You Can Be a Leader: Leadership Principles to Achieve Excellence

Chapter Four Flight School

Prior to the Army actually permitting me to sit in a helicopter at Ft. Rucker, I was required to complete Initial Warrant Officer Training, which turned out to be six weeks of pure mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion. My fellow cadets and I conducted physical training before the sun came up, ran to all of our classes, which were sometimes up to two miles away, performed in leadership positions, and endured endless barracks inspections. My platoon lived in an old World War II wooden barracks which proved impossible to keep clean enough to meet inspection standards. Old air conditioners hanging in the windows did their best to keep the interior temperature barely livable.

I was quickly reminded about my dislike of hot Alabama summers.

The room and locker inspections seemed never-ending. The inspectors demanded perfection. We slept without disturbing our blankets since we only had ten minutes from waking to make our bunks, dress, and shave. Every morning before dawn, a mass of candidates would burst out of the barracks door at full speed to make it to formation in time. Anyone who was late immediately received demerits and a set of fifty push-ups. The negative re-enforcement worked miracles. Within days every candidate was able to meet the tight timeline.

We had to take extreme measures to meet the inspection standards. On a nightly basis most of us sprayed our underwear with lots of starch, ironed the briefs, rolled them inside a flexible piece of plastic that was exactly six inches long, and then baked that package over a lamp. When removed from the plastic, the briefs had perfect measurements and no wrinkles. We'd then gently set them in perfectly placed rows in our dresser drawers. Believe me, wearing heavily-starched underwear in the Alabama heat and humidity is not a comfortable experience.

The course was creatively designed to give us too much to do without enough resources. The training, advising, and counseling (TAC) officers regularly overused the bad cliché, Candidate you had better figure out a way to stuff that ten pounds of shit into a five pound sack. Those movies you see are true; the military excels at over-using clichés.

The dreaded confidence course was scheduled during the third week of our training. This was one of many severely stressful situations where one mistake could end a candidate's dream of becoming an army aviator. Standing in formation that morning, I am sure I wasn't the only one with the fear of washing out of the course lurking in the back of my mind.

With olive-drab Vietnam era ruck sacks strapped to our backs, we marched the five miles to the leadership confidence course. Our single line formation silently sliced through the early morning haze of thick humidity that hung in the air. After the first mile I could feel my sweat soaked T-shirt clinging to my skin. As we entered a woodland trail, a deep scent of decay entered my nose. The Deep South swamps always emit a distinctive odor from the constant heat and humidity taking their toll on the dying vegetation.

Upon arrival at the confidence course, we were ordered to eat a Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) for breakfast. "Oh boy, spaghetti with meatballs for breakfast," I declared with false enthusiasm to the candidate next to me as I ripped open the top of the green bag that held my over-salted meal.

I felt a slap on my shoulder from the candidate next to me, "Don't feel so bad dude, I got hot dogs and beans."

I was about halfway through shoveling my breakfast down when one of the muscular, loud, and intimidating TAC Officers ordered us into formation. I quickly shoved a packet of crackers and cheese into the cargo pocket of my battle dress uniform pants prior to stuffing the remnants of my breakfast back into my brown MRE plastic bag.

NOW, screamed the TAC Officer. Dropping my MRE bag into the trash, I sprang to my place in formation.

Casually pacing in front of the formation, the TAC officer proceeded to explain the rules of the course to us. In a high pitched poor Korean accent he said, "Candidates, do or die today, no passy you station, no flight school, you go home GI."