Shoot, move, communicate: Finance Soldiers get back to the basics

By Sharilyn Wells
Paraglide

October 13, 2011

	Photo by Maj. James Weaver/82nd FMCO 82nd Financial Management Company meet for the pugil stick bout during the Paymaster Challenge held September 27 to 30 at Fort Bragg.

Being a finance specialist for the Army is more than just pushing paychecks into bank accounts to the thousands of Soldiers across the world. This is just what Maj. James Weaver, commander of the 82nd Financial Management Company had in mind when he hosted a field exercise dubbed the Paymaster Challenge, Sept. 27 to 30.

“What we are trying to do here, over the next couple of years or so, is to get a message out to everyone that finance doesn’t just equal military pay,” explained Weaver. “As soon as someone hears the term ‘finance Soldier,’ everyone automatically thinks, ‘Oh, they do my pay.’ But in reality doing military pay is less than 10 percent of what we actually do.”

Weaver admitted that before the war, military pay and travel pay took up most of their time, but since the war, finance specialists focus primarily on disbursements, like budgeting and paying for goods or services throughout the military.

“This four-day competition focused on Soldiers’ technical skills as well as their tactical (ones),” explained Weaver. “There’s always a balance we have to keep proficient between our war fighting skills and our technical skills. We needed them (finance Soldiers) to get back to the basics — shoot, move, and communicate.”

Six teams of five Soldiers headed to the field to competed against each other on basic Soldier skills such as patrol base activities, map reading, first aide, weapons familiarization, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear familiarization, and radio communication. Soldiers also participated in convoy missions, improvised explosive devise lanes and they went through the reconfigurable vehicle tactical trainer. Soldiers even competed in team, night land navigation and held a small battle between the teams that included pugil sticks.

“With all the stuff we did, it really tests your stress level,” explained Staff Sgt. Robin Torres, team leader of the Charlie Takers. “Because people will get stressed out constantly being tested, but in the end we still have to accomplish the mission. So as a team leader, I had to ensure that each Soldier was okay throughout the competition,” said Torres.

“We wanted to push them to point so that we could test them but not break them. Basically make the teams pull together and gel and I think they did a great job at it,” added Weaver. “It was an overall team building exercise.”

By day three, Soldiers began to be tested on their military occupational specialty. They were challenged with employing a deployable dispersing system, deal with customer vendor service payments and debts, military pay, cashier operations, and pay agent operations. On top of all the tasks the Soldiers faced, they also had to take an accumulative written test and attend the Paymaster Board, which entailed more questioning on their MOS.

The competition ended with a foot march to an M16 firing range where they trained on stress shooting and reflexive fire, something the majority of the Soldiers were not familiar with, said Weaver.

“(The range) was a challenge,” said Spc. Eugene Wright, team leader for the Spartans. “But a good challenge.”

After the range the excited Soldiers hopped into their military vehicles happy to be heading to McKellars Lodge for an awards ceremony and food other than meals ready to eat.

But their convoy home was hit by a simulated IED attack near the Longstreet gate and they were told to navigate, by foot, through the woods the rest of the way.

“It was just another way to test the Soldiers’ stress levels,” said Weaver. “It was another way to see how they’ll react to different situations; we were continuously pushing them hard,” he said.
“Yeah, because you had people jumping on the LMTVs (light medium tactical vehicle) fast, happy to be going home,” laughed Torres.

“Yeah, I was one of them,” Wright admitted, smiling.

Wright, a junior enlisted Soldier and the only specialist who was a team leader during the competition won the title Iron Paymaster even though his team didn’t win.

“Our team worked really well together. We didn’t look at the rank on our chests, we looked at each other’s strengths and just made it work,” said Wright.

The Takers, Torres’ team, took home the title of Paymaster by the end of the competition.
“Every single day was something different for the Soldiers, and I think that the fact that they weren’t used to living in those conditions and having to put up with the constant stresses during the competition, was definitely the hardest part of the competition,” Torres explained. “We had to put aside other issues to be able to get the mission on hand completed, and completed to standard.”

Simulating a mission to a place that just suffered a natural disaster, the Soldiers were faced with the challenge of constructing their own living accommodations that included using their poncho and whatever else they could find laying around — something some Soldiers learned the hard way when it rained their first night.

“Usually these Soldiers are sent to areas that are already set up with electricity and air conditioning,” explained 1st Sgt. James Cope, FMCO first sergeant. “So this was geared towards starting a mission from the very beginning where they (other units) need to help rebuild an area that has been struck with a natural disaster.”

“It definitely wasn’t an easy competition,” said Torres. “Going back to the fact that we had to deal with so many different tasks throughout the day, it fell on me to know my Soldiers. My job was to keep them motivated. It may look easy on paper, but it definitely isn’t,” he added.
“Just going back to the basics, was great,” said Wright. “I’m ready for the next one.”

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