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Show I w- - THE DESERET SAMPLER, Friday, March 28, 1980 t An interview with Captain James Aiken Continued Aiken: Sure, if anybody wants to do Sampler: Who is in charge bf trainanything we would be glad to do it. ing and why isnt the training more We are looking for some ideas for ad, regular? Do you think there should be venture training. The colonel is enthmore field training? used about our adventure training Aiken: What do you mean by field and I think he would go along with training? anything we could come up with that would be feasible like the river trip Sampler: IRF training, map readwe took last year. ing, rifle range, etc. Sampler: Do you think you have Aiken: We have a specific amount improved the living conditions of perof instruction that we do on a six sons living in the barracks? month cycle according to local reguAiken: In some respects. We have lations that belong to the post and new and new furniture TECOM. TECOM has given us a reand beds are coming but it is a long tedious process. I did get them that sponsibility to man and equip an Installation Readiness Force and it has Physical training field. Quality of life given us subjects which we must is really out of my hands. That takes a lot of money when you talk about cover. There are some common sublike first quality of life types of things like imjects map reading, aid, weapons qualificationfamiliarization, proving the barracks. I think I have has to have a protective improved hot so much the physical everyone mask exercise and a PT test once a conditions but more .the psychologiyear. IRF, search and rescue, oil spill- - cal conditions. For example, we have been very liberal in how you can defirefighting are either TECOM or local regulations. There are so many corate your room, the troops can do hours of these things that we must what they want to their rooms. . .if they want to paint it, they can paint give and keep track of. Once we have whatever. Maybe this is one of the our for it, the completed requirements block then we can do the reasons why my open-doopolicy training we want. Maybe it seems that hasnt had too much zing as it should;. it isn't regular but it is regular based People know they can talk to me whenever on the fact that we do a regular they need to, they dont block of training of 45 to 50 have to wait until a specific day and hours of instruction that has to be hour. Sampler: In the event of an emergiven. There is a big window opening now' on SQT we have to push that gency, do you think the IRF is trained harder. adequately enough to respond? Aiken: Yes, to do what they have to Sampler: Do you accept suggesdo. tions for training from anyone? Sampler: Is this based on seeing them in CAIC exercises? Aiken: Yes, from seeing them in CAIC exercises and the little exercises we have. If the chips are down and this were a firefight I mean if we actually had some intruder out there Im sure there would be much more incentive to be serious. Sampler: Ive heard mention of making the IRF a volunteer force. Reasoning that if people volunteer they will be more willing to do a bet. . wall-rocke- rs six-mon- r th six-mon- th . e, racks live in a healthy comfortable environment. That is our responsibility as Platoon Leaders, First Sergeant and Company Commander. Those are things that need to be done. A lot of it depends on the personality of the First Sergeant because that is one of his functions. The function to see that GI Joe is dressed correctly is the Sergeants. If I have to go out to tell a soldier how to, dress do I need the NCOs? Im always willing to do that. Sometimes the enforcement of policies are difficult because of the personalities of the First Sergeant on down the line. Aiken: Yes, but you would go back to the apathy again. Nobody would volunteer. We tried to give away a party here on the 29th of March and we couldnt even get people to go to that. Sampler: Do you think the problem with that is that it was at the Officers Club? Aiken: No, we had it last year at the Officers Club. We had 90 people ther. These people just dont want to play. The people have gotten to the point that it is time to change command, they are tired of me. They want to do something else. I think we get stale. A new commander comes in and he has some new ideas, it adds to the unit, it lifts morale, you get a chance to change things. What happens is that a new Commander comes in and changes the biggest problem Sampler: Ive heard talk and com-- 1 plaining about the policies and enforcement of policies becoming more , Sampler: How do you handle a Platoon Sergeant who is rather belligerent and doesnt want to cooperate with his platoon and is too hard on his troops? Aiken: I would call him in and talk to him about his leadership ability. Leadership is something you learn and about 50 percent of leadership is listening because peole will tell you what they will respond to. I dont treat every troop the same because all troops have different needs and closest we come to that face time which is so important in this company. If people dont know who their squad leader, platoon sergeant, executive officer of their Company Commander is this is the time they find out. Sampler: How do you reward the people who try harder than others? Aiken: The people who try to get a personal satisfaction, there are some people who dont need PT, but as soon as you start excusing one vou have to excuse everybody. What' we do sometimes is excuse people who complete the run from the next run. Sampler: What would you consider . icies are more hatrd-linbecause ther are some things that we should be doing that we havent been doing. We have a responsibility to make sure that the people living here in the bar- ter job. . here at the company, is this true? Aiken: No, the policies arent more hardline, the enforcment or the polhard-lin- e wants. So if you treat them all the same you are putting everyone on one level, but they are not all cm that level some are above it and some are below it. You have to treat each soldier as an individuaL There is a difference between a guy who really cares, about his troops and gives an honest effort and does the best he can and a guy who is just delegating his authority, to someone else you can see that. When that happens you call him in and say, Hey youre the E-- 7, youre the guy that is getting paid big bucks, youre the guy with the responsibility, if you want to delegate authority that is fine but the responsibility is still yours, You can delegate authority but never responsibility. Sampler: What advice would you give an incoming Company Commander? Aiken: Treat the troops with respect because they deserve it. I dont have any bad troops and I know every one of them. They are good people, give them the proper leadership, respect and understanding and they will do a good job. Sampler: Why do you feel PT is so important? Do you think it really gets the troops in shape? Aiken: It does something for me and it does something for the platoon sergeants and the individual soldiers. One thing that it does is that it gets them all together at the same time in the same place. At formations we dont have that and we dont have that during the day or at meal-timThere is not one time in this units history that we have had everybody at .. cme place and at one time. PT is the e. . most your important accomplishment? Aiken: I dont know, I think what I feel best about is that have touched or helped everybody in the company with something. If its just a handshake or a pat on the back or whatever. I have at least given them a part of myself, maybe some understanding, a kind word or maybe an ass chewing. I try not to ignore anybody, I try to say hi to everyone. I try to be as personable as possible because I believe that the individual soldier is the mast important product we have. Being here at Dugway gives the company commander a lot of benefits, I can know everybody' in the unit, their first name, where they come from,, what they like and what they dont like, what theyve done before and where theyve been. I would hope that the one thing that I leave here is a good feeling from everybody because Ive tried to take care of them. I may not have always accomplished that but at least I gave that honest effort.. 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