Day 21-25: STX!

The STX is over and we are on the home stretch to being done with DCC! The Direct Commission Course is the name of the phase that we are currently in. It is four weeks long and is designed to introduce the students at CHBOLC to the standards and disciplines of the Army and the basic tasks that every officer needs to know. It is what we call BOLC A. The first phase of BOLC. For most officers (including me) ROTC, West Point, or OCS is BOLC A. BOLC B is usually the branch specific BOLC that follows on immediately after graduation from one of those places. But since most chaplains Direct Commission based on their prerequisite skills and education, they utilize the first four weeks of CHBOLC to introduce the chaplains to the Army. Hence, I am fairly familiar with most of the non-chaplain specific material we learn in DCC. That was pretty evident in our STX.

Day 21

On the first day of our STX we went straight to where our Capstone Tactical Operations Center will be. Capstone will be our final Field Training Exercise at the end of CHBOLC. But we based our STX in the area we are going to do capstone in. We had breakfast and started immediately learning land navigation. The main point of that day was to do day and night land navigation with a map, protractor, and compass. I believe the goal of the day was to get new Chaplains familiar with the concepts and to let the prior-enlisted help them along. We were put into groups of five and we helped each other learn the concepts and then go find the points.

The courses were extremely easy. I was already familiar with land navigation so I helped others in my squad learn it as well. One of our squad members is a ranger so he took the lead on planning the route. I plotted the points. We found all of the day points quickly. We found all the night land nav points before it was night. They had let us go while the sun was just about to set.

In between setting up our Bivouac (our tent city) and doing land navigation we attended the field services of two of our three Small Group Leaders (Chaplain leaders) while we were there. First my platoon attended a Catholic service and then we attended a contemporary protestant one. I got a lot of ideas about how I could shape my services and I was inspired and motivated that one day that would be me performing field services.

After night land navigation we bedded down for the night in our little tents. In Advanced Camp we were in pretend infantry platoons so we had slept in patrol bases underneath the canopy of trees in Fort Knox. I thought sleeping in tents would be much nicer, but I kinda missed sleeping under the stars while I was in the tent. It was extremely hot outside so I felt like I was sleeping in a sauna.

Day 22

In the morning I noticed that two of my battle buddies in my platoon were arguing with each other. The long day and early morning had frustrated them and they got into a petty argument. I got up and asked our PSG if we had time for a Word of the Day and he said absolutely. I gave my first Word of the Day! My message was on 2 Thessalonians. I talked about how Paul is speaking to a church that was experiencing suffering and persecution and he was giving thanks for them and the persecution they were experiencing. He chalked it up to the fact that they were being made worthy of their calling. That part of the process of them being made worthy of their calling was that they grew in love of one another and in their faith through suffering. So as we experienced the long and hot days of Fort Jackson, I wanted them to look and see how they could love one another more and how they could grow closer to their God. I prayed for our meal and ate breakfast. I felt that the message had lightened a very heavy atmosphere that morning.

Our second day in the field was a hodgepodge of different Soldiering skills. It was very surface level stuff all day. We learned how to move tactically as a squad, how to use a radio, how to call 9-line medevacs, how to make a SALUTE report (if you see an enemy you report the element type and size) and we learned how to low crawl and high crawl.

The day was all culminating to the Night Infiltration Course, also known as NIC @ Night. NIC is where you high crawl/low crawl for about 100 meters navigating different obstacles while machine gun fires overhead. In preparation we did these drills on a sandy hill where we run for two seconds, yell, "I'm up, he sees me, I'm down!" and then fall down to a low crawl and crawl for a few feet before repeating. We did it for like 50 meters up a steep hill. It was exhausting.

NIC ended up being a bit dissapointing. There was a lot of hype building up to it. Since we had a lot of prior enlisted Soldiers in our platoon we were all talking about their experiences at NIC. They had talked about how you can feel the machine gun fire right over your back and how you could get burned by flares and explosions from the blast tanks that were scattered throughout the course. They talked about how there was supposed to be tons of barbed wire everywhere and that you could easily cut yourself on it. I think a lot has changed since then, or they didn't want to give the chaplains a hard time. The reality ended up being it was a long low crawl with machine guns firing over our heads high enough that I quickly forgot that it was there. It also happened to be the longest day of Summer and it was still light outside at 9:30pm and we were running behind schedule so we did it while it was still light. It was great PT though! 100 meters of low crawls are not easy! We all had a blast and listened to a speech from the Commandant of the Chaplain Center and School afterwards. He motivated us like no other and we were proud of the last two days of Field Training.

We ended up going back to our hotels that night and had a couple hours of sleep before our final day of "STX".

Day 23

The day only consisted of one thing. Medical Simulation Training. Tactical Combat Casualty Care or TC3. It was fairly watered down. We had a much more intense training on it during ROTC and we had been tested on it with the possibility of getting a "NO GO." At CHBOLC we were taught the same concepts in a much longer period of time and we had teams of people being tested at a time while the trainers coached us through it. I enjoyed it because I felt they really wanted us to learn, but I feel like we could have probably gone deeper into the subject. Even though medical care is not a chaplain's primary responsibility, he does go into combat unarmed. Part of his job is to care for the wounded and if there is someone wounded he needs to be able to care for that Soldier well.

The day ended pretty early and we were able to go home after a safety brief and were released for the weekend.

That evening we went to a restaurant called Kiki's Chicken and Waffles where I probably gained 5 pounds from that meal. It was outstanding. If you are in Columbia you have to check it out.

Day 24

Yesterday was a pretty easy going day. I only left my room to go eat dinner with my friend 2LT V. We went to a restaurant that my friend recommended but it wasn't very good. I don't want to put the name here cause I don't want anyone going to it.

I picked up a package with some books I had ordered from Amazon. They are three books about the Chaplain corps. Faith Under Fire by Roger Benimoff, A Table in the Presence by Carey Cash and No Greater Glory by Dan Kurzman. I am already halfway done with A Table in the Presence. It is an incredible story of a Chaplains point of view as he rode with his Marines during the invasion of Iraq and how God moved in the hearts of his battalion and transformed their lives in the midst of the horrors of war. I have so much to read but I really want to read stories written from and about chaplains. The stories I hear in the museum and in our classes have been so motivating that I know reading these books will keep encouraging me and inspiring me to be the best chaplain I can be here.

Day 25

Today I woke up and went to a Chapel service with my friends. We no longer needed to attend services outside our denominations because I finished that assignment. So we ended up finding a protestant service. Originally I planned on going to a service at 11 in the main post chapel but my friends told me they were going to one at 10. I didn't see it on the worship schedule but I figured that they must know of a service that I didn't. What we didn't know was that the reason it wasn't on the schedule was because it was a Basic Training service. We ended up sitting in on it. It was incredible! I was so encouraged by the amount of passion that many of the trainees had for Jesus and you could really sense that lives in the room had been transformed for Christ! One of the groups at the service was graduating and you could tell that the chaplain was so proud of them and was nearly in tears because he was sad they were leaving. I figured this is what it was like to be a chaplain of a basic training unit. He wasn't just the chaplain of the service they attended. He was THEIR chaplain. He had followed them through their whole training and had helped them encounter and experience God. There can't be anything better than that. I am so excited to be a Chaplain. I can't even explain it here.

We are almost finished with DCC! We finish it on Wednesday. We have two main events in between now and Phase 1. Tomorrow we are going to Victory Tower (Rappelling) and then Tuesday we go to the Gas Chamber. Only a couple of weeks left until I am back home with my fiance and family. But until then I am going to enjoy every minute of CHBOLC. It is a privilege to be here.

Land navigation!

Beautiful Fort Jackson summer days.

Home sweet tents.

Getting ready for NIC

Done with NIC

TC3 where a chaplain is about to have a tube stuck up his nose.

Kiki's Chicken and Waffles!

Trainee service.