ROTC takes to the field
UCLA Army ROTC members spent a weekend polishing leadership
skills and tackling survival drills. After that, and a 500-foot
climb, Bruin Walk is easy.
By Phillip Carter
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line
 unless there’s a 500-foot mountain in your path.
Six students in UCLA’s Army ROTC learned that lesson the hard
way, two-thirds of the way up the side of a mountain, during a
land-navigation exercise at Marine Corps Camp Pendleton this
weekend. Their goal was to get from one point to another  by
reading a map, looking at their compasses and counting steps.
Unfortunately, it was no day at the beach, because it took the
six-student group two hours to climb the hill. When they reached
the top, it was time to hike back to the starting point.
For the unit’s leader, third-year cadet Seth Labadie, the
experience provided a valuable learning experience. Immediately
after the event, he said the climb exposed him to being in a
leadership role with very little preparation or specific training,
so that he had to rely on his basic abilities and character to get
him through the exercise.
Cadet 1st Lieutenant Javier Zamora, who helped coordinate the
weekend trip for the Bruins, said the purpose of this activity was
to build leaders, not just to build warriors.
"Infantry skills are not really the focus, they’re just a way of
giving out tasks to cadets to complete," he said. "The bottom line
is that he had a task to complete  to do that, he had to
prioritize that task, and bring a bunch of individuals together to
do it."
Navigating their way through the woods was just one of many such
tasks during the "Field Training Exercise," which the more than 40
camoflauged Bruins underwent. From shooting the M16 to eating
Meals-Ready-to-Eat, the new field lunch specially engineered by
U.S. Army scientists to remain in the human digestive system for
days, they experienced military life in its entirety.
Composed of nearly 80 students, UCLA’s Army ROTC program
provides full and partial scholarships to students in return for
their service after graduation as military officers. In addition,
the cadets meet weekly for military science classes and labs.
The cadets assembled at UCLA on Friday morning in combat
fatigues, ready to get on the buses toward Pendleton. Many of the
students had never been on such an excursion, so they seemed
somewhat hesitant on the bus ride down. But by the time the first
exercise was over on Friday evening, most cadets’ anxiety had
evaporated in the heat of the 90 degree day.
"This is fun," remarked first-year cadet Robin Caine, who
qualified as a Sharpshooter with the M16 rifle, and added that the
weekend was exceeding all of her expectations for the ROTC
program.
In fact, the trip was partially designed with first-year cadets
in mind, said Cadet Lt. Col. Victor Suarez. "The weekend’s focus
was to introduce them to some of the things we do in Army ROTC. You
can only teach them so much here at UCLA, but you really get a
sense of what you’re training for out in the field."
Suarez added that the program has changed a lot since his first
year, however.
"They’d make us do push-ups all the time, and we would have been
up 48 hours straight, sleeping in the field  it was too much
for somebody who was new to the program," he said.
However, the new character of the UCLA Army ROTC program did not
mean the cadets had an easier training weekend. Saturday was the
longest day of the trip, beginning at 5 a.m. and lasting until
midnight. The cadets shot rifles in the morning, patrolled in
"enemy territory" in the afternoon and learned the difficulties of
hiking en masse at night.
The event which left the most indelible impression was the
ten-person squad patrol, which lasted four hours. Each group went
through three missions, using real tactics and real weapons to
achieve a given objective.
During one such mission, the groups had to run 500 meters up a
rocky creek to destroy a fake "machine-gun nest" which was firing
blanks. Squad leader Jennifer Schneider led the group in a scene
reminiscent of an old World War II movie, charging the "bunker,"
overpowering it and "killing" all the enemies inside by yelling
"Bang" at them.
Despite its obvious military nature, Suarez said the real
purpose of this assault was to test leadership under pressure, by
throwing all the different scenarios and problems of a field patrol
at the cadets.
"The majority of people in Army ROTC aren’t ever going to go
into the infantry, but we use infantry tactics because we can see a
broad range of leadership dimensions in a patrol like this."
For the cadets, the most important part of the exercise came
after the last shot was fired, Suarez said. Each student fills out
a self-evaluation card which is then evaluated by a more senior
student on the basis of "oral communication," "physical stamina,"
"followership" and 13 other categories.
The purpose of the evaluation, Suarez explained, is to get the
third-year cadets ready for their summer training camp where their
leadership skills are evaluated by professional army officials from
around the country, whose report affects their military
careers.
This system of action and evaluation stems from the army’s core
philosophy of leadership development, Zamora said. Unlike some
organizations, which take leaders for granted, the army emphasizes
developing new managers for its ranks.
"There’s two points of view on leadership  that it’s an
inherent quality or a learned quality," he said. "We take the point
of view that it can be learned and mastered."