US Army NCO Heritage and Education Center Museum Tour Video

[Rakkasan187]

A little over a year ago, the NCO Leadership Center of Excellence and US Army Sergeant's Major Academy launched a 30 minute video to support the program of instruction (POI) for the Battle Staff NCO Course. This course formerly known as the O&I Course (Operations and Intelligence) prepares senior NCOs to become staff members of a planning staff for a tactical operations center (TOC). These battle staff NCOs were trained to produce operations reports and to track the battle of a unit on the ground in combat. The current resident course is conducted at Fort Bliss, Texas and it's instructors are also trained to conduct the course for Non-resident students through Video Tele Training and satellite links to other installations across the US and overseas.

As part of the curicculum, NCO History is imbedded in the course in order to further inform and educate NCOs on their duties and responsibilities as leaders. Several years ago when I was a lesson developer/writer for the Battle Staff Course, I was asked to develop a lesson that would incorporate a virtual tour of the NCO Museum into the course for those students who were at other installations such as Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, and overseas so that they would be able to fulfill their NCO History requirements. A short video was produced by the then curator of the NCO Museum Mr. Larry Arms. In 2015 when I was hired as the curator of the NCO museum, the Director of the Battle Staff Course approached me to once again do an video after we had renovated the NCO Museum and it's exhibits..

We were alloted a 30 minute window to conduct a tour of the facility and highlight some historical areas as well as show some of the artifacts and highlight some of the basic repsonsibilities of NCOs through time.


Attached is a link to the video which is currently on Youtube. We are now in the process of doing a longer video which will be tailored towards the civilian population to better define some of the acroynms and terms used in the military version as well as more details on specific artifacts in the museum. The newer video will be broken into segments that can be skipped over if the viewer wants to see a specific time period in hisotry and a more virtual artifical intelligence (AI) experience will be injected such as turning pages of the Blue Book or seeing more angles of a particular artifact.


I hope that you enjoy this short video that we produced, and you get to see your's truly narrating you through the museum.. We had fun filming this and we are working on more of the script for our next revised video.. Comments and feedback are welcome..

 

 

Leigh

[Rakkasan187]

I also want to add that many of the exhibits had been refurbished and redesigned by myself and a few other museum staff members.

 

Leigh

[ScottG]

Really awesome Smitty, great job on all of the exhibits and the narration. We do have a proud history as NCO's! Scott

[Rakkasan187]

Scott,

 

Thank you for your feedback..

 

Leigh

[gomorgan]

Nicely done Leigh, brings back some memories from one old Sgt. to another...George

[Rakkasan187]

George,

Thank you very much.. It has been a labor of love and my priority is to educate the force (The force being the US Army as a whole) on the importance of NCO's and how their responsibilities have changed and developed over the past 200 plus years..

 

We will continue to expand on the video as we move forward...

 

Leigh

[gomorgan]

Leigh, long retired now but know we didn't stress this enough to our young soldiers and junior NCO's. I can't remember if it was Senior or First Sergeant Academy but we had to give a 5 or 10 talk about any military subject. So I gave the class a 10 minute talk on the history of our shoulder sleeve insignia and how we came to wear them etc. I thought my TAC NCO was going stroke, he was so impressed and then wanted to know how did I know this, he'd never heard it. I guess we get so wrapped up in all the day to day goings on that we forget to really sit down and talk values, traditions, and history to our soldiers. I really enjoyed this video and will probably watch it again...George

[Rakkasan187]

George,

 

I have always maintained the highest confidence in the generation that took the guidon from me when I retired after 22 years of service. The one thing that can never be emphasized enough is our history. At the NCO Museum I feel honored to be able to educate and inform our Soldiers. They seem to enjoy the guided tours and they get a better appreciation of what their duties are after speaking to a veteran who now has a son in the service..

 

They seem to take the responsibly of taking care of Soldier's a little more to heart when I explain to them that they are watching over my son now as a leader.. When our junior leaders hear this many of them understand the obligation they now have to be the caretaker of my only child...What a huge responsibility to thrust upon a 20 year old man or woman,, and when they acknowledge that fact that they are now an acting parent of someone's child......What an impact it has on them to strive to be the best they can be...

 

Admittedly some are not ready for the stressors of being a Leader so once again the obligation lies with those of us who were Leaders and our obligation to be available to mentor, train and educate our Sergeants in today's military... although retired,, Veterans have a lot to bring to the table,, a wealth of knowledge and experience that many are willing to share...

 

Thank you George for your Service as well as keeping our history alive..

 

Best regards

 

Leigh

[gomorgan]

Thank You Leigh, you did an excellent job on this video look forward to any others being posted.