I've mentioned talking about the Warrant Officer Entry Course (WOEC) in more detail. Well I guess this is a good time to do it. Historical note, this is what is was like in 1987, there have been a lot of changes, I don't know what most of them are, but this is only a recount of my life in 1987. My first thought upon arrival at WOEC was disappointment. While the majority of the post was more modern buildings, the WOEC was all housed in good ole World War II buildings. The first 2 weeks were mostly like a reception station at any post. They barely acknowledged your existence, because until you started training you really didn't matter to anyone. 2 weeks of getting your act together. Getting all the items you'd need for the next 6 weeks of training but mostly waiting and a lot of dread as you could see what the candidates in training were going through.
There were other "Administrative" things that had to be taken care of while in Snowbird status before training commenced. Aside from acquiring gear that you would need for your training, all aviation tracked candidates had to take the Class I Flight Physical I'd mentioned earlier. That took up a couple of days, but the one item I was dreading the most was the Physical Fitness Test (PT Test for short).
PT Tests have always been my nemesis. I've never been a great athlete and I'll admit my PT Test scores had always been mediocre at best. I wasn't really worried about the test itself as I'd been training with the Scout Platoon of the 5/327 Infantry before I made the Permanent Change of Station (PCS) to Fort Rucker Alabama from Fort Richardson Alaska. What I was concerned about was acclimatization.
Acclimatization is your ability to adapt to the surrounding climate conditions and I was struggling. In May of 1981, while attending an Army training course in Fort Lee Virginia, I'd developed a severe case of Heat Exhaustion nearly to the point of Heat Stroke during a field training exercise (FTX). I ended up in the Emergency Room and received 2 liters of IV fluids because I was so dehydrated. I missed the remaining part of that FTX but I had passed enough of the training to merit graduating the course. I'd also earned the label "Heat Casualty". Once you have had your body stressed severely due to dehydration, one of the unfortunate results is that you are statistically more prone to have the experience again.
My body had become acclimated to the cold weather in Alaska. When we'd left, the high in Anchorage was 20 below zero. I'd been running all Winter in snow and cold and now I was in Alabama where the low temperature was higher than the summer high temps I'd experienced in Alaska the past 2 seasons. Add with that the oppressive humidity and the result was my body having a very bad reaction to the conditions. I had voiced my concerns to our Platoon Sergeant who would administer our test and she did have some compassion for us. The PT test was scheduled for 6 AM on a Saturday morning and it was a balmy 70 degrees. I'd been in Alabama 29 days and I was up against the wall as I had to pass this test today. Obviously, I did, but I assure you it was not my best test score ever, but better that I expected.
Then comes the WOEC experience. First there is a bit of history about Warrant Officer Candidate School. It was created after World War I when a need was identified for engineer technicians to plant land mines and some clerical positions. The rank of Warrant Officer was created between the existing enlisted and officer ranks in the US Army. Attaining Warrant Officer rank became a goal of many tenured enlisted personnel between WWI and WWII. "The Warrant Officer grade continued to be used as a reward to enlisted men of long service and special qualifications rather than to fill essential military requirements." In World War II, patterned after the British, aviation training was opened to enlisted soldiers who earned the rank of Warrant Officer Junior Grade upon completion of training.
The Warrant Officer corps continued to evolve after WWII when the Air Force was separated from the Army and helicopters became a war fighting tool in the 50s and 60s. Both Commissioned officers and Warrant officers were assigned to helicopter flight training in the Army. In 1984, it was determined that a training school for newly selected Warrant Officers was needed and this was the birth of WOEC. WOEC was formally created in 1984. Before WOEC, if an enlisted soldier was selected to be a Warrant Officer, they were just awarded the rank. With WOEC, you now had to complete the 6 week training course, and of course that meant that you now had to pay for the privilege, and pay you did.
How can I describe this course? In a lot of ways it is like basic training, magnified. You have the feeling of being lost without a map, overwhelmed by ridiculous attention to detail and just generally harassed. Like basic training, the main intent of WOEC is to weed out those who can't handle it. If you've seen the movie "An Officer and a Gentleman" you get an idea of how this is done. First you are awarded the fictitious rank of Warrant Officer Candidate. If you were below pay Grade E5 you were bumped up to E5, if you had a higher pay grade, you kept it. But we were all the same, and treated worse than a private. You were addressed and called yourself "Candidate". When addressing the WOEC equivalent of a drill sergeant (Your "friendly" Training and Counselling Officer aka "TAC Officer") you started and ended any answer with Sir and identified yourself: EG: Sir, Candidate Kempf, Yes Sir). If you were outside in the designated company area and you visibly saw a TAC officer, regardless of the distance away, you were required to salute and give the greeting of the day: Sir, Candidate Kempf, Good Morning Sir! This was of course done at the top of your lungs. To make things more interesting, you were also required to run, anytime you were outside and not on steps. When marching, you had 8 steps from quick-time to double-time. (Forward March, 2 steps then Double-time March was the norm.)
There were 3 active platoons in WOEC, Red, White and Blue Platoons that were nominally called flights. One flight started training every 2 weeks. Junior, Intermediate and Senior flights. The Junior flight always seemed to be in crisis, Intermediate flight was figuring it out and the Senior flight, like all seniors had it all figured out. Everything was done by seniority so the Junior class was always last.
The first day as an active flight, was all about getting organized. The leadership team was appointed (Flight Leader, Flight Sergeant, Admin Officer, Security Officer, Standardization officer and other tasks I can't remember. The Admin Officer became my assignment and was both a blessing and a curse. (More about that in later entries.) Unlike all my other training environments I'd encountered in the Army, this was the first one where almost everything you had with you was a "Display item". We had a single wall locker that we kept the select items that were not inspectable such as our tackle box with "tools of the trade" that that consisted of plastic signs used to wrap clothing rolls to make them wrinkle free, stencils, magic markers and a very gaudy yellow track suit that was used for physical training. Everything else, was an item that had to be on display for inspection. A place for everything and everything in its place.
You had 4 set of battle Dress Uniforms (BDUs) which were the standard duty uniform. A field jacket, and dress uniforms. 2 sets of boots, 1 set of dress shoes, 1 pair of running shoes. I don't remember if there was a limit on the number of T-Shirts, underwear and socks, Your pin on insignia for you uniforms had to be pinned on a fresh 5 x 7 index card (no extra holes when some pieces were in use) 2 towels, and a washcloth. Your display wall locker had 4 to 12 hanging items (4 minimum, 12 maximum) depending on how much dirty laundry you had either at the laundry or in your dirty laundry bag. Hanging items had to be spaced equal distance apart. they measured this to the 64th of an inch. Try that in your closet if you think it is easy. T-Shirts were rolled 7 inches wide and could have no wrinkles. Same for underwear. In case you are curious, there are shortcuts for all these, and as flights leave the training environment, outgoing candidates sell their equipment to incoming snowbirds. Sometimes they even give you a tip or two. One tool was a 12 inch wooden army issue ruler. It had 9 notches on the back side marked 4, 5, 6 ... 12. These notches corresponded with the number of hanging items in your wall locker. You counted the hangars, then used the corresponding notch to space the hangars and Viola! they were evenly spaced, to the 64th of an inch. Total time with practice, maybe 15 seconds.
All this sounds fairly normal for a training environment, and it was. The crazy part was the attention to detail for all items. Socks, for example, had to be rolled individually, 4 inches wide and cuffed so that the rolled up part in the center didn't show any of the side of the roll. This also created a slot on the bottom side that had to be aligned in each sock of the display. "They called it a "Smile" and the standard was smiles toward the isle. (The slot oriented toward the center bay isle in the barracks.) There was a standard for EVERYTHING. The Standardization officer was the deciding authority on any detail that was not specifically designated by the bible of WOEC, the Warrant Officer Guide. This kept him busy the first couple weeks as it turned out to be a lot the guide didn't cover. I learned this as one of the jobs for the administrative officer, was to write memorandums detailing all these standards. (NOTE: A memorandum is a military format letter. They have a regulation for how to format them, and of course, everything was done to regulation.)
Very quickly it seemed evident that it was impossible to do all the required tasks in the time allotted. Time was a precious commodity. 1st call was at 04:53 and 1st formation was at 05:00. In that 7 minutes, you had to get up, make your bed to inspection standard, setup your display (Wall Locker, Desk and Bunk) ensure that the building was ready for inspection and be lined up on the company street (the barracks locked by the security officer) and at attention for Physical Training (PT). No big deal, RIGHT! The first morning, all was chaos and if we were all out there by 05:15 is was a miracle as we didn't have our act together. We were chewed out then taken for an hour of physical abuse then brought back to the barracks. The security officer learned the hard way that you have to check all the doors every day, because during the night one of the TAC officers slipped in and unlocked a fire Escape door on the 2nd floor (They are always locked from the inside) and we found all our mattresses, blankets, sheets etc. in the middle of the immaculately polished center bay floor we never walked on due to it's high gloss shine. Now we had to make up our beds again, shower and shave, have the barracks clean and ready for inspection and be information for chow in 20 minutes.
Since we were the Junior flight, we had to be ready first (The order going to chow was in reverse seniority, so newbies had to be ready 1st.) Of course this means less time for cleanup. We had the supervisory assistance of the TAC officers (This generally included the standard in your face being chewed at at attention, push-ups and other friendly advice) and eventually we made it to the dining facility. This is where the fun really begins.
Disciplined Dining. This was the order of the day, every meal, Monday through Friday, weekends were a tad more relaxed. The first trick, getting in the door. Field Manual (FM) 22-5 Drill and Ceremony was followed to the Tee. So your Flight (Platoon) leader has to give the correct commands, and the squad leaders the correct supplementary commands for you to file into the building. Day one, this might take 5 to 10 precious minutes and a lot of push-ups, but finally you are in chow line. But you are not just standing in line, you are standing at Parade Rest (Feet shoulder width apart hands overlapping in the small of your back, palms outward and staring at the head of the guy in front of you). To move forward, you came to the position of attention, then stepped forward, then returned to Parade Rest. No looking around, no talking, unless a TAC officer comes up and starts asking you questions. Screw up, and it is outside for push-ups, then into the back of the line. Disconcerting.
Eventually, you make it to the serving line, and like a miracle, you could now act like a normal human. The meals were served by civilians and so you were allowed to interact. The food was plentiful and hot, and generally tasty for institutional food. Since there were no snacks, only 3 meals a day, you got what you could while you could. There were some rules, 3 glasses of liquid (Minimum) and 2 haad to be water. You had to have a knife, fork and tablespoon, even if you were getting only cold cereal. You all had to sit as a group. Until meal rights were given, you could talk. You took advantage of that while you could. This was likely the freest part of your day outside the barracks.
The tables in the dining facility were the standard institutional folding tables with built in benches. Each table seats 8, 4 people on each side and the tables were lined up in rows of 5 end to end making a long continuous table that seated 30. You sat in groups of 4, 2 on each side, and then you placed your pistol belt with canteen and headgear on top of it under you seat. You had a tray, it had to be aligned to the edge of the table, Your 3 glasses of liquid were aligned against the back edge of the tray on each corner and the center. You plate was aligned and centered on the forward edge of the tray. Your fork was laid tines on the plate upside down with the handle pointing to the right, your spoon the same manner on the left and your knife on the back edge of the plate pointing to the left and blade edge pointing away from you. (If the edge of the knife is pointing toward you, you were suicidal, ya know.) Now you could begin to eat. But of course there is a method and standards. You sat at the position of attention on the forward 6 inches of you seat. Hands in your lap holding you napkin. You took your right hand, reached across your plate and grabbed your tablespoon, (also known as a WOC Shovel) Scooped up the largest amount of stuff you could from your plate, and then brought it up to your mouth. This sounds easier that it is because you were at attention, back straight, and you could not bend forward. You were facing ahead and looking down only with your eyes. If you took into account the placement of the plate, on the edge of the table, and your sitting on the edge of the seat, the plate was barely visible.
Now that you had managed to get food in the spoon, you opened your mouth and got the spoon in, closed your mouth and removed spoon. But wait, there is more! You had to return the spoon to its resting place on the left side of the plate. Then your right hand to your lap to get your napkin, then wipe your mouth and return your hand to your lap, then you could chew. With practice, you could eat an entire plate of food in 30 spoons or less, hence the Tablespoon, not a teaspoon. While going through the serving line, you learned quickly to cut anything that needed cutting, and mix everything into one big pile of mush. This aided you in actually getting food to your mouth. There is no hand food, all had to be eaten with utensils. and each time, only with the right hand. The spoon wasn't mandated, it was just practical, you learn a lot about being practical.
Eventually, your long table filled up. When it did, and when the last 2 people had their dishes and equipment arranged, then they stood up, facing each other at the end of the table, did a facing movement to turn facing down this long table, and they started the meal rites. Meal rites went like this:
Candidate on the Left: "Candidates on my left, please stop eating."
Candidate on the Right "Candidates on my right, please stop eating."
Candidate on the Left: "Candidates, please take all orders from the candidate on my right."
The rest of the commands are given by the candidate on the right.
"Candidates, please sit at the position of attention in the forward 6 inches of your chair." Everyone sat up a tad bit straighter in response (You were already that way when you started).
"Candidates, please ensure your pistol belt and headgear are centered beneath your seat." You bent slightly to the right and glance down, you already had done this too).
"Candidates, please ensure your tray is grounded to the forward leading edge of the table," (Again and with every succeeding command, you essentially feigned doing the task you'd already done when you sat down initially).
"Candidates, please ensure your main entree dish is centered and grounded to the forward leading edge of your tray."
"Candidates, please ensure you silverware is properly grounded to your main entree dish."
"Candidates, please ensure any auxiliary dishes are grounded to the forward right edge of your tray."
"Candidates, please ensure that you have 3 glasses of liquid, two of which must be water, grounded to the forward left, center and right of your tray."
"Candidates, please enjoy your (Morning, Noon or Evening) meal."
After the last command, the group sounded off in unison with a previously agreed saying, then you could finish your meal, get up, and head outside.
You quickly learned to time your seating to either be at the beginning of a table or the end. The absolute worst thing to happen was someone sit at the right end and not know the meal rights. With hassle from the TAC officers, it might mean sitting there at attention for 15 minutes while the candidate giving the commands was berated. So, whenever possible, I made sure I was the candidate giving the rights.
Not everything about WOEC was ridiculously hard. There was a bit of compassion, we had laundry service. You could get 2-day service, not free, but well worth the cost. Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings were the only time you could visit with family. While the training was hard, the isolation from family was harder. The only reason it was bearable was they kept us too busy to think about it too often.
Officially, the training day was 04:53 to 2100 because we had to allowed 8 hours to sleep. This sounds like a good thing, but it was more to force us to manage our time better. At lights out, you had to be in bed. Your only exception from bed is the bathroom. By taking 8 hours out of the day, we had much less time for preparation. Classes were 08:00 to 12:00 then 13:00 to 17:00. 3 hours for meals, 1 hour for PT and you lose about 2 hours going back and forth, so you end up with about 2 hours a day preparation time. Of course they didn't make it that easy, you also could end up doing penance marching up and down the company street in your Class A uniform for a hour or two as punishment for rules infractions. I got lucky, I only ended up marching for 2 hours if memory serves me correctly.
My penance was usually spending my time writing up memorandums requesting one thing or another. This was made even harder than usual, as I had no access to a typewriter, so all of these had to be printed in longhand, time consuming. It took me the 1st week or so to get the format down pat, then it was just the volume of paperwork I had to complete. Other team members started helping me and other leadership positions out as ones that didn't have additional duties or penalty laps. That made life a lot easier for me.
I'm not going to mention a lot about academics in WOEC, just because there wasn't a lot of meaningful instruction in the classes. I mean 12 hours of Ethics training really is meaningless. If you don't understand ethics by the time you get to WOEC, 12 hours of classroom training isn't going to help you. Like many other things, classwork was a tool to take up your time. I cannot think of any other classes we attended, what I do know is we had 8 hours of class Monday through Friday and I can't think of anything I learned during that period in classroom instruction that I hadn't already learned somewhere else in the army. For airforce types this may not have been so true.
What I will mention though is TAC alley. TAC alley was the 2nd floor of the of the WOEC administration building. The TAC officers had their offices there and by each office was a distribution box for information for the Flights. Just getting to TAC alley included its own set of challenges, like pull-up bars. Every time you passed these bars, you were obliged to do 4, 4-count pull-ups. (W-O-C-1, W-O-C-2, etc.) When I first arrived at WOEC, just 1 pull-up was a challenge. That didn't last long though. One of my duties as the ADMIN officer was to check the distribution box before class and after class, 4 times a day. This meant passing the pull-up bars 8 times every day and obliged me to a minimum of 32 4 count pull-ups a day. Needless to say, by the time the 6 weeks were over, I was pretty good at pull-ups. But that was just one of the TAC alley challenges.
The distribution box for my flight was at the far end of the hall, which meant that I had to pass the offices for all the other flights TAC officers en-route to my goal. It seemed to be a rite of passage that other flight TAC officers needed to ensure that I was squared away and healthy. The WOC Guide stated that if you were in TAC alley and a TAC officer entered from either the stairs or their office, candidates were required to brace against the wall at the position of attention with 4 points of contact on the wall. Head, shoulders, buttocks and heels against the wall. This had to be done immediately and you had to avoid any obstacles, like pictures, distro boxes, doors etc. The TAC officers then would generally question you on a myriad of subjects usually to the point of failure, or if you were very lucky their point of boredom. In most cases the former. Providing a wrong, incorrect or even timid answer generally resulted in some type of physical discomfort, the "Dying Cockroach" being a TAC officer favorite. (Lay on you back, arms and legs pointed to the sky until the TAC officer got tired, tired of watching you in pain,) Most days, I managed to get through unscathed, but I recall 1 day getting caught incoming and outgoing by a total of 4 TACs, that was a very tiring trip that lasted over 30 minutes. (Normal time about 30 seconds, get in, get out.)
WOEC was great at inspiring teamwork. It was also an exercise in cleanliness and organization. For example, taking showers. The building was a WWII standard barracks with some slight modifications. They nominally slept 60 people, roughly 30 per floor. 5 toilets, 5 sinks and 2 single person showers. that sounds pretty normal. Now cycle all 60 people through the showers after PT. Add a 20 minute time limit to get clean, dressed, have the barracks inspection ready and get out to formation. It sounds impossible but it is not, if you all cooperate. Showers are done in a Japan bath inspired way. You jumped in the shower and got wet, then jumped out so the next guy could get wet (There is a line of course) once out you lathered and scrubbed yourself and the line kept moving, this gave you about a minute to shuffle and scrub before you got back to the shower and rinsed off. If you were the last guy, you got to dry the shower and squeegee the floor to the drain, then dry the drain cover. In this manner, everyone got showered in say 3 - 4 minutes. Shaving was next. If you are speedy, then you got to use one of the 5 sinks. After most people were done, shaving was limited to the last sink while rest were cleaned and dried for inspection. Each squad in the Flight was tasked with a specific cleaning assignment that had to be completed before we left the building. Most days, things went pretty well after the first week or so.
Let's talk about clean. This wasn't your normal, you lived in a barracks, kept it clean enough to be healthy clean. This was on the border of ridiculous. If it could be polished, it was polished. Did you know that the shiny nickel plated drain pipes are mostly copper with nickel plating? they are. And if you polish them daily for years at a time, the nickel plating wears off, but you can really make that copper gleam. Same for floor drains. They are made out of brass. The screws that held the drain plates in place were long gone when we arrived, and both the bottom and top of the drain cover and the brass drain itself had a bright golden sheen that had to be maintained, daily. This place was anything but low maintenance. In the bays, each bay had an open center section that no-one except a TAC officer walked upon. We polished the floor with Turtlewax until it gleamed like a 57 Chevy in the sun. Walking on it got you the privilege of buffing it, for the next week, or until someone else was caught transgressing the sacred portion of the floor.
I'd mentioned before that everything in your wall locker was inspectable. Well when it came to cleaning up, this made for some more "how can you use this item and still pass inspection" quandaries that some smart people figured out. Your bar of soap for example. It had to be in the basic clear plastic soap holder. But for inspection the soap had to be dry and the holder immaculate. Pray tell, how does one shower with their soap (you had to use the bar that was inspected) and have it dry, hard and not leaving soap residue on the tray? Simple, you never get it wet. You take your washcloth, lay it on your desk flat and unfolded and then rub the soap real hard on to the washcloth. It rubs on the to the terrycloth pretty easy and then you put it back into the dish and position it for inspection in the drawer. Then take your washcloth and towel with you for a shower. Your towel and washcloth were the only 2 display items that could be on display wet.
Barracks inspections. These happened generally every day and on you desk was the demerit list. Demerits were all listed in the Warrant Officer Candidate Guide. The TAC officers amused themselves with creative demerits. They would stack them (Give multiple demerits, each having a higher point score to where a minor infraction could rack up 50 or more demerits). So you could get something like -1, -7, -13, -21, -25, -31 for mud on a boot. Translated is came out something like this:
-1 Dirty = 1 demerit
-7 Inattention = 2 Demerits
-13 Failure to follow instructions = 5 Demerits
-21 Not in accordance with FM/AR or WOC Guide = 10 Demerits
-25 Gross Misconduct = 15 Demerits
-31 FLAGRANT NEGLECT = 25 Demerits
So a spot of mud would get you 57 demerits
The 1st inspection, the average candidate had 1000+ demerits, and the really talented ones had 2500 or more. I avoided being really talented in the demerit department. I knew all about this because as the ADMIN officer, I got to add it all up, and post the roster for the bottom 10% who got to walk the company street for 2 hrs that night in their Class A uniform.
About the 4th day, (About 3:30 AM actually) we got our start for Hell Day.
More to come, this just touched the surface.
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