Corporal Kadin Fowler reports on his recent attendance at the SNCO Course:
I was quite eager to attend the Senior Non Commissioned Officer (“SNCO”) course when I was preparing myself to leave for it. The SNCO course is the second leadership course a cadet will undertake nationwide and follows on from the Junior NCO course. It is a week long program and is held at RNZAF Base Ohakea for all units within the central area of NZ to create well natured leaders within the Cadet Forces. As I had already attended JNCO course last year, the military routine of the Air Force Base was all too familiar, and getting up at 6am and having a lights out time of around 10pm was a given.
Unlike the JNCO course, we were given our own individual rooms within a barracks block, and as we were expected to be self-managing experienced leaders, there was no wakeup call. We relied entirely on cell phone and watch alarms to wake us, and if they failed to go off then it was plain bad luck!
After the introductions were given by the officers at the training centre we started our primary training which is split into three terminals or topics; the first of which was Instructional Technique (“IT”) which is in a basic sense classroom lessons. They’re not too exciting, but they are really informative and useful when it comes to developing plans and presenting or instructing. Lessons were given by the staff before we were split into three syndicates in which we took our own turns at instructing. We first started with knot tying as a precursor lesson, before we went onto the proper test which was based on bushcraft.
The course became so full on after the start that we forgot to name the syndicate we were put into so we aptly named it Charlie group. Apparently this was too boring for the officers so they renamed it several times, and then couldn’t decide on a fitting name for us! After the IT terminal, there was the Leadership terminal, the most important of the course. To fail this was to fail the course. We started with classroom lessons before going onto the practises and then the tests themselves. These practises and tests happened to be one of the most enjoyable moments in the course because of the interesting scenarios we were put in. Unfortunately it just happened to be ruined by a bout of the flu I caught. Isn’t that a coincidence! The good news is that the course staff immediately dealt with the situation quickly and we all passed the terminal.
The final part of the course was to be the SNCO drill. This was pretty much squad handling as a SNCO during a parade. As I have already been doing this, it was a piece of cake. We then found out that we had all passed that terminal as well, and that practically meant we had passed the course. All we needed to do then was complete the final parade which is pretty much a parade that concludes our course exercises. It occurred during the afternoon of Friday straight after our final terminal which meant there was no time to congratulate each other or celebrate.
As the final parade commenced and our families and friends watched us parade in all our glory, we were all treated to a very low flyby of CT-4E Air Trainers which looked absolutely amazing. We were then brought into the training centre where food and drinks were served, and each cadet was awarded their graduation certificate. Then the celebrations and partying occurred and we stayed up for a good amount of time that night, ignoring the 10pm lights out rule. Great way to finish up by getting in trouble! Turns out they wanted us to stay up anyways to get rid of our high energy levels.
Eventually the closing chapters began as we said our farewells to each other and boarded our respected buses. We may have been departing from our hastily made friends, but not from the knowledge we hastily learnt there. It was a rewarding experience and I highly suggest others to partake in the course. The benefits surely outweigh the negatives.
