Photo By Christopher Hanson | U.S. Army Garrison Fort McCoy commander Col. Michael Poss, outgoing Recruit Training...... read more read more
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With an April visit to Naval Station Great Lakes, Ill., Fort McCoy garrison leaders recently fulfilled a promise made back at the beginning of the Navy’s Recruit Restriction of Movement mission at Fort McCoy in April 2020, to come visit the Navy's boot camp.
Garrison Commander Col. Michael Poss and Deputy Garrison Commander Lt. Col. Alex Carter traveled to Great Lakes, Ill., on April 29-30 to tour Naval Station Great Lakes and the U.S. Navy’s only boot camp at Recruit Training Command (RTC).
In early 2020, the Navy had reached out to Army leadership and Fort McCoy to negotiate an agreement to allow Navy recruits to conduct their 14-day COVID-19 waiting period on the installation. During that timeframe, Navy staff cycled 37,800 recruits through Fort McCoy.
Poss was welcomed by Rear Adm. Jamie Sands, commander of Naval Service Training Command and senior commander of RTC, in his office in Great Lakes’ historic Building 1. The admiral thanked Poss again for Fort McCoy’s “outstanding support” of the Navy’s recruits and ROM mission and complimented installation staff for their superb customer service to his Sailors.
“We could not have successfully trained new recruits during these past eight months without the help and support of the U.S. Army and Fort McCoy,” Sands said. “To not be able to train those recruits during that time would have negatively impacted the Navy for years to come.
“Your team was instrumental in making this as smooth a process as possible, and I thank you for that,” he said.
Additionally, Poss met with Naval Station Great Lakes commanding officer Capt. Raymond Leung. As the installation commander, Leung fills a similar role as Poss as the garrison commander. They discussed some of the shared issues each installation faces, and Leung provided Poss a tour of the installation’s massive galley (dining facility) complex. The galleys provide numerous healthy dining options and feed thousands of Sailors each day.
Early Friday morning, Poss and Carter were escorted onto RTC, where they were met by RTC commanding officer Capt. Erik Thors, who provided a guided tour. The tour included the new recruit processing center, marksmanship training, medical, damage control/firefighting training, swim qualifications, physical training areas, seamanship basics and many others. The highlight of the trip was the Battle Stations - 21 training simulator, a full-scale accurate mock-up of a Navy ship, where recruits go through their final phase of training, pulling everything they learned during boot camp to operate and save the ship during emergency circumstances.
“This was an outstanding trip,” Poss said. “I’m most impressed with how the Navy is able to integrate simulators into this training to create the most realistic scenarios possible.”
The goal for the future is to continue to build on the relationship between the U.S. Army, Fort McCoy, and the Navy.
Carter expressed his gratitude that the Fort McCoy workforce was able to come together to tackle such an important mission for the Navy.
“Col. Poss and I were proud to represent such an amazing workforce while we visited Great Lakes, a workforce dedicated to accomplishing the mission,” Carter said. “It was indeed a tremendous accomplishment by ‘Team McCoy’ to provide these essential services with our typical award-winning customer service.”
“We hope to further enhance this joint relationship between the services,” Poss said. “We truly are a Total Force Training Center.”
| Date Taken: | 05.07.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 05.11.2021 11:53 |
| Story ID: | 396112 |
| Location: | GREAT LAKES, ILLINOIS, US |
| Web Views: | 117 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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