Photo By Patricia Deal | A Soldier and NCO team climb the “ToughOne” during the obstacle course challenge...... read more read more
FORT HOOD, Texas—Trading scrubs and stethoscopes for M16s and rucksacks, 26 Soldiers and noncommissioned officers from hospitals and clinics throughout the Regional Health Command Central area tested their mental and physical prowess during the “Best Warrior” competition hosted by Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center here April 8-12, 2019.
While they are all used to dealing with the stress of a busy trauma room or running sick call, the five-day, multi-event competition took competitors out of their comfort zone and pushed them to prove their readiness skills with warrior tasks and battle drills relevant to today’s operating environment.
Sgt. Aaron Angulo and Spc. Henry Gross from Brooke Army Medical Center rose above the field to earn the title of NCO of the Year and Soldier of the Year.
Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Johnson, commanding general, RHC-C, gave the winners their trophies and praised the competitors at the April 12 award presentation.
“Only one Soldier and one NCO are going to walk away from here as our best warriors, but I think that regardless of how you ended up today, every one of you is a winner. I want each of you to recognize that you here today represent something greater than that of those who were not willing to take the challenge and are not sitting here today,” Johnson told the competitors.
While he’s handed out awards at many competitions like this throughout his career, Johnson wanted to reiterate the importance of these competitions and the value they offer.
“It's all about readiness. It comes down to practicing and executing the skills that allow you to be successful at your medical center or on the battlefield. We are medics that have to be able to transcend an environment, and be able to be just as ready regardless of the setting. No matter what your particular MOS (military occupational specialty) is, whether it's a 68W combat medic or 68H optical laboratory specialist, you’re foremost and first always Soldiers. You are responsible for your brothers or your sisters at arms who stand beside you in battle.”
Although there's no way to truly simulate true battle scenarios, Johnson said that competition such as this try to get as close as possible. The intent is to simulate what actions would be needed to create lifesaving interventions and to preserve personal survival during combat.
To test their physical and mental prowess during the week of competition, competitors faced an obstacle course, day and night land navigation, a small arms and stress shoot, urban warfare simulations, a 12-mile ruck march and written and oral boards. The competitors also were tested on the new Army Combat Fitness Test, a first for all of them.
The event schedule was tight, giving competitors little rest in between.
Angulo and Gross are used to working under stress due to their hectic schedules at BAMC, the Department of Defense's largest facility and only Level 1 Trauma Center. Angulo, a licensed practical nurse working in critical care said that he and Gross, a radiology specialist, don’t have a lot of opportunity to train up on warrior tasks.
“Both of us have pretty intense schedules so we trained a lot on our own time like at 4 a.m., after hours and on weekends,” Angulo said. “I like to stay active and am pretty physically fit, but there’s so much more that goes into training for a competition at this level. Our leadership was really good about supporting us. Plus we helped motivate each other as things got tougher and tougher.”
Gross agreed that the competition was more than just a test of physical strength.
“It was really tougher than anything I experienced. It’s more than just being physically capable of doing things like run through an obstacle course or do a ruck march. You have to be tactically proficient, too. I struggled with things like the day and night land navigation because I don’t have a lot of experience with it,” Gross said. “But it did feel good to challenge myself and see just what I could accomplish. Sometimes I think our leadership had more confidence in us than what we had in ourselves. But we pushed through. We didn’t want to disappoint them.”
Angulo said that they will continue to train and spend more time in areas they felt they need to improve, and is optimistic about their chances of winning the MEDCOM Best Warrior competition and going on to the Army level competition.
“This whole thing is not really about winning. It’s about making all of us—not just the winners--better leaders,” Angulo said. “We all need to take what we learned from this competition and then take it back to our Soldiers to train and develop them. We need to look at ways to incorporate readiness training into our normal schedules.”
| Date Taken: | 04.24.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 05.17.2019 12:40 |
| Story ID: | 322494 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 82 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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