MILITARY SERIES – After spending 20 years in the military and retiring in 2000 as a First Sergeant from the Wisconsin Army Reserve National Guard, I decided to create this series and dedicate it to all of the men and women that served before me, with me, after me, serve today and those who will serve in future generations.
Each of the caches in this series is named after a unit, position, rank or other significant event during my military career.
While some of these may be an easy find, others may require some creative and critical thinking. Look at the rating for each cache as they will vary within the series.
Wisconsin Military Academy: During my first year in the National Guard, I was recruited and selected to attend Officer Candidate School (OCS) at the Wisconsin Military Academy (WMA) at Volk Field. At the time, the OCS program was about a yearlong broken down into three phases. My Platoon Leader, 2LT Nehls, is the one who recruited me into OCS, only to find out later that he would also be one of my TAC (Teach Advise & Council) Officers at the Academy.
Phase I was two-week period in which the TAC Officers and Instructors at the Academy tore you down, breaking all of those bad habits we all developed on the enlisted side. We were lower than the dirty under a rock! In Phase I they tore you down to build you back up during Phase II and III and mold you into an officer.
Phase II took place one weekend a month over the next year. During this time is where we were given the formal instruction on becoming an officer. Coming out of Phase I and entering Phase II, everyone is a ‘Candidate’ otherwise known as a ‘pleab’. During Phase II, you had to meet the qualifications to become a ‘Senior Candidate’. As a Senior Candidate, the pleabs had to treat you like any other commissioned officer. If you did not make Senior Candidate by the end of Phase II, you were kicked out of the program.
Phase III was another two-week training period during which we had a major field exercise where everyone was but to the test at different times in the role of a 2LT leading a platoon into a combat situation. It started off by being flown into a ‘hot LZ’ in Huey helicopters with the doors open. But that is a different cache down the road.
I graduated from the WMA in Class 28 and was commissioned at a 2LT.
Congratulations to Hollysdaddy on the FTF on this Cache Ba$hless weekend!