| OCS: The Buck Stops Here |
196th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment There is a plaque that reads “The Buck Stops Here” in the 147th Regional Training Institute’s Officer Candidate School (OCS) barracks at Rickenbacker Army National Guard Enclave in Columbus, Ohio. OCS candidates presented this plaque to Maj. Jeffrey Buck, senior OCS TAC (Teach, Assess, Counsel) cadre at the 147th RTI, as a sign of respect. “The buck stops here" derives from the phrase "pass the buck," which means passing the responsibility to somebody else. In poker, a buckhorn handled knife was used as a button in frontier days to show whose turn it was to deal. If a player didn’t want to deal he could pass the responsibility (buck) on to the next player. In many respects, OCS is about dealing. The candidates cannot pass the buck and still make it as an officer. They have to deal with physical strain, mental challenge and emotional stress. They deal with land navigation, infantry exercises, physical fitness tests, leadership reaction exercises and most of all the deal with the TACs. “A TAC is someone who is a captain or above or an E-7 (sergeant first class) or above who is seasoned in the military, who can mentor a student and say, ‘When I did this, this is what I did, and it would be better if you did it this way,’” said Maj. Tim Maples, battalion executive officer, senior TAC and full-time training officer at the 2nd Battalion, Officer Candidate School at Ft. McClellan, Ala. TACs manage officer candidates much the way a drill sergeant would at basic training. Traditional course candidates indicated they began seeing TACs more as mentors toward the end of phase two. Phase three is known as the mentor phase “You are working more with those Soldiers one on one,” Maples said. “Soldiers also feel more comfortable coming to you and asking questions.” “There’s a big difference between phase three and the other training,” said Candidate Philip Van Treuren of Lorain, Ohio. “Here in phase three we’re treated more as second lieutenants than as officers in training. I think that that respect allows us to conduct our missions as second lieutenants and really get a feel for what it’s like when we’re doing this in actuality.” Candidates have the choice between traditional and accelerated coursework. The traditional course consists of four phases over 18 months. Phase zero is an orientation of basic Soldier skills. Phase one is a two-week instruction of land navigation, field leadership, cover operations and training management. Phase two makes up the majority of traditional OCS training as 12 months in drill status. In phase three candidates go through a field leadership exercise, combat water survival training, leadership reaction course, confidence course and a tactical exercise. Ohio National Guard officer candidates are offered two accelerated OCS classes per year, where they attend a consecutive 57-day course that includes phases one through three. The first is held January through March and the second, from June through August. In the accelerated course, phases one and three are held at Fort McClellan, while phase two is held at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pa. Class 54 of Ohio’s 147th RTI traditional OCS recently traveled to Fort McClellan for phase three, coordinated by 2nd Battalion, 200th Regiment. “The 200th is the subject matter expert on OCS for the country,” Maples said. “There’s a training schedule that we follow that’s from the course management plan, a program of instruction that’s from our proponent school in Fort Benning, Ga., who accredits us. It’s also outlined from the National Guard Bureau, and we follow each one of those tasks.” Other states offer support, such as TACs, medics and administrative specialists. “We display teamwork, pull all those resources together and make it work,” Maples said. Fort McClellan, which was significantly downsized in 1999, sits in a tree-filled valley of the Choccolocco Appalachian foothills. A section of the fort is now home to the Alabama National Guard Training Center. Candidates develop leadership skills in the forests of Alabama, with its patches of sun, rolling hills, swamps, holes, dead trees, snakes, ticks, poison ivy, sumac and briar patches. TACs speak over locusts, while candidates listen, enduring the heat and humidity. “I’m having a great time here in wonderful Alabama; we just had a wonderful start to an FTX (field training exercise) with pouring down rain, but spirits are high,” said Candidate Douglas Franz of Mt. Gilead, Ohio. “The environment of Alabama makes training more realistic,” Maples said. “No, it’s not the terrain of Iraq or Afghanistan, but it still gives them a more realistic effect when they’re going out on the ground and conducting a mission versus sitting in a classroom and talking about it.” The outdoor training is fast paced and focused on leadership. “There’s not a minute that is wasted here at OCS. That takes them from early morning until late at night,” Maples said. One leadership skill that is highly stressed throughout OCS is communication. “You have to talk,” Maples said. “You have to pass that information down from the highest to the lowest and from the lowest to the highest. We push for them to communicate, to make sure that everyone is involved, so that the mission can be accomplished.” “You need to be a good communicator to be a good leader,” Van Treuren said. “If you can’t communicate your own plans, then you can’t expect your Soldiers to follow your orders.” Most of the Ohio Soldiers at OCS this year went through the traditional route to becoming an officer, having more than a year to develop camaraderie. They were largely split apart in Alabama and mixed with the rest of a class of 306 from across the United States. When traditional Ohio candidates would see each other, they’d smile, shake hands if time allowed, and tell one another to stay motivated. “The most memorable experience was our phase two operation at our RTI in Rickenbacker and the 12 months that I spent with the other candidates there,” Franz said. “It gave us a lot of time to bond together, learn about each other and to pull information from each other.” “The camaraderie that you build within your group is really amazing,” Van Treuren said. “We haven’t just trained, we’ve also made friends. We’re confident in each others’ abilities as well. You need that kind of meshing in order to be successful at OCS. The relationships that you build are important both for now and your future career.” Candidates choose to become officers for an array of reasons, but all must accept that they are stepping into a leadership role. In going through OCS, they accept the deal to not “pass the buck.” “These students are here because they want to make a difference,” Maples said. “They want to do their part in the Global War on Terrorism.” “I chose to become an officer candidate because I wanted to be a leader,” Van Treuren said. “That sounds like a cliché answer, but it’s the right answer.” At OCS, candidates work long days to learn to be leaders and TACs work long days to mold them into leaders. "The best part of my job is seeing the finished product,” Maples said. “I had a lieutenant who graduated recently say, ‘We’re getting shot at a lot; we’re taking some casualties, but the best training I’ve ever received, that prepared me for combat, was OCS. Please, Sir, keep doing what you’re doing; push them harder. Make them understand that what you’re training them to do there will pay off in the end.’ That’s when the long hours, the hard work, and all of the organizing pays off. “If a Soldier is out there who has college time and thinks they have the leadership skills to be a second lieutenant, I’d like to challenge them to come to OCS. This is a challenging program; this is the most challenging thing that I’ve ever done in my military career. It’s definitely hard, but I guarantee you—it will be worth it.”
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