Future flight students commanding grunts - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Future flight students commanding grunts

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — They could have been drinking beer on the beach in Pensacola, Fla.

Instead, 13 active-duty lieutenants commissioned with aviation contracts are on the ground in Afghanistan, leading infantry platoons with 1st Battalion, 23rd Marines, a Houston-based Reserve unit in need of platoon commanders.

The lieutenants volunteered for the job while still in The Basic School at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., because there was still a one-year wait for a seat in flight school.

Their May 2010 graduating class had 80 lieutenants with aviation contracts. The junior officers were given about an hour to decide among several options. Sixteen went to the 12-week Infantry Officer Course, and 13 made it through and shipped out to Houston to link up with 1/23 for its annual training and pre-deployment workup.

For the battalion, it was a solution to a manning shortage. For the lieutenants, it was a surprise chance of a lifetime.

First Lt. Jeremy Wood said that as a kid, he’d always wanted to be a pilot. After deciding he wanted to be a Marine, the next step was choosing between aviation and infantry.

“When I heard … volunteers were needed for a yearlong endeavor, I said, ‘Sign me up, put me in. I want to do this,’ ” said Wood, who commands 1st Platoon in the battalion’s Weapons Company and hopes to one day fly an F-18.

The long wait for flight school was an anomaly created when the Corps surged above 202,000 Marines faster than expected, said 1st Lt. Brian Villiard, a Quantico spokesman. Four Basic School companies have had flight school students — the last of whom graduated in December — redirected to other assignments. By October, the wait time for flight school is only expected to be up to a month, Villiard said, so the initiative will no longer be necessary.

While some lieutenants enrolled in the IOC — where they were nicknamed “sky grunts” — others have participated in language training and logistics officer training, or have been temporarily assigned to billets across the Corps to “enhance their professional development as Marine officers,” Villiard said.

The lieutenants serving as platoon commanders have been fully trained as infantry officers and even have the 0302 infantry officer military occupational specialty. When they get to flight school later this year, they will be given the 7599 MOS that all student naval aviators get. Their infantry officer role will become a secondary MOS, Villiard said.

The lieutenants should be commended for stepping up for deployment, said Lt. Col. Todd Zink, commander of 1/23.

“They’re putting their service in the Marine Corps ahead of being a pilot,” Zink said.

When he first arrived at the unit, Wood said his Marines would play the soundtrack from the movie “Top Gun” whenever he walked into a room. But on patrol, it’s all business.

“Being an infantry officer gives me the opportunity to lead Marines in a capacity I won’t have as an aviator,” he said.

At least one of the lieutenants is enjoying being in the dirt with the grunts so much that he might stick with it.

“I’d lie if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind,” said 2nd Lt. Chris Norgren, who also said he would fly “anything the Marine Corps will let me.”

Right now, he said he’s focused on the deployment but will be looking more closely at his options when he returns home.

“At some levels, the coolest parts of being an infantry officer will go away,” he said, predicting he’d be in line for a staff job if he stayed with the infantry.

While he’s looking forward to going to flight school, he said he could still reconsider.