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EASTOVER, S.C. - Eisenhower called him “the greatest soldier of
our time.” Churchill said he was “a true organizer of victory.”
Orson Welles said he was the “greatest man I ever met” and George W.
Bush called him a “great architect.”
But what tremendous
achievements and accomplishments did America's first five star
general, Gen. George C. Marshall, bring to the table for so many
world leaders to sing his praise?
Was it his "Marshall Plan,"
which helped a post World War European economy recover? Was it the
fact that he became just the third United States Army officer to win
the Nobel Peace Prize? Or was it his extensive work with the
National Guard and the Virginia Military Institute throughout his
long and illustrious career?
We may never know just what
exactly drove these polarizing figures of history to glorify him so
highly. But for one Army Reserve unit at Camp McCrady in Eastover,
South Carolina, perhaps his most significant contribution of World
War II is the one that defines their mission; the development of an
individual replacement system.
In 2004, the United States
Army Reserve tasked its 108th Training Command, based out of
Charlotte, North Carolina, to provide basic combat skills refresher
training to mobilized soldiers called to duty for military service
in various theaters of operation; from Djibouti in the Horn of
Africa to Afghanistan in Central and South Asia in support of the
War on Terror. On Aug. 15, 2004, the 108th stood up a task force to
accomplish that mission.
What to call it? That was an easy
one. There was no more fitting name than that of the great
organizer, architect and soldier himself. And thus Task Force
Marshall was born.
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December 5, 2014 - Staff Sgt. Aaron
Matthers, 108th Training Command (IET), provides marksmanship
instruction to individual augmentees in preparation for upcoming
mobilizations and deployments. Matthers and other mobilized
instructors with the 108th Training Command work alongside civilian
contractors to provide a three week basic combat skills refresher
course to Sailors and Soldiers as part of Task Force Marshall. Task
Force Marshall, located at Camp McCrady in Eastover, S.C., works in
conjunction with Navy Individual Augmentee Combat Training, or
NIACT, and supports more than 4,500 Sailors and 1,100 Soldiers
annually.
(U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Brian Hamilton)
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Task Force Marshall is comprised of a mobilized battalion
sized element of drill sergeants from the 108th Training
Command, U.S. Army Reserve, in addition to civilian
contractors who serve as weapons, munitions and tactics
specialists. Together, they provide a three week refresher
course to service members called to active duty from various
reserve components in support of the Global War on
Terrorism, global ebola crisis response and more.
“What we do here is provide a broad spectrum of combat
skills refresher training to service members deploying into
various theaters across the globe. We start with the basics
and try to determine their skill level. After we find out
where they're at tactically, we adjust fire and try to
provide them with an extra skill set that we think might be
useful, depending on the area of operations they're heading
to. We give them a good baseline skill set to start from
that they can further develop when they get to where they're
going,” said Staff Sgt. Aaron Matthers, 98th Training
Division, 108th Training Command, a mobilized drill sergeant
with Task Force Marshall.
“I've been a drill sergeant
for two and a half years now. This is a lot different from
working with new recruits in basic training. In Army basic
training you're taking a civilian with no knowledge of the
military and trying to turn them into a soldier. It's kind
of like molding a piece of clay. These guys are all seasoned
veterans. You run into different problems here and there, so
you have to be flexible. But in the end, everything comes
together and I think both the trainees and the cadre walk
away with an invaluable experience,” Matthers added.
Shortly after its inception, the need to train sailors for
the United States Navy became a reality as that service's
top brass realized that most of their individual mobilized
service members would be faced with the undeniable reality
of an ever-changing ground war. It seemed that more and more
of its sailors would be placed in positions away from the
confines and safety of the Navy's modern battleships and in
austere environments that few of them were trained to fight
in. The solution- Task Force Marshall.
In December
2005, the Navy sent its first group of sailors to the
three-week course with Task Force Marshall and since then
more than 9,000 sailors have received a wide array of
marksmanship, weapons and tactics training.
”Individual augmentee is a very good term because all of
these men and women come from totally different walks of
life. And once they leave here they are dispersed all over;
Uganda, Afghanistan, Qatar, just everywhere. So this just
makes sense,” said Master Chief Petty Officer Mark Seifert,
senior enlisted leader for the Navy Individual Augmentee
Combat Training, United States Navy Reserve.
But as
with any joint forces mission, there are always some kinks
that need to be ironed out before any quality, realistic
training can take place. Everything from the multiservice
rank structures to customs and courtesies between the two
services presented a challenge to both the soldiers and
sailors.
“The integration of multiple services
working together is always difficult at first, but the
service members we have today are extremely intelligent and
adapt very quickly. They did it in World War II and it
worked very well, so why not now? It's good business. It's
smart business,” Seifert said.
No matter what their
differences though, both the sailors with the Navy Reserve
and the drill sergeants with the Army Reserve work through
their issues with each class iteration to provide
professional, worthwhile training, giving extra emphasis to
the slogan "One team. One fight."
“From my
experience, I learned more here than I did when I
pre-qualified with the Navy, at least with the weapons
anyway. Here everything is done over and over again. It's
repetition and it becomes muscle memory. That's a good
thing. Back at the Navy, it was a one- or two-day thing. You
qualify and that's it. You don't touch the weapons again,”
said Senior Chief Petty Officer Martha Martinez, a Navy
Reserve Sailor headed to Djibouti as an individual augmentee.
“In a way we're the same. This works out well because
most of us here are in the Navy Reserve and just kind of got
yanked out of our jobs and homes, so to speak. With the
drill sergeants being in their Reserve component as well,
they have more of an understanding of what we are going
through. Everyone here understands that we all do things
different, but we're able to work out our differences and
get the training we need. It's been great so far,” Martinez
said.
So regardless if you serve in the active
component Army or reserve component Navy, no matter whether
you are called to fight in the Global War on Terrorism in
Afghanistan, or participate in Operation United Assistance
combating the spread of ebola in West Africa, and regardless
of whether you cry "honor, courage and commitment" or "Army
strong" come game day, Task Force Marshall embodies all of
the qualities that the great organizer of victory himself,
Gen. George C. Marshall, envisioned with his concept of the
individual replacement system. Yes, service members from
every walk of life can agree; Task Force Marshall truly
epitomizes the slogan "One team. One fight!"
More photos available below
By U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Brian Hamilton
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2015
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