Taking it back
to basics
Story and photos by U.S. Army Sgt. Samantha Parks
4th Public Affairs Detachment
C
adences, soldiers marching in formation and
junior enlisted servicemembers leading from the
front, this is what Camp Bondsteel can see at the
Joint Regional Detachment-East headquarters
every Saturday. Soldiers with JRD-E are getting back to
the basics with weekend classes covering everything from
marching to basic ri?e marksmanship skills.
“For the past two weeks we’ve gone over rest positions at
the halt, position of attention, hand salute, all the way up
to marching and now we are doing forming and aligning a
squad,” said U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Robert Summerlin,
a platoon sergeant with JRD-E from Richland, Miss.
“We’ve basically started at the beginning and are building
the foundation over again because a lot of soldiers have
forgotten.”
The weekend classes are rolled into an overall course called
the Primary Noncommissioned Of?cer’s Course.
U.S. Army 1st Sgt. Shawn Wussow, the JRD-E Command
PG 10
Sergeant Major and a native of Los Angeles explained that
PNCOC was replaced by the Primary Leadership Development
Course and is known today as the Warrior Leader Course.
Using the name PNCOC allowed him to reference going back
to the basics without using a course name that is still in use.
“It’s an attempt for us to bring our subordinate soldiers the
education to prepare them to be NCOs,” Summerlin said.
He added that it’s an aggressive step forward in making sure
everyone knows what the standards are.
“The audience for the course is all soldiers, but it started with
E-4 and up because they are the next in line to get promoted,”
Summerlin said. “We have E-5’s that serve as squad leaders
and staff sergeants that serve as platoon sergeants. It’s just
like WLC.”
Wussow said the students are placed in leadership roles like
?rst sergeant, platoon leader and squad leader to give them
more leadership experience.