Courtesy Photo | A company re-enlistment non-commissioned officer assigned to 4th Brigade Combat Team,...... read more read more
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LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan – The 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, conducted mobile retention training on Forward Operating Base Shank, Afghanistan, April 13-16 for 37 re-enlistment non-commissioned officers from across Task Force Patriot Brigade’s footprint.
Instructors used the training to educate company-level re-enlistment NCOs about the Army’s current re-enlistment environment so soldiers can receive up-to-date counselling and re-evaluate short- and long-term goal planning, said U.S. Army Master Sgt. Robert Theriot, 4th BCT, 10th Mtn. Div. TF Patriot’s senior career counselor and Opelousas, La., native.
Re-enlistment NCOs can use the knowledge to help soldiers achieve and understand their re-enlistment options and assist them if they are faced with leaving the Army, he said.
“The Army, as we know, is going to go through a drawdown phase. We have more people than we do positions, so the Army right now is looking to us to effectively counsel soldiers on possibly ETSing [expiration of term of service] and not staying with the team,” said Theriot. “It is not because they are substandard soldiers; it is not because they are marginal soldiers; it is just because the Army has identified soldiers who are working in an military occupational specialty that is at 200 or 300 percent strength across the Army.”
The Army will have to separate some soldiers in overmanned positions, he said.
“The reality of that is retention, especially now - even in the deployed environment – has become more important, because these soldiers need to be counselled on how to properly ETS,” said Theriot.
Theriot said the mobile retention course offers an overview of the retention program. However, he compared it to drinking from a fire hose, in that so much information flows from the course instruction that four days is really not enough time to get through all of it. Therefore, what he stresses to the company re-enlistment NCOs is the importance of counselling soldiers on short- and long-term goal planning, using what he called the cradle to grave concept.
“When soldier enlists in the Army, that is their inception into what we would hope is the Army as a career, or the Army as a profession, making a soldier or creating a soldier who has positive experiences and can establish or reach their goals through military means so they get from zero years to 20 years through constant counselling, constant goal updating and things of that nature,” he said.
Ideally, a soldier who wants or has to ETS should have a plan before getting out, especially if he or she is married and has children. The Army has services soldiers in such situations can use even in a deployed theater, with Internet access, including résumé building, said Theriot.
“If you look at the Army as a major corporation, corporations make cutbacks all the time. They give people pink slips all the time,” said Theriot. “What makes the Army great is that they attempt to identify all of this stuff as early as possible and offer services to help soldiers properly ETS so that they don’t find themselves in a bind.”
Company re-enlistment NCOs who attended the course are the leaders who counsel soldiers and work with them and their chains of command to provide data and access to sources to help soldiers separating make informed decisions about their futures.
U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Marc Snopkowski is a satellite communications NCO from Niagara Falls, N.Y., assigned to Company C, 4th Brigade Special Troops Battalion’s Task Force Dagger, 10th Mtn. Div. He has been a company retention NCO for about two years and said the training was a big refresher for him. He said he appreciates receiving the refresher because retention policies change often, and he needs to know what he can and cannot do to assist soldiers regarding re-enlistments.
“Coming to this class makes me ... understand what is really going on [and] what I can do for these soldiers to help them out,” said Snopkowski. “They are doing a job that less than one percent of the U.S. civilian takes [on], so what they are doing is important. Keeping them in the Army, keeping quality soldiers in the Army, is going to make our lives easier in the end and the safety of our country as a whole.”
U.S. Army Sgt. Troy Delaune is a mechanic from Franklin, La., assigned to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 10th Aviation Bde., TF Knighthawk, based at Fort Drum, N.Y. He has been a company retention NCO for about one year.
“Retention is really helping me out a lot to learn about what soldiers want to do, what their frames of thought about the Army are and, basically, making decisions,” said Delaune, who said the course taught him about bonuses, qualifications for soldiers and effective counselling.
“These are life-changing decisions that we are in charge of,” said Delaune. “So either your [a soldier’s] life is going to change to the civilian world or your life is going to stay the same and you are going to make that change to better yourself in the Army as a whole.”
U.S. Army Sgt. Anthony Torres, an infantryman from Pomona, Calif., assigned to Company B, 2nd Bn., 30th Infantry Regiment’s TF Storm, has been a company retention NCO for less than one month. He said the mobile retention class is good because it taught him to process re-enlistments and counsel soldiers the right way - instead of him having to figure these things out on his own.
“I was always taught, and what I believe is, ‘Soldiers first, mission always.’ I don’t know about everybody else, but I am not going to try to convince somebody to stay in,” said Torres. “My main responsibility, that I am going to try to do, is show them what is better or how it would benefit him and his family to stay in ... just put out the facts and let him decide on his own.”
All 37 NCOs who enrolled for the course earned their graduation certificates, said Theriot.
“I would think that they considered all of it to be important. I would think that they considered all of it to be something that not only would benefit them but would benefit their chains of command,” said Theriot.
| Date Taken: | 04.14.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 04.26.2011 18:38 |
| Story ID: | 69389 |
| Location: | LOGAR PROVINCE, AF |
| Web Views: | 327 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Retention NCOs train to retain, counsel soldiers on re-enlistment options, by MSG Ryan Matson, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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