Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC)

The most influential thing I learned way back when was not on the Program of Instruction POI.

What I learned at FT. Moore, GA PLDC

So, this story is much juicier than the title leads on to. I mention this to get your eyeballs on the page because it does have to do with female soldiers’ breasts. More on this later.

I am not going to tell you anything at all on the details of what we learned in this standardized U.S. Army school, PLDC. I want to talk about one thing I learned from the women that share the uniform. It has and always will be one of respect. I STILL adhere to the Army Values. I am waiting to see if the Army can do it during this transition. We shall see.

To my non-military members (DAD), PLDC is the first formal leadership training that is required along with time in service and grade to become a leader. Formally and honorably “Sergeant”.

People are selected in Ranger Battalion to attend a board where you compete among all the other qualified Ranger’s so you can be on a merit list. If I remember correctly, my entire board crew made it into school with me from my unit that class. Once you are there a good portion is army basics, marching, leading physical fitness, leadership training classes and the like. At the end of this you go out to the woods, in what the Army calls “the field” and do basic leader tasks, some out of the infantry handbook. We that be Rangers would always lead these things. It made sense to us and wash practice, plus, we were Rangers, would you pick a short order chow line cook? No. But we all knew that we would learn something, and this is what happened.

At some point I was picked to lead a squad of 9 soldiers to do something simple like an ambush or something. One of the things I was taught as a Ranger was you want to TOUCH the soldiers no matter what when you counted them. This, I was told, was to get us in the habit of doing in when we mostly operated. At night. See where this is going?

I went down the line with a “knife hand”. It is exactly like it sounds and counted my soldiers. I touched each of them center mass below their head, like I ALWAYS did. After this we went on doing what it was without issue.

Here is where you need to pay attention!

In the next formation we had, and I was squad leader like that same day, there were FIVE women in my squad when I counted them. They very professionally told me what I had “done” and they just wanted me to know that they all agreed that I had absolutely no fucking clue what I did when I was counting them.

That was my crash course in awareness around women in the military. I never, ever had a single problem since then. Women are key assets in our military structure. Don’t forget. KEY.