After weeks of By RICHARD SALIT It's like a dream, a memory of a past life. In it, Nicole Lobecker sits down at a small dining table with three friends. She chats. She smiles. She laughs. She casually bites a forkful of beef stroganoff. Thankfully, it's all real. Since arriving at OCS, Lobecker has had to eat with only a spoon. She's had to sit at a long cafeteria table and not speak to or look at anyone. And she's been denied coffee and dessert. Today, she is finally able to dine normally. "I'm never going to stop drinking coffee again," she says, lifting a mug to her lips, holding it there and sipping it slowly. As graduation nears, students at OCS come full circle. But while they regain many of the freedoms and privileges stripped from them upon their arrival, they are no longer the same uncertain, unpolished newcomers, nervously trying to follow orders. They are now candidate officers. They wear service khakis, the same higher-quality uniforms they'll wear out in the fleet, and they are responsible for taking care of not only the newest arrivals, but the entire regiment of students. And they don't just follow orders, they give them.
The transition takes place during a formal ceremony, when the most senior class turns over command of the regiment. For two weeks beforehand, the graduating class grooms its successors, teaching them the duties they will inherit as candidate officers, nicknamed "candi-o's." On the morning of the ceremony, the class taking charge of the regiment joins in the traditional "victory run" and presents its drill instructor and class team leaders with a T-shirt. The one presented by Class 05-08 shows an illustration of its drill instructor, Marine Gunnery Sgt. Sandra Center, standing over a student rising out of the depths of a sand pit. Being able to have fun with their drill instructor, and to present her with a gift reflects a comfortable familiarity that would have been unthinkable a short while ago. IN THE WEEKS leading up to becoming candidate officers, the students think a lot about leadership. For Jason Moehlmann, it started after he twice failed the Room, Locker, Personnel inspection, forcing him out of Class 05-08 and into a class graduating two weeks later. "I hadn't really struggled with any of the evolutions up to RLP. I had improved my run time. I had improved my pushups and sit-ups. I had no problems with academics. Drill I picked up very quickly," he says. "But the one thing that stood out to me … was that the whole time I had been focused more on staying off the radar rather than stepping up as a leader and helping the rest of the class. That was the biggest gut check. When I got into 06, I said I can't just be the fly on the wall and hope they don't notice me and just get through." For his days ahead as a candi-o and as a future Navy officer, he says, "I'm trying to develop my leadership style. I have to do it confidently so I don't get walked all over." Cole, a previously enlisted sailor who failed the inspection twice and wound up in Class 06-08, also did some soul searching. "I had to really do some searching inside to take that next step in my training and really just refocus [on] why I'm here and what it is that brought me here," he says. "I know I still have a ways to develop. That's how I see the rest of this program. I've raised this bar in terms of attention to detail and at least a little bit of confidence. "Maybe I'm not 100 percent of the leader they want me to be yet," he says. "I came with an ability to get tasks done, think outside the box and mentor and develop other people. One of the reasons why I was struggling is because all of that has been taken away from me. It's been, ‘Go here, go there, do this, do that, fold your underwear,' like that." Becoming a candidate officer, "that's going to be a time for flourishing." NEARLY FOUR months ago, Matthew Gottschalk and his peers in Class 05-08 were on the receiving end of the not-so-pleasant greeting on their first day at OCS. Now it's their turn to dish up some indoctrination, OCS-style. On a Sunday morning early last month, Gottschalk is scrutinizing the members of Class 10-08 who have just been led to the entrance of the room where they will get measured for poopy suits, their first uniforms. He gets right in the newcomers' faces and screams at them when they don't follow instructions. "You are not going to make it," he yells at one. He rushes up to candidates who are "sounding off" weakly when saying, "Aye, sir." He points his finger sharply at them, stomps his polished black shoe on the floor for emphasis and yells, "Louder!"
One tall candidate with glasses and dark hair keeps getting flummoxed on what he's supposed to say when he reaches the doorway. When Gottschalk learns that the newcomer wants to be an aviator, he pounces.
"If you're cracking under pressure here, then what are you going to do when you're on a jet," says Gottschalk, who will soon be headed to Pensacola to be a pilot himself. An hour into the morning and Gottschalk is already hoarse. He says he can better appreciate now that there is a purpose to the harsh welcome. "When we got here 12 weeks ago, we were going through this and it was like, ‘Are you kidding me?' These guys are yelling at us and acting like they have been here forever when they are only 12 weeks ahead of us, so how in the world can they be so hard on us? "But after going through this for 12 weeks, you can understand. Yeah, you have been through a lot, you have earned the right to do this and this is part of the OCS tradition. You don't want to be hard on these guys, but you want to give them a good wake-up call, a reality check, when they get here. You're not being degrading, or completely a jerk to them. But you're getting the point across. You're trying to prepare them for a military mindset and what is going to happen to them for the next three months, including Wednesday when they meet their drill instructors. "This is a wake-up call for them ... Some people cry, break down, and they cannot handle the initial shock. And if they can't handle this, then they are certainly not ready for the rest of the training here." WHEN IT'S CLASS 06-08's time to serve as candidate officers, Cole and Lobecker get assigned to watch over Holding Company for two weeks. It's an appropriate assignment for each since they both had setbacks that landed them in the remedial company. Their job is to escort Holding Company to the places they need to go, support them during physical training, answer their questions and basically keep them in line. One evening they escort them to the physical fitness test that will determine whether they are ready to join a class. Afterward, they take them to the chow hall. When Lobecker passes one of them, she offers encouragement. "Good run," she says. The members of Holding Company eat rigidly and silently, as required. "Are you laughing down there?" Cole says to one student. "Let's get some bearing." When they are leaving the chow hall, he sees that a student's reflective safety belt is crooked. "Hey, Brown, fix your glow belt," Cole says. "Aye, sir," he answers.
A candidate officer with Cole decides to do what one did when he was in Holding Company. "I'm going to turn my back and if a dessert winds up on your plate, I'm not going to ask you how it got there," he says and turns around. Many of them smile, quickly rise and then crowd around the glass dessert display. They return with servings of cake and pie. It's important for the people you're leading to know you care for them, says Cole, adding, "If you're the enforcer all of the time, they can't tell you their troubles." After dinner, 15 members of Holding Company who pass the physical fitness test are allowed to join a class. Lobecker and Cole lead them from the H Company's wing to their new quarters. "I wish you the best of luck. I'll definitely stop by," Cole tells one of them. "The next couple of days are going to be tough, right? Speed and intensity, right?" "Aye, sir," the student replies. "Don't give up. Keep pushing," Cole says. "You still have a long way to go from here." NOT ONLY ARE the candidate officers trusted to take charge of the less senior students at OCS, they also earn liberty. They are allowed to head off base and do what they please, but they must wear their Navy uniforms, making Newport look once again like a sailor's port at times. On her first trip off base, Lobecker couldn't wait for some alone time, after being surrounded by classmates and ordered around by superiors for weeks on end. She checked in at the nearby Holiday Inn Express, where she soaked in the Jacuzzi and swam in the pool and watched Pay-Per-View. The next day she and some OCS pals went to a bar to watch a New England Patriots playoff game. Cole used lots of his free time to get involved in church-oriented charitable efforts. He passed out food to the homeless at Providence's Kennedy Plaza, folded clothes at a church to be sent to the Philippines and participated in the annual Martin Luther King Jr. torch run across Aquidneck Island. That same holiday weekend, Moehlmann and some friends drove up to Boston to tour the Colonial-era warship the Constitution. Because they were in uniform, they received a free, personal tour. A couple of weekends later, Cole and Moehlmann and some classmates went to Coddington Pub in Middletown for dinner, sitting at several large tables. A waitress brought over a pitcher of stout, compliments of someone who wished to remain anonymous. They drank beers, laughed and talked about how each class and each drill instructor seem to have their own personalities. They told stories about walking down a hall at OCS eager to get to a bathroom only to run into a drill sergeant and find themselves on the floor doing pushups. And they described nodding off in classes until being jostled awake by each other. After eating at the chow hall for most every meal for the past nine weeks, they indulge in burgers, fries and chocolate peanut butter pie drizzled with chocolate. |
BACK TO MAIN | Arrival |
Uniformity |
Under the Guns |
Welcome Aboard
Toughest Test |
Repairs |
Taking the Helm |
Shipping Out |
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©The Providence Journal 2008
