Students to soldiers

It is late Saturday morning, and the ambush is set. The radio sounds to say the opposition force will be there in a matter of minutes. The only sounds are the chirping of the birds and the rustling of the wind.

David Dominguez, a UCLA student and the patrol leader for this ROTC mission simulation, gets up to make a last check of his troops, who are lying among the trees and the high brush. Most of them are facing the direction from which the enemy should approach. Nine more minutes pass and the opposition force is in sight. Dominguez lets the first shot fly and the rest of his patrol opens fire. There is an attempted flanking action to the right, but it is quickly suppressed by Dominguez’s troops. After a few minutes Dominguez calls for a ceasefire and his patrol moves back up into the hills to set up a patrol base, or an assembly area in enemy territory, and to have its after-action review with its ROTC commanding officers. “The students are given a mission; they have to develop an order and a plan and then they have to execute it. No plan goes as planned,” said Lt. Col. Shawn Buck, the chair of the military science department at UCLA. Army ROTC at UCLA prepares students to become officers upon graduation. Members receive leadership and military preparation through classes, labs and morning physical training, as well as extended exercises at Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base near San Diego, two times during the school year. Each year in the program builds upon the previous years as students gear up for their commissioning into the army. This includes basic tactical training in their first and second years, leading missions in their third year and coordinating training exercises in their fourth year. Dominguez, a third-year political science student, and other UCLA ROTC students left campus at 5:30 a.m. Saturday for their field-training exercise at Camp Pendleton. They stayed at the camp through Sunday afternoon, working through a variety of missions simulations, training in land navigation and learning other tactical skills necessary to become officers in the army. “It’s about incrementalism,” said Maj. Ariel Axelrod, a battalion executive officer at UCLA. “You cannot expect that they will improve wholesale; it is like an exam. You can cram and even do well on the test but not remember anything afterwards. Our training is more focused on leadership ability and developing individual skills.” For first- and second-year students, the weekend was a culmination for the training and education they had been receiving all year in the classroom and campus exercises. But for the “level three” students such as Dominguez, the camp was only a taste of what is to come this summer. After their third year in ROTC, students attend a leadership development assessment course, which consists of about a month of intense tactical and leadership training. At this camp students are evaluated based on their leadership, and to prepare for these evaluations, students lead squadrons and patrols on various missions. “A lot of times it is like muscle memory so the more you practice it, the more you reiterate it, the more you will just use it and it will come to you ... so that’s basically what I am working on a lot,” Dominguez said. In one of the training simulations at Camp Pendleton, Dominguez was the patrol leader of two squadrons, which consist of about eight students each. His mission was to set up an ambush and then to pull back to create a patrol base. In the simulation, the opposition force was a group of first- and second-year students whose mission was to move into contact, or move from one location to another to find the enemy. Dominguez first received orders from the headquarters, then gave orders to his squadron leaders, who in turn directed their squadrons in how to act and move. He said the tension was high during the simulation, especially once the people were in place to act. “You’re waiting for the enemy to come into what we call the ‘kill zone,’ the area where we will engage them,” Dominguez said. “I just hope everyone performs.” ROTC builds upon itself as each year students learn new skills that prepare them for the challenges to come. First- and second-year students have less pressure on them at camp, as they are still expected to be learning the basics, such as land navigation and basic maneuvers. A normal school week for first- and second-year ROTC students consists of about six to seven hours of training and class. This includes physical training, military science courses and Friday labs, in which they complete various training exercises. “It is not that bad. I have had to learn more time management,” said Tamara Dejesus, a first-year undeclared student. But third- and fourth-year students weekly spend 10 to 15 hours on ROTC studies. The commitment is increased for third years because they are preparing for camp in the summer, and fourth years, who have completed most of their basic training, are preparing to be commissioned as officers upon graduation. “It’s an extra demand on their time, and clearly staying out late is a difficult choice to take,” Buck said. “It teaches them a valuable skill because they have to learn to prioritize their efforts.” Buck added that while some have to give up a lot of sleep, others learn to budget their time and are able to do all of the extracurricular activities they want to do. “I don’t want them to leave college saying that I missed my college experience because of ROTC,” Buck said. “I want them to be able to do whatever they want.” Dejesus said that ROTC interfered with things occasionally, but it was not very often and that she didn’t mind.“I have thought about doing it since high school; my grandpa was in the military,” she said. “I wanted to get my college degree, and this was something secondary. It interferes every once in a while, but I know that ... it will be a big accomplishment, something besides just school.” ROTC students often have different schedules from non-ROTC students, and it can make hanging out with friends difficult. Rebecca Rainboldt, a fourth-year theater student, said her schedule is almost the opposite to her apartment-mate Anna Acosta, a fourth-year political science student who is in ROTC. “She is up really early in the morning and back almost for an hour before I’ve left for class and she has to go back to work,” Rainboldt said. “I don’t get home till after 11 most nights. ... I don’t get to spend a lot of time with Anna so I see her the most if I come home at dinner or in the morning.” ROTC, though it is another extracurricular activity offered on campus, is very different in the type of training cadets receive. “It seems like another type of learning. She’ll go on trips over the weekend, go on missions, learn how to use guns and weapons and carry huge packs,” Rainboldt said of Acosta. “I’m memorizing lines and taking hours of dance classes.” As members of ROTC, students know almost exactly what they will be doing upon graduation as they contract with the U.S. Army after their first year in the program. This binds them to several years of service upon graduation, when they are commissioned as second lieutenants of the Army. Until they graduate, students are not actually members of the army. Acosta’s future branch is aviation, so when she graduates, she said she will likely work for a few months at UCLA with the military science department and then leave for her officer training and to aviation school. She said eventually she would like to fly a Blackhawk helicopter. To prepare for their upcoming commissioning as officers, fourth-year students are given the extra responsibility of organizing and mentoring many of the younger students, which will give them valuable experience for the future. They set up much of the missions during the camp as well as the labs during the school years to help them improve their leadership skills. These skills include not only being able to give others guidance, but to be able to think critically and make choices that could affect those under their supervision. “As lieutenants, we are going to be making decisions,” Acosta said. “It is important to make the right decisions, but sometimes a bad decision is better than no decision.” ROTC programs, though they teach students tactics and information about weapons, machinery and other maneuvers and procedures, tend to focus more on the leadership aspect of the military. “They are college students and they will do college things. ... We don’t expect them to be extra military,” Buck said. “We expect them to be average students, but we do expect them to be mature young adults. They are officers in training and we expect them to remember that.”