FORT JACKSON, SOUTH CAROLINA — At Victory Tower at Fort Jackson on a recent steamy South Carolina morning, some 260 Echo Company recruits gathered for only the second time in their three weeks at the Army’s largest combat training center.
COVID-19 has kept them in platoons of no more than 30 since late spring.
Since then, future soldiers have not been able to touch the same handrails or use the same outdoor obstacle courses until they have finished 14 days of isolation.
If one of the recruits tests positive for the coronavirus during that time, the recruit gets removed for 96 hours, and the “control monitoring” clock restarts for everyone in the platoon. No time is lost, but the platoon will continue training in isolation from other platoons.
Recruits have their temperatures checked every morning and night, as does anyone who enters the 80-square-mile base.
On the mini wall, a sloped version of the 100-foot Victory Tower, drill sergeants with feet dangling over the edge holler orders through black masks and wear gloves to avoid touching shared equipment.
“Walk! Walk! Walk! Use your break hand! Faster!” one female drill sergeant yells through a mask at a recruit.
A nervous trainee slowly inches backward down the short incline, leaning his weight into the air, learning how the rope’s friction through his belaying device will keep him safe.
Nearby, trainees who land on their feet with heavy exhales after descending Victory Tower raise their arms in the air. A fellow recruit removes their ropes from the belaying device and frees them before they trot back in line.
All trainees and drill sergeants are nearby. All are wearing Army-issued masks.
Fort Jackson has contained the coronavirus.
Asked about outbreaks, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said Tuesday there were early contagion clusters at training facilities, but they were quickly quashed.
“If you think about that, we’re taking men and women from every corner of this country, we’re putting them on a bus, on a train, on an airplane, and we get them to four locations,” he said. “And we’ve only had a handful of clusters when you’ve moved thousands of people.”
McCarthy acknowledged a slight uptick in cases in the last 60 days with the reincorporation of collective training. Still, commanders on the ground at Fort Jackson say anecdotal evidence suggests the new system shows unexpected improvements tailored to a new generation of recruits.
Commander of the Center for Initial Military Training Brig. Gen. Lonnie Hibbard has dubbed the new approach across the military’s boot camps “Spring Training.”
To accommodate keeping platoons isolated, the 10-week basic training program, once divided into “red,” “white,” and “blue” phases, was changed to a “2 + 8” program that includes a new “yellow” phase.
The 2 + 8 model front-ends the classroom study to isolate platoons and stem the coronavirus’s spread at collective training events.
At Victory Tower, commanders said the changes could be called best practices.
“I would certainly recommend that we keep something like that even after we don’t have to focus on COVID force protection,” Lt. Col. Jason Dudley told the Washington Examiner.
The 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment commander said in the first cycle of 2 + 8, injuries, misconduct, and separations from the Army were all “way down.”
“It was just a much better transition from civilian to soldier,” he said.
From drill sergeants getting sick less often to healthier troops who can retain more classroom instruction, Fort Jackson is a case study in making basic better.
Drill sergeants as mentors for the “iGeneration”
The newest generation of Army recruits was born after 1996, making them part of Generation Z, or the “iGeneration,” a generation born into the age of the internet and social media.
Most of this generation never had to worry about slow dial-up service.
But they are also accustomed to a less physical lifestyle and more individual attention, explained commanders.
“This generation of people benefits more from that onboarding process, what 2 + 8 sort of forced us into — a slower integration into the service,” Dudley explained. “Instead of going and crawling under barbed wire through the mud.”
Recruits are receiving vital Army lessons at the outset: classroom training on things like Army values, ethics, and sexual harassment and assault prevention.
Dudley hearkened back to old videos of basic training.
“The screaming from the getting off the bus the second they show up — they’re just getting hammered by drill sergeants,” he said.
When the intensity was dialed down, retention turned up, he said.
“I think they’ve retained it better because it’s been less intense,” he said. “It’s been more structured and disciplined. It’s been more individual and classroom-focused.”
Staff Sgt. Pedro Ortiz, 26, arrived from Germany to Fort Jackson in March for his first tour as a drill sergeant just before travel restrictions were imposed.
“I jumped straight into a COVID environment as a drill sergeant,” he said.
What he saw shatters the image of a Full Metal Jacket-style drill sergeant in a wide-brimmed campaign hat yelling insults at a young recruit.
Ortiz’s voice is quiet but firm. His demeanor is serious but not overbearing.
Ortiz said that just because he started training recruits in a classroom instead of in a challenging physical environment doesn’t make him any less tough as a drill sergeant.
Mentoring can be firm too.
“Immediately since day one, instead of being louder, all we do is be more assertive,” he explained. “To get soldiers to react to something, you don’t need to be loud. You don’t need to be in their face. I think that’s what a lot of people here that were here prior to the COVID environment are learning.”
Command Sgt. Maj. Jamie Holt said that “iGen” recruits are more sedentary as an aggregate, hence the early injuries experienced before Spring Training started. But they are also more curious. Starting training in a professional classroom setting satisfies their curiosity.
“They’re a different generation. You have to teach them different,” he said. “They also like to know the ‘why’ behind things more than previous generations.”
Ortiz recalled the first trainee that he corrected as a drill sergeant:
“I saw that he was angry that I corrected him, and I went to him, and I had the one-on-one.
“I was like, ‘Has anyone ever asked you to be better?’
“‘No, drill sergeant.’
“‘I’m asking you to be better. That’s all I’m asking.’
“And it clicks, and you can see it in their eyes. And then the next day, they’re different.”
