The New Recruit: Getting through final phase means soldiers ready to serve
TODAY: (Updated 6:05 a.m.) FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. — Her dress uniform hangs in plastic next to her combat uniforms in a crowded locker at the back of the barracks.
The Army’s military police training is at a critical stage now.
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Watch video of Shappard
In just a few weeks, the new soldiers from Pfc. Hailey Shappard’s Alpha Company, 796th Military Police Battalion, 2nd Platoon will answer their first calls to duty. Some are headed straight to Iraq. Others are going to Korea. Shappard’s first stop is Fort Carson, Colo.
“I feel prepared enough to go to my first duty station,” she said. “They’ll train us their way of doing things. What we’re getting here is just the basics.”
But the basics have changed — tailored like a dress uniform to fit a specific war. The privates must drink a certain amount of water each day. They have been gassed, taught to drive Humvees and fire M-16 rifles. They have been ordered on several-mile marches to remote areas of the sprawling post where they pitch tents, have no showers and learn about survival.
“The sergeants try to tie everything to one thing: You’re going to need this down-range in Iraq,” Shappard said.
After so many weeks away, the 18-year-old’s home in Davenport seems almost as far away. Even her mom — her dearest ally — can seem like a stranger.
In fact, Tammie Martin made the seven-hour drive to Fort Leonard Wood recently when her daughter got an on-post pass. It was a limited taste of freedom for Shappard, but an emotional gold mine for a mother and daughter who have been separated for months.
For a new soldier with an uncertain future, even the familiar can become distant.
“I felt awkward,” she said of her mom’s visit. “I didn’t know what to say to her.
“I hadn’t seen her in so long.”
Testing the troopsBy 8 a.m., their canteens are hanging by the straps over the backs of their chairs.
In the front of the classroom is a pull-down video screen, and the sergeant standing next to it is telling 100 privates how important it is they pass the test they’re about to take.
“The Army hasn’t even certified it yet,” Sgt. 1st Class James Camba says of the exam.
Even so, the soldiers are expected to know the answers to at least 70 percent of the 35 questions.
“When you get your orders, this is the training you’ll need,” Camba says.
He asks how many of the privates already are headed to “The Sandbox,” which is Iraq. Ten of them raise their hands.
Getting through the final phase of FTX, or field training exercise, is important to the military police training because it signals to the sergeants that their privates are ready to serve. Camba and six other sergeants are in the classroom during the two-hour test to make sure no one fails.
“Raise your hand if you have a question,” he barks. “The answers won’t be given, but we’ll steer you in the right direction.”
The training is so important, in fact, that Camba reveals to the soldiers that he and the others paid out of their own pockets for some of the material used to make IED training as realistic as possible.
A little more than two hours later, Camba calls out the names of two soldiers, including Pfc. Richard Kryka of South Lyon, Mich., one of three men from Shappard’s training foursome.
“These soldiers are not failures,” Camba’s voice booms. “They scored 100 percent. Give them a hand.”
With the test now behind them, the sergeant returns to a computer at the front of the classroom.
“What’s the number one killer of American soldiers right now?” he asks.
And the soldiers in unison reply, “IEDs.”
For the next 30 minutes, gruesome, violent images flash across the screen at the front of the classroom. In one scene, a person is seen walking toward an object on the ground in what appears to be a public square. Suddenly there is a quick “Boom!” and a small cloud of smoke appears.
As it clears, all that is left of the person is a torso — lying still in the square. Everyone around it is screaming and crying.
The classroom is silent.
Waiting for chow
It is lunchtime, but the chow truck hasn’t shown up in the parking lot outside the military police training school.
The Army teaches an aversion to idle time, and two drill sergeants find a training opportunity in a section of grass across from the school.
Shappard and the other privates seem relieved to be out of the classroom. They are chatty and in good spirits as they follow orders and drop to the grass for calisthenics. Warmed up and still on the ground, they are ordered, one group of five at a time, to the curb.
They are pretending to be in a Humvee and are ordered to “pull security,” which means they must properly exit the make-believe vehicle.
Staff Sgt. Raylon Miller is watching the soldiers scatter, weapons drawn, away from the ghost Humvee.
“Private!” he suddenly shouts. “What do you think you’re doing? You didn’t look back. You have to look back. What if you’d stopped the truck over an IED? You’re all dead.”
Just then a military police squad car pulls to the curb on the opposite side of the street, and two men quickly get out. Miller’s voice grows louder as it competes with a thundering knock on the door of a training house near the squad.
As the door opens, a woman is screaming inside. She is part of another training exercise — in domestic assault response.
But the voices of Miller and the screaming woman begin to disappear as a low-flying helicopter sweeps the sky above the soldiers. As it disappears behind the school, Miller’s voice returns.
“You don’t want to be the one to go to the memorial services for your battle buddy because you weren’t paying attention,” he is nearly shouting. “It happens, and it’s going to continue to happen.
“Pay attention!”
Acting their age
The giggling is a reminder — despite the M-16 and the camouflage — that Shappard is still a teenager.
After a morning of testing and training, most of her company is back at the bay (also known as barracks). There is a slow-moving chaos to the assignment of “detail.”
Sometimes, detail means cleaning toilets, raking leaves or scrubbing floors.
Today, after considerable confusion and a long wait, Shappard and three other soldiers are ordered to count pillow cases and bedding in a maintenance closet outside their sleeping quarters.
When battle buddies were reassigned several weeks ago, Shappard lost Pfc. Katherine “Ozzie” Osborne of Baltimore but gained Pfc. Kimberly James of San Antonio. Some of the battle buddies “weren’t working out,” she said, and the pairings were changed.
“I still see Ozzie all the time,” she says. “She’s still in my same platoon and bay and everything. She’s also going to Fort Carson, but we don’t know how long that will last.”
Linen counting, it turns out, can last a long time.
Shappard and James, along with Pfc. Kelley Scott of Traskwood, Ark., and Pfc. Samantha Brennan of Cambridge, Mass., are in charge of the detail — counting 239 pillow cases and a couple hundred mattress covers. But the foursome is bored by the busy work and quickly falls into fits of laughter.
As Brennan starts to remove a piece of twine from a collection of layered bedding, Shappard snaps at her, “Don’t take them apart! Count them as they are. It’ll be easier.”
Scott turns to a reporter and says, “Put this in the newspaper: Privates get pissed at Shappard.”
And all four soldiers stop what they are doing long enough to throw themselves onto piles of bedding, laughing.
Shappard picks off a piece of twine and begins stringing it between her fingers. Brennan, whose East Coast accent is well-duplicated by the others, quickly joins her and the two focus on a Cat’s Cradle design.
For several minutes they are lost in the levity — like sorority girls at campus housing.
When a drill sergeant’s voice echoes from around the corner, however, the soldiers get back to work and quickly finish. Their count is off by about a dozen, but they are unconcerned and simply begin again.
“We’re easily amused because there’s nothing to do,” James says.
Still giggling, the four head for their bunks for a few minutes of relaxation.
Shappard opens the doors to her lockers and pulls out her new dress uniform, which she hasn’t tried on yet. She repeats that she is excited for graduation, excited to get back to Davenport on leave.
And what message would she like to send home?
“Just tell my mom I love her,” she says.
Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.