soldiers work together for a common goal -- it was a story that proved when in the Army uniform, everyone is a Soldier first, and everything else is second to that -- it was a story about the camaraderie that forms between Soldiers in arms -- and that, readers -- is the rest of the story.
| Date Taken: | 03.24.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 12.09.2014 18:56 |
| Story ID: | 149867 |
| Location: | FORT STEWART, GEORGIA, US |
| Web Views: | 333 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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