THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE AMERICAN ARMY NON COMMISSIONED OFFICER TO TRAIN ENLISTED SOLDIERS

The responsibilities of the American Army Non Commissioned Officer to Train enlisted Soldiers

The responsibilities of the American Army Non Commissioned Officer to Train enlisted Soldiers

Introduction

Emerging prominently from U.S. Army training doctrine is the relatively new role of senior noncommissioned officers (NCOs) as “master trainers.” Senior noncommissioned officers at the battalion and company level hold primary responsibility for planning and executing to standard all individual and most small-unit training in a manner that is supportive of, and synchronized with, collective and leader tasks. (Gustave 1906) With fifteen to twenty-five years' service and the benefits of the Army's Noncommissioned Officer Education System (NCOES), the Army's senior NCOs are the equivalent of the guild masters of the Renaissance. Guild masters trained mid-level journeymen in the more advanced skills of the craft and taught the journeymen how to train apprentices.

Above all, the masters set the standards and enforced them within the trade. Those who did not meet the masters' standards were retrained or removed from their positions. Likewise, the U.S. Army senior noncommissioned officer today trains the mid-level platoon sergeants who in turn train the junior NCO s. (Winfield 1854) How did the U.S. Army get to the point that the commander and his noncommissioned officer sequence their work and talk through each stage of their unit's training plan, once considered strictly “officers' business”? Many throughout the world see this collective involvement in training as the epitome of synchronization, allowing organizations within the Army to progress smoothly through the different training phases.

The Beginnings

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, noncommissioned officers in European armies assisted the officers, who mainly belonged to the aristocracy, in maintaining good order and discipline within a unit, as well as training recruits, with sergeants and corporals as the principle drillmasters. (Frederick 1779) In the United States during the early years of the American Revolution, with no aristocracy to speak of, the Army reflected the country's egalitarian nature and blurred the lines between lieutenants and sergeants. There were officers (commissioned and noncommissioned) and men.

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a Prussian expatriate serving as inspector general for the nascent American Army, wrote the first set of drill regulations, in which he listed the duties of each respective rank within a regiment. (Russell 1994) The sergeant major (“head of the noncommissioned officers”) and first sergeant generally dealt with administrative aspects of regimental life. In addition to overseeing the everyday details regarding cleanliness and enforcement of good order and discipline, sergeants and corporals within the companies were expected to instruct recruits in all matters of military training.

This tradition changed with the founding of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. The military academy was the principal Regular Army commissioning source in the 19th century and taught academics as well as the individual skills of a soldier and the duties of the noncommissioned officer. Officers graduated knowing more about the minutiae of soldiering and training soldiers in individual tasks than did ...