Photo By Sgt. Christopher Gaylord | Staff Sgt. John Ahern, a laboratory technician for Madigan Army Medical Center and the...... read more read more
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JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. – For Staff Sgt. John Ahern, April 6 stood out as the highlight of his Army career – the apex of his eight years of military service.
Every mentor, every leader, every counseling, every snippet of his time as a soldier all melded into one moment: Western Regional Medical Command recognizing Ahern as its top non-commissioned officer.
“It feels great,” Ahern said, following an awards ceremony to honor the top soldier and non-commissioned officer from the WRMC Best Warrior competition held on JBLM, April 2-6. “It’s a culmination of my whole career.”
The competition brought together nine soldiers and nine non-commissioned officers from nine different medical treatment facilities in the region, which encompasses 22 states.
The competitors vied with their counterparts in a physical and mental test that mixed together an Army Physical Fitness Test; an oral board; a weapons qualification; day and night land navigation; a 50-question written exam; a two-page essay; a combatives tournament and a mystery event, which revealed itself as a race to see who could write out the Army’s Non-commissioned Officer Creed the quickest.
“This is huge,” said Master Sgt. Steven Smith, the operations non-commissioned officer in charge for Madigan Healthcare System, whose section organized the competition this year. “This would be the equivalent to winning division-level Soldier/NCO of the Year.”
From here, Ahern and the event’s top soldier competitor, Sgt. Michael Divernieri from William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss, Texas, will move on to compete in June against non-commissioned officers and soldiers from Army medical treatment facilities across the world.
If they win, they’ll fight to become the Army’s top non-commissioned officer and soldier for 2012.
But right now, Ahern is focusing on what he could have done better.
“I need to get some more trigger time at the range and continue to study for the board,” said Ahern, a Coventry, Rhode Island, native.
To prepare, he practiced combatives – the Army’s variation of Jiu Jitsu-based martial arts self defense – twice a week and went on ruck marches weekly. The hours of studying he put in the past few months to earn membership to the Army’s coveted Sergeant Audie Murphy Club last month readied him for the oral board he faced to secure top honors for Best Warrior.
But even with all the hard work he put in on his own, he’s crediting his mentors for his win.
“The Army’s mentorship program is probably one of the biggest elements to becoming a leader, and I have a lot of mentors,” he said. “They all mentored me into becoming the leader that I am.
“When you’re getting mentored by senior leaders like that, and they’re willing to take the time and sit with you, and talk with you, and tell you, ‘this is how to operate,’ that’s important to keep that Army train rolling.”
Ahern and the other 17 competitors came from treatment facilities where their specific jobs – all medical specialties of some sort – take up nearly 100 percent of their time and efforts.
They come from optometry, cardiology, radiology and other sections of hospitals and clinics far removed from the typical training regimen and bountiful resources of most line units.
Ahern is a lab technician for Madigan’s Department of Pathology.
“Being at a hospital, it’s a challenge for operations to get us training,” said Ahern, who had to win Non-commissioned Officer of the Quarter and Non-commissioned Officer of the Year competitions for Madigan before competing against the rest of his region.
“Medical treatment facilities don’t have an arms room; we don’t have a supply room,” said Smith, Madigan’s operations non-commissioned officer-in-charge and a Las Vegas native. “We don’t have chemical masks, chemical suits, weapons and all that.”
And for that reason, he added, winning a competition that examines the true mettle of soldiers and the proficiency of their common military tasks gives a unique fulfillment to soldiers like Ahern.
“I think it’s a little bit more special for these guys, because they don’t have all that,” Smith said. “They kind of get stuck with what they get.”
The competitors for WRMC’s Best Warrior train and qualify on M16 rifles with traditional iron sights – a weapon referred to as a musket in today’s military.
But the infantrymen and other soldiers those from a medical treatment facility would face at the Army level, Smith said, are likely training on M4 rifles equipped with bells and whistles and have better access to the best equipment.
“These guys have to work harder,” Smith said of the Best Warrior competitors from medical commands.
Command Sgt. Maj. Cy Akana, the senior enlisted leader for WRMC, said the myriad of skills the competition tested the soldiers on is still vital to their roles as medics, even if they don’t use them every day.
When they deploy, Akana said, many of them essentially become combat medics.
“To more effectively do what they do best in providing healthcare to their patients, they need to be prepared for when those conditions change, and their survivability skills, like combatives, marksmanship make up all of the things that keep them alive and keep their patients alive on the battlefield,” he said.
It’s what the 30-year soldier refers to as versatility – a good medic, whether at home in a facility or abroad in a warzone.
Ahern, who said he’s looking forward to his competition at MEDCOM, knows one thing rings true no matter where you compete.
“You don’t have to be excellent at one thing and crappy at another thing; you have to be consistent,” he said. “I did well in every event. I don’t think I got first place in any event. It was just a consistency, and that’s how we [leaders] should be: consistent.”
| Date Taken: | 04.10.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 04.10.2012 19:19 |
| Story ID: | 86532 |
| Location: | WASHINGTON, US |
| Hometown: | COVENTRY, RHODE ISLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 644 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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