More Team Work During Crucible
From behind a gutted amphibious assault vehicle, the men charge to their first rally point. There’s no time to discuss tactics or make a game plan and they have to find a way to work together. Their orders are simple: finish as a team.
Weary from training, the recruits of Company M traverse the recently remodeled daytime infiltration course in four-man teams during the 54-hour Crucible at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif.
The course changes add more teamwork drills in the Crucible. Recruits run the course in fire teams, moving in synchronized efforts through barbed wire, across an open road, over a wall and through a tunnel into a skirmisher’s trench. The fire team regroups and concludes the course with an organized rush on a stationary target.
The new renovations include a hill for taking cover and a skirmisher’s trench that recruits lie in and provide simulated cover fire for fellow team members to advancing to the next obstacle.
The course changed to make recruits more tactically proficient in combat situations, according to Sgt. William F. Cerny, a Weapons and Field Training Battalion instructor.
Cerny said the course modifies to fit the situations recruits are more likely to see in combat.
Without direction from drill instructors, recruits move from cover, negotiating as a team to the next cover spot. In the previous course, recruits moved individually, incorporating low-crawling, high-crawling and rushing a target.
“We combined the skills we were teaching … with fire team skills,” said Capt. Robert Richardson, Field Company commander, WFT Bn.
Combining the three techniques taught during the Crucible is an introduction to assaulting an objective as a team, he said.
Throughout the new course, the fire team reunites at designated cover positions after each obstacle. The fire team leader yells, “Follow me,” and his team rushes to the next cover point. This builds leadership and unit cohesion.
In the previous infiltration course, recruits simulated infiltrating an encampment enclosed by barriers. The renovated course teaches recruits how to infiltrate such objects and minimize harm in the process.
“It took teamwork to do this,” said Danny Lerma, a recruit from Plaino, Texas, after finishing the course, “And a lot of motivation and a lot of heart.”
