Senior Chief Yeoman Larkin Whetstone, leading chief petty officer of the Navy Liaison Office for the course, said Sailors must never forget that they are only receiving a foundation in combat skills training that will be built upon by further training when they reach theater.
“We are teaching initial combat and survival skills,” he said. “We are not trying to turn Sailors into infantrymen.”
Maybe not, but an IA’s typical training day is nothing to scoff at, either.
“You’re tired, but it’s an incredible training experience,” said CAPT Marcus Fisk, a Reservist and leader of Class 506. “We’re up at 5 a.m. and put in 18-hour days sometimes, but the instructors are outstanding and I’m having a lot of fun.”
Whetstone is quick to praise the Army instructors for the life-saving training they are providing, but he also wants his shipmates to understand how appreciative the Soldiers are for the Navy’s service.
“We asked the Army to perform this service so we expected to be treated like a customer, but they have treated the Navy like a partner,” Whetstone said. “The drill instructors are very motivated because they realize what they are here to do, which is to save lives. They know that every time they send a Sailor into theater it means another Soldier gets to take a break.”
Fisk sees this training as a direct reflection of the increase in joint service operations to meet changing military requirements. “I think this training brings with it an awareness and understanding that what we used to do in the Navy is changing,” said the surface warfare officer who spent 10 years in Navy Special Operations. “When you consider that 85 percent of the world’s population lives within 200 nautical miles of the sea and there are over 900,000 miles of navigable rivers in the world, you see it’s crucial for the Navy to be involved on the ground as well. I think in the future this type of training is going to become the rule rather than the exception.”
“The Sailors had no idea how difficult some of these tasks are, such as being an effective stacking team in urban operations,” Snyder said. “I cannot stress enough how critical Sailor readiness is in this training. IAs need to arrive here ready to train. That means they have all of their medical and dental requirements completed, their paperwork is in order and they are prepared physically, mentally and personally.
“Taking five or six Sailors with no combat experience and molding them into a functional and coherent team so they can meet their mission objective is a lot to ask in such a short time,” Snyder continued. “We are teaching them how to crawl, walk and maybe start to jog. Once in theater, they take it to the next level, but they must have something to work from and they will get that here.”
