Asymmetric Military

From four different commissioning sources- ROTC for those attending a civilian university; the Military Academy (West Point); OCS which provides a path to the officer corps for enlisted soldiers; and "direct commission," a "fast track" officer spring traditionally reserved for entering doctors and lawyers as it allows selectees to forgo some officer training, but, because of an officer shortage, not an uncommon officer starting place in 2007- all new officers converge onto either Ft. Sill or Ft. Benning for what's called BOLC II (BOLC I is OCS), a kind of combat basics course. After BOLC II, officers disperse again to the schools for their respective branch which the Army calls, BOLC III.

After BOLC 3, most newly minted LTs go on to become Platoon Leaders or "PLs." A platoon has around 40 soldiers and can be further broken down into squads (which themselves can be divided into teams). Several platoons make up a company and it goes up from there through battalion, brigade, division, and all the way up to corps.

Anyways, the job being important, the training can be intense at times. This song lovingly satirizes some of the teaching techniques employed by those who train lieutenants. I'd like to warn you that it has some rough language so, if that offends you, skip to another post.

Listen to PL Song.

Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump was a platoon leader.