Officer Candidate School (OCS) is a microcosm of West Point in some respects. During the first seven weeks, the training taxes the candidates physically, mentally, and psychologically. One of the goals of the training is to determine whether a candidate will break under the pressure of the training. Teaching, Advising, and Counseling (TAC) officers would much rather break a candidate during training than to witness an officer break during combat. If you think about it, that sort of logic makes sense. As such, the first seven weeks, or phase I of training is very grueling. It culminates with a week in the field. During the week in the field, the candidates spend a couple of days on defensive maneuvers, a couple of days on offensive maneuvers, a day at the confidence course and the obstacle course, and the day at Victory Pond. There are a few interesting stories that I gleaned out of this field training week for lack of a better word or description. I will start with the defensive maneuvers. The TAC officers hauled us out into the field in cattle trucks. I called them cattle trucks because they looked like cattle trucks. It wasn’t just me that called them cattle trucks. Pretty much everybody called them cattle trucks. If you’ve ever driven on an interstate highway through rural America, you have seen at least one cattle truck in your lifetime. A cattle truck is a big rig with a tractor and a trailer, but the trailer is hauling cattle instead of other stuff. Those TAC officers stuffed us candidates into those cattle trucks like we were cattle. Moo. Moo. Can you hear us? Now, the real talent was being able to sleep standing up in a cattle truck. Once you mastered that, you were a true officer candidate. I was certified gold. I could sleep on command. But I digress. Here’s a thought for you. We got out into the woods for our two days of defensive tactics. And the first thing that the TAC officers told us to do was to dig foxholes. Note. I had been assigned as a machine gunner on the M-60 machine gun. My roommate, the National Guard guy, was my assistant gunner. Our ammo bearer was his OCS girlfriend, a female officer candidate. He didn’t know that I knew that he and her were a thing, but I knew. Go figure. Like you can keep something like that secret. Anyway, I told them I had experience with machine gun nests and Fort Benning and rain. Since one was a National Guard guy and the other was a college option candidate, they both listened to what I had to say. I told them we needed to dig it deep. I said that we needed chairs with reclines so that we could sleep. I also said that we needed a deep sump pit toward the front of our bunker that we could kick grenades into. I mentioned that we needed a reinforced roof over our bunker to provide cover and concealment and rain protection. Finally, I mentioned that we needed a trench leading away from the rear of our bunker toward the tactical operations center (TOC) that we could crawl in once we exited our bunker. The trench would be used by the ammo bearer to exit the bunker unseen to get us a resupply of ammunition. At first when I explained these elaborate construction plans, my fellow candidates thought I was nuts. But after we had it built and we were snug and dry inside when it started to pour buckets of rain, they thanked me profusely. They asked, “How did you know?” I simply replied, “This isn’t my first rodeo at Fort Benning. I was stationed here for two years across town in the infantry.” The first night we were in the field, some aggressors started probing our defensive perimeter. It was dark and overcast, so we couldn’t see them. But we could hear them talking whenever they got close to us. The funny thing was, they didn’t practice communications security. They were chattering constantly. One thing I had done when I had selected the location for our bunker was that I had positioned it right between two big trees. I did that for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted the trees to serve as a natural umbrella for the rain. Second, I wanted the trees to help hide the bunker. When we built the roof of the bunker, we used logs and foliage from the surrounding area to camouflage the logs. And we used poncho liners as a rain proofing barrier for the roof. When the aggressors probed our defensive position, I heard them say, “I know they’re around here somewhere. I watched them build the bunker this afternoon.” When they were almost upon us, we lit them up like a Fourth of July fireworks display with the machine gun and threw a couple of grenade simulators. We could tell they were pissed because they were cussing up a storm. A little while later, they came back. The second time, they threw a concussion grenade that landed right in front of our bunker. We had no warning. When I saw the flash, I yelled, “Take cover!” My roommate and I immediately dove to the bottom of the bunker. However, our ammo bearer had just exited the bunker and stood up. She took the full force of the concussive blast when whatever it was that they threw at us went off. It knocked her silly. We rushed out to check her out. She was lying on the ground with blood coming out of her ears. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that she had a probable concussion. We picked her up and carried her to the TOC. The TAC officer on duty made me and my roommate write a statement about what happened. We explained that we had heard the aggressors talking. We explained that they knew the general location of our machine gun bunker. We explained that we knew they were targeting us specifically. We explained that we lit them up with machine gun fire and simulated grenades when they attacked. Then, we explained that they came back and counterattacked with some sort of concussive device. We explained that it was a deliberate attack. The ammo bearer had to be medically evacuated back to Garrison because she was suffering from a concussion. Word spread quickly about what had happened during the aggressor action. We later heard that the aggressors were disciplined for their aggressive action. No shit. It was supposed to be training. After all, we were all on the same side. What a bunch of maroons. You do know what a maroon is, right? I refer, of course, to my friend Bugs Bunny. Ole Bugs likes to refer to morons as maroons. Those aggressors had managed to turn easy training into another exercise in futility.
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