Photo By Joseph Siemandel | Spc. Lillyanne Clarke and 1st Lt. JP Sumayang, 898th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 81st...... read more read more
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Spc. Lillyanne Clarke didn’t let second-guessing stop her from making history.
As a 19-year-old female combat engineer with the 898th Brigade Engineer Battalion, 81st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Clark has heard side comments about her ability to be a hardened combat engineer in the Army. “Nothing offensive,” she said. “Just little comments here and there whenever I participated in combatives and ruck marches – stuff like that.”
On July 1, 2022, Clarke became the youngest female graduate of the Sappers Leader Course. She’s also the first enlisted female and overall second female in the Washington Army National Guard and just the eighth enlisted female over all to ever complete the grueling course.
Known as one of most challenging and difficult schools the Army offers, the 28-day course at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri is designed specifically for combat engineers and trains leadership skills in a wide range of subjects such as mountaineering, rappelling, demolitions and obstacle breaching among many others. It’s so tough, the course has a high drop-out rate.
Although the course is designed to be brutal and demanding, Clarke looks back on her experience with a bit of fondness. Sleep deprivation and operating off of very little food are part of the experience, she said. At one point during the training, in the middle of the night, she started to see and hear things that weren’t there.
“I remember seeing cartoons,” she recalled. “And I thought the trees were cadre and they were telling me to move out. You learn so much about yourself. I didn’t know I could run off of zero sleep and very little food.”
Clarke’s Army career is just getting started. Having just graduated high school in 2020, the Olympia native already has a year-long deployment to Poland under her belt. That deployment was part of the NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence mission – a multi-nation forward-deployed presence with the purpose of deterring aggression in the region. She was attached to an infantry platoon in 3rd Battalion, 161st Infantry Regiment.
“On the deployment is where I really learned how to be a more competent combat engineer,” Clarke said. “We were in the field training so much and I really dove into the engineer manual to learn as much as I can.”
All the knowledge she absorbed in Poland helped her greatly as she navigated the sapper course. Her training on infantry tactics, field expedient demolitions and patrolling made her stand out from all the officers in her class.
“But I struggled with operation orders and mission planning,” she said. “All the officers knew how to do that – I had to learn a lot in that area. Now I can write one on my own.”
She also struggled with preconceived ideas about her abilities. During one particular training event, she was paired up with two male counterparts. She began to overhear comments about how she would likely slow them down. “I felt like I had to prove myself,” she recalled. “It turned out that one of the guys was the one slowing us down and I had to help carry his ruck.”
When she returns to her unit for drill she hopes that she can motivate her fellow Soldiers to attend the course if they can. Her and her fellow Sapper Leader Course graduate, 1st Lt. JP Sumayang, are making plans to collaborate on a pre-sapper course that they can implement at their unit to help prepare other Soldiers who will attend the class.
“That is what I hope my [Sapper] tab will do,” she said. “That it will help to change perspectives and that females will be taken a bit more seriously in combat arms.”
Clarke has her eyes set on Ranger School next. She plans to attend the two-month course next year.
| Date Taken: | 07.22.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 07.22.2022 19:52 |
| Story ID: | 425638 |
| Location: | CAMP MURRAY, WA, US |
| Web Views: | 2,233 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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