Courtesy Photo | New York Army National Guard Spec. William Neumeister assembles and disassembles an...... read more read more
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FORT DRUM--Four Soldiers became the first in the New York Army National Guard to earn the new Expert Soldier Badge on Oct. 1, 2021, following two weeks of training and testing at Fort Drum.
The four men joined another 950 Soldiers across the Army who have earned the badge.
Created in October 2019, the Expert Soldier Badge is open to all Soldiers who are not infantrymen, Special Forces Soldiers or medics. Those Soldier earn the Expert Infantry Badge and Expert Field Medic Badge.
As of July, according to Army Training and Doctrine Command, only 19% of the 5,000 Soldiers who have sought the Expert Soldier Badge have passed the course.
Sgt. 1st Class Ryan Blount, a member of the 427th Brigade Support Battalion; Sgt. Alexander Sonneville and Spc. Nicholas Weber, both assigned to the 2nd Squadron, 101st Cavalry; and Spc. William Neumeister, assigned to the 10th MCPOD; had to successfully complete 30 Soldier tasks, complete a physical fitness assessment, and complete a timed 12-mile foot march.
The session run by the 10th Mountain Division allocated two weeks for training and testing. The first week, from Sept. 20 to 26, gave Soldiers a chance to review the skills. The second week, from Sept. 27 to Oct. 1, was the testing phase.
The New York Guard Soldiers arrived at Fort Drum early so they could get a jump on the training and then they resolved to work together throughout the program, Blount said.
“Once we got there and we saw what it was all about and how challenging it was, it was pretty clear we were going to succeed or fail as a group,” said Blount, a full time human resource specialist.
“We wanted to make sure we didn’t leave anybody behind,” Blount said. “We went at it as a team.”
“We would stand there and test each other while we were getting ready to go through the lanes,” Sonneville said.
The toughest part of the two weeks for him, Blount said, was “maintaining that outward appearance of constant motivation” for the other Soldiers and “managing the stress and anxiety.”
“With the 30 plus tasks that you have to perform near flawlessly it can get extremely stressful and overwhelming,” Blount explained.
The tasks are broken down into three lanes: weapons tasks, medical tasks and patrol tasks which involve things like map reading, transmitting a spot report and emplacing a Claymore mine.
Sonneville, a cavalry scout and team leader in the 2nd Squadron, 101st Cavalry’s Alpha Troop, said it was “kind of overwhelming” to work through tasks involving the Mark 19 grenade launcher, the M-2 .50 caliber machinegun and the M249 squad automatic weapon without making a mistake.
They also had to learn to break down the new M-17 Sig Sauer pistol because that is the pistol issued to 10th Mountain Division Soldiers.
Weber, a part-time college student and full-time security guard who is also a cavalry scout in Alpha Troop, said he also found the weapons lane challenging.
That was probably because it was the first set of tasks they had to complete and he had to get used to the system, Weber said.
He got interested in tackling the badge after talking to Sonneville, Weber said.
“Because it is a new badge, and not many people have it, it was something I wanted to go for,” Weber said.
“Just having the word ‘expert’ attached to you is awesome,” he said. “And at the very least, if I failed, I know I would have learned a lot of stuff I could bring back to my unit.”
Neumeister, a signals intelligence analyst, said he signed up for the ESB competition when his chance to go to Air Assault School fell through.
Going to the ESB competition at Fort Drum was Neumeister’s last official act as a member of the New York Army Guard and the 10th MCPOD, a unit which supplements the 10th Mountain Division headquarters.
He has since transferred to the Colorado Army National Guard’s 19th Special Forces Group, where he will serve as a full-time intelligence analyst.
Earning the ESB has been a real confidence booster as he moves into a full-time job with a highly specialized unit in Denver, Neumeister said.
The biggest challenge for him, Neumeister said, was learning a new skill, becoming an expert on it and then “completely brain dump” the information and master something else.
“I usually carry a notebook with me and in two years in the Army I have filled in ten pages,” he said.
“I filled that up immediately. My hand is a lot stronger now from taking notes, with how much I had to write,” he joked.
| Date Taken: | 10.13.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 10.14.2021 09:16 |
| Story ID: | 407218 |
| Location: | FORT DRUM , NY, US |
| Hometown: | CICERO, NY, US |
| Hometown: | LATHAM, NY, US |
| Hometown: | LIVERPOOL, NY, US |
| Hometown: | WEBSTER, NY, US |
| Web Views: | 227 |
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