Pre-CIET training for future Army Officers

At 0800 on Wednesday, June 29, the MMI Army ROTC Department loaded 45

recruits onto a bus departing for the four-week Cadet Initial Entry Training

(CIET) at Fort Knox. This group of incoming Early Commissioning Program

(ECP) freshmen had just completed their weeklong Pre-CIET training on

campus. The mission of Pre-CIET is to prepare ECP cadets to be successful at

CIET by conducting all the requisite in-processing tasks, training them on

the fundamentals they will need to be successful at Fort Knox, and testing

to establish a baseline of where each is academically and physically to

determine their developmental needs.

 

During Pre-CIET, MMI Army ROTC cadre conducted administrative tasks such as

haircuts, equipment and uniform issue, interviews and briefings. The

training schedule consisted of physical readiness, map reading and land

navigation, leadership development, drill and ceremony, military customs and

courtesies, troop leading procedures and operations orders, individual

movement techniques and squad tactics, and first aid. The group was also

subject to required testing:  Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT), height and

weight, Combat Water Survival Test (CWST), school placement testing, Armed

Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) and Occupational Physical

Assessment Test (OPAT). 

 

MMI's Professor of Military Science, LTC Gregory Wall, USA, is pleased to

welcome another exceptional ECP class, who are on track to commission as

second lieutenants in May 2018. "This is a great, talented group of new

cadets from across the nation with a wide variety of backgrounds that came

together as a team this week and are well prepared to be successful at

CIET," says LTC Wall.

 

Hailing from Homewood High School in Birmingham, Ala., Gage Hevey is an

incoming Early Commissioning Program freshman recruit whose path to

officership is a family tradition. His father, MAJ Sean Hevey, USA (Ret) was

part of the Marion Military Institute Army ROTC Cadre from 2012-2014.

 

At the ROTC social, the night before he would depart for Fort Knox, Hevey

shared his military aspirations: "Growing up, we lived on an Army base most

of my life. And I would from a very young age dress up in my dad's BDUs. All

the men in my life were in the Army, so it seemed like the right thing to do

for as long as I remember. It still seems like the right thing to do. I

think that every young man or woman should serve their country, in some way.

It doesn't have to be in the Army, but, in my case, it is."

 

As a former cross country and track athlete, Hevey wasn't worried about the

physical demands of CIET: "I am worried about getting jumbled up, flustered.

I want to have everything in check and retain information. But I'm excited

more than anything. It's that thing I've been hearing about for so long, and

it's finally here. And it's the real Army. There's always that nervousness,

but mostly it's pure excitement."