My Personal Experience As A Non Commissioned Officer

My personal experience as a Non Commissioned Officer in the military and my growth as a Non Commission Officer started on 25 March 1988. It all started with my lifelong dream of being a Soldier. My next-door neighbor was a Sergeant in the Army and every day when he got home, I would sit and chat with him, I was no older than eight years old. I remembered him saying, “Curtis, I can tell you will join the service in ten years from now because every day you produce different questions regarding the military.” Trust me when I say every single day would be a series of questions prepared for him when he returned home. I must say that he was the most patient man I had ever met in my life because not once did he ever get tired of me asking …show more content…
I felt proud that I had achieved a rank that I had admired over the years; so many times, I have seen Soldiers retiring the rank of Specialists and Sergeants with twenty to thirty years of service. Therefore, it was then that I had set my personal objective to achieve the rank of Staff Sergeant (SSG). Being an NCO was something I took pride in and I realized that I wanted to go much further than an E-5. At this point, I investigated all conceivable outcomes to getting elevated to the rank to of Staff Sergeant I understood that I had been in the infantry for some time now and advancement was much slower than other Military Occupational Specialties (MOS). In July of 1999, I transferred to a transportation unit with the aim of changing my MOS to be a truck driver (88M). I was granted the opportunity to attend motor transportation training in order to change my MOS, so I …show more content…
Being a 1SG would not be the least demanding position that I thought I had observed through the years. I had one influence beyond any doubt that would guide me along the way; and that’s the significant mentors I had while I was coming up in the ranks. I have personally taken a bit of each First Sergeants’ style and approach, and with that I created my own and along the way I was prepared for the challenges. Right then, I knew what I wanted to implement. My first drill I had my philosophy in hand, prepared to peruse through the entire unit at the same time, this was a transportation unit. After eighteen months as the 1SG of that unit I was asked to go on a deployment. I would be the 1SG of a remarkable organization. It was a gun truck company and what made it interesting was that it was comprised of one active Army platoon, one Army reserve platoon, and one Army National Guard platoon. I had to inquire as to why I was asked to take this mission, then I recalled, that while at Fort Stewart and through the two years I had been back, all I did was train gun