MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. -- On an unseasonably hot September afternoon, a handful of enlisted Marines from Quantico’s Range Management Branch worked their way across the lawn beside their building, signaling to each other and taking turns running from one cover to the next or diving into the grass, all the while keeping an eye out for an unseen enemy. Watching over them was Sgt. Terrance Bowens, noncommissioned officer in charge of the Range Scheduling Section, who was leading this training session on patrolling.
He rounded the men up to drill them on squad leadership. When practicing a maneuver, he asked, how much practice is enough? The answer: “You practice until your men cannot get it wrong.”
The infantrymen of RMB, however, have historically had little time or opportunity to practice combat operations, said Capt. Craig Olszta, RMB’s head of projects, plans and policies, noting that the hours are long and the work fast-paced. Unlike most of their peers, they spend much of their time on administrative work, sitting behind desks or conducting post inspections, rather than training as squads.
Following his completion of the Advanced Infantry Course at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C., Bowens is now working to put the branch’s corporals and lance corporals back in touch with their infantry roots and keep them proficient in their military occupational specialties.
Despite having little time for combat training since he arrived at RMB two years ago, the Columbia, S.C., native was named as the top graduate among the 44 Marines who completed the seven-week course. More than two dozen didn’t even finish.
“It’s far from every day that the base can send somebody to an advanced school and have him come back an honor grad, especially when he’s working outside his MOS,” Olszta said.
Bowens earned that distinction partly by his high grade point average at the school and partly through his fellow students, who voted for him based on his leadership qualities. His squad finished first in six of the course’s seven squad evaluations.
Since returning to Quantico in mid-August, he has continued to lead, instituting a noncommissioned officer leadership development program to teach RMB’s squad leaders-to-be what he learned at Camp Lejeune. For two hours per week, he leads training sessions, such as the one on patrolling, for the 11 junior infantrymen at RMB.
“He injects that 03 culture back into an administrative setting,” Olszta said, referring to the first two digits of the infantry MOS codes. “It’s kind of the old bull teaching the young bulls the tricks of the trade.”
Bowens said training his colleagues is a way for him to repay the Marine Corps for the opportunity to attend the course and at the same time helps him to refresh what he learned there. And he’s equipping the young Marines to return to the fleet proficient in their MOS despite their time away from the field.
“Their units are not going to care where they came from, they’re going to care what they can do,” he said. “They could find themselves leading a squad that’s going to be deployed in a few months.”
Olszta said the leadership mentoring also prepares the junior Marines to take Bowens’ place at Range Management when he leaves.
“This is the first time since I’ve been here that we’ve had a formalized training schedule for their development,” he said.
Bowens said the course also helped him with his administrative job heading the Scheduling Section. “Being away from the grunts for a while, you lose a little bit of your tactical thinking,” he said, noting that the field work has helped him to better envision the training he’s scheduling and foresee possible concerns.
“These are the guys who have to have a mental picture of what’s going on in the [range training area] five days from now,” Olszta said, adding that Bowens is “hands down the best” at the job. “Without him, the RTA wouldn’t be as efficient as it is today.”
— Writer: mdicicco@quanticosentryonline.com