FORT JACKSON, South Carolina — By 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, the sky was as white as the sand below the fallen pine cones and needles at the Army’s largest combat training center at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
A thick fog shielded some of the oppressive heat but not the humidity. Sweat streamed down the faces of young recruits, wetting their Army-issued face masks.
Awake since 4 a.m., the recruits stood in full camouflage with their sleeves peeled back slightly to stave off temperatures already rising above 80 degrees.
“Make sure you guys keep your masks on, all right?” yelled a drill sergeant at Victory Tower ahead of rappelling practice.
Echo Company recruits in their third week of 10 of basic training had just finished 14 days of “yellow phase.” The new protocol was designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus by isolating 30-member platoons from the nearly 1,300 other new recruits.
“Yes, drill sergeant!” dozens of young men and women yelled back in unison. Their weariness was barely evident as they prepared to rappel down a hundred feet with nothing more than a rope harness and their break hand tugging through a carabiner to prevent their fall.
Mask-wearing, which has sometimes taken on political significance across the nation, is not up for debate on the 80-square-mile, 100-year-old military installation.
Fort Jackson mandated mask-wearing on April 6 for those who could not maintain 6 feet of social distance.
“COVID is our enemy here,” the commanding officer of 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment, Lt. Col. Jason Dudley, told the Washington Examiner.
“We wear our masks because that’s the smart and safe thing to do to protect them and us from spreading the virus around posts,” he added. “Ultimately, that’s the biggest threat to our mission and what we provide the Army.”
Force protection guidances related to the coronavirus have been issued from the Pentagon since January. By March, it became apparent to the Department of Defense that gatherings led to the spread of the contagion.
Fort Jackson canceled graduation and family day on March 10. By March 18, post access was limited, and temperature checks and additional COVID-19 questions began at gates. Guards were also issued masks and gloves and no longer touched a person’s identification card.
Echo Company commander Sgt. Maj. Jamie Holt told the Washington Examiner that recruits were explained to about the importance of mask-wearing and have not resisted.
“They comply,” he said. “We haven’t heard any reports of anything where they were like, ‘No, I don’t want to wear a mask,’ or, ‘I don’t believe in coronavirus.’”
As a result, few recruits have been removed from platoons for showing symptoms of the virus, and when recruits are removed, there are fewer incidents of contagion within a platoon.
“Our biggest threat at the moment is coronavirus or excess attrition due to coronavirus,” said Dudley.
The Pentagon stopped releasing base-specific data regarding the coronavirus earlier this summer for national security reasons.
As of Aug. 31, the Army has had 13,607 cases of COVID-19 in its ranks. Overall, the active-duty military has suffered nearly three times that number.
Though most cases do not result in hospitalization, 569 service members have been hospitalized, and six have died.
“I know it’s going to be uncomfortable to wear a mask. I know it’s going to bother you,” Dudley said of conversations with recruits. “I know it’s going to get hot and [that] you’re going to get sweaty under your face [mask] and all that stuff, but you have to do it because the threat of the coronavirus is real.”
Recruits are allowed to pull the mask down when doing aerobic exercises alone, such as running, or their morning physical training routine.
But even when running the obstacle course, if a mask slips down, drill sergeants remind the recruits to get the mask back up before rejoining the line.
“It’s difficult to run two miles in this South Carolina humidity with a mask on your face,” Dudley admitted.
That’s when an Army version of risk-reward comes in.
“We buy ourselves the ability to go run a couple of miles without a mask on because I know for the rest of the 10 weeks that you’re going to be in a safe place, not contracting and spreading the virus,” he said.
Fort Jackson was forced to suspend recruit intake for two weeks as the coronavirus began to spread across the nation.
But larger cohort sizes since then and reduced rates of attrition have helped the Army’s largest training center make up for some of those losses.
“You’re surrounded by 1,300 people that just came from all over the country. We’re trying to mitigate the spread of it,” he said. “People are more tolerant of the discomfort because we’ve taken the time to explain there is a threat and [that] we’re trying to mitigate it.”
