With Support Battalion folded into TBS command, NCOs embed in platoons

More than any class before them, the lieutenants of The Basic School’s Charlie Company are getting a first-hand experience of “what it is to have a really good sergeant or staff sergeant to help them lead Marines,” said Col. Todd Desgrosseilliers, commanding officer, TBS.

Instruction at the school that teaches every new lieutenant in the Marine Corps how to lead Marines has been under­going a fundamental change since this spring. Pending approval of Marine Corps Bulletin 5400, submitted in June, Support Battalion is no more, with its 400 or so Marines folded into TBS’s command, and many of the enlisted members of Combat Instructor Company embedded in the school’s training companies as senior enlisted leaders, platoon advisors and squad advisors, participating in the everyday life of the Basic Officer Course Company. Each company also now has a company first sergeant and gun­nery sergeant and each platoon has a platoon sergeant and a squad advisor noncommissioned officer.

Charlie Co., which started its instruction in April, was the first to incorporate enlisted Marines, and the model has continued with each successive company.

In a typical day under the old model, Cpl. Alex Willbanks might have acted as an aggressor against the students dur­ing a field exercise, taught a class at the Military Operations on Urban Terrain facility and gone home, he said. Now, as a squad leader, he said, “It seems like [the lieutenants] don’t just view us as instructors but as Marines who one day they’ll be in charge of.”

The enlisted Marines underwent a number of enlisted instructor qualifications, from tactics to Marine Corps mar­tial arts to advanced swimming — preparing them for their enhanced roles with the companies, and Willbanks said he has filled notebooks with notes from sand table exercises and discussion groups he would never have seen before.

“We’re becoming more disciplined prob­lem solvers ourselves,” he said. “I see a lot of different ways we can take our knowl­edge here and bring it back to the Fleet Marine Force.”

That was part of the idea, Desgrosseilliers said, noting that he wanted to make TBS’s enlisted Marines stronger leaders, better noncommissioned officers and more com­petitive for reenlistment and promotion.

“It’s a morale benefit for sure,” he said. “We’ve raised the bar for what being a Marine assigned to The Basic School is all about.”

The incorporation of the former Support Battalion into the TBS command increases efficiency so the school can accommodate a personnel cut of about 15 percent while the number of student lieutenants remains steady, Desgrosseilliers said.

Maj. Rich Barclay, the Charlie Co. com­mander, said the change achieved that end. In addition to having more instructors in each platoon to make training more effi­cient, he said, “We can administer ourselves and support ourselves. We don’t have to borrow gear to go do training.”

But efficiency during a drawdown is only one reason for the change. TBS has been incorporating enlisted instructors into its program of instruction for years.

The school sends out surveys and dis­patches groups of field-grade officers to each Marine Expeditionary Force every year to ask leaders about the lieutenants they’re getting from TBS, Desgrosseilliers explained. “Part of that feedback was, ‘How can you do a better job there of teach­ing them to build relationships with their noncommissioned officers?’”

Lieutenants were graduating having had little interaction with the enlisted Marines they would partner with in the fleet, he said. “I remember one of the lieutenants saying, ‘I thought all staff noncommis­sioned officers did was yell at you.’” The lieutenant had based that judgment on his experience at Officer Candidates School, the only time he’d had much contact with the enlisted ranks.

Not only are the lieutenants bonding with the enlisted Marines, but seeing them work through decisions with the captains who are their platoon commanders shows the students the kind of cooperative interaction they’ll need to have with noncommissioned officers in the fleet, said Capt. Dennis Dun­bar, executive officer of Charlie Co.

“It just models better for them what hap­pens in reality,” he said, adding that the officers hope to soon have the lieutenants working with their enlisted instructors to build training plans, getting them more comfortable with the cooperative relation­ship and position of authority they didn’t have in OCS.

Capt. Chris Parks said his enlisted advi­sors are able to take some instruction off his hands to free him up to counsel lieutenants one-on-one or do other work.

“I know I have a platoon and squad advi­sor who can answer some of the questions coming off some of the classes from the last couple of weeks,” he said, adding that the noncommissioned officers also often field questions that otherwise might never have been asked. “I’ve heard that when I’m not around, a lot of random side questions get asked.”

“Every little bit of downtime [the lieu­tenants] have is an opportunity to learn something in greater detail,” said Gunnery Sgt. Leon Wojciechowski, the Charlie Co. gunnery sergeant.

It’s always been a point of pride for TBS platoon commanders to run into their former students in the field, Barclay said, adding that the platoons’ noncommis­sioned officers will now share in that pride and that ownership of the new officers’ development.

“I have these two other individuals who, we’re all working toward the same mission — 40-some students all walking across the stage and being as successful as they can be,” Parks said of his advisors.