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Show Michael Schoenfeld 31 u u t 2009 being back ninety days and the inspector instructor, who's the active duty counterpart to the company commander, we didn't have a company commander at the time, so thi active duty officer came down and said, "23rd Marine Regiment sniper platoon's no longer in existence. You're all going to be put in with platoons." They had sent our rifles to 223 Battalion headquarters, 123 and 323 and split up all the rifles. So in effect I went back and was put in as a fire team leader, was a corporal at the time, put in as a fire team leader. So by that point I'd been a rifleman, assistant automatic rifleman, automatic rifleman, now I was a fire team leader. Shortly after that they started the drawdown in '90, '91.The INI came down and basically told everybody, I think it was about the third drill weekend back, so about ninety days after we came back, they came down and said the Marine Corps is reducing its strength and anybody that wants to transfer services or if you're so close to the end of your contract, we can start processing you now. A lot of Marines jumped on that opportunity and left. So I went from being a fire team leader, pretty much overnight, to being a squad leader as a corporal. From that point forward, that was '91, up until I received my commissioning in '97, I was pretty much filling a squad leader or platoon sergeant billet as a pretty junior. Did a lot of growing during that time. But it was a great time because I had opportunities to train Marines and participate in some other things. I took a squad to Super Squad and won the Western Regionals and finished third nationally. Just got a good experience. Spent some time as an E5, a sergeant, filling a platoon commander's billet, and I bumped around between that and a platoon sergeant billet for about three or four years. We did a lot of exercises, combined arms exercises, had a chance to go over to work with the 8 |
