We were processing a new class of students into the Motor Vehicle Operators Course. The classroom we were in was right across the road from the Final Test Module. I was standing outside the classroom watching the trucks coming and going as the "Finished Products" took the test that would determine if they had retained enough over the last five weeks to qualify them as 88Ms, Army Military Occupation Specialty (MOS) code for truck drivers.

The course had recently changed its mode of operation. I had been snatched up in and emergency personnel fill, pulled from a pretty good gig at the 301st Trans in Fort Ord CA to serve as an instructor at the drivers course in Fort Leonard Wood. There were about 50 senior NCOs tagged from all over to fill the school which had become critically short of instructors somehow. Since I had been an instructor before and had worked in a similar system to the change they wanted to implement, I was named the Chief Instructor of the the first instructor team. What they had done before was to set up "Modules". Students were handed from Mod to Mod each week. Each Mod had a group of instructors who were subject matter experts on whatever Mod they were in. Each Mod roughly corresponded to one week of training. So first Mod was mostly classroom and simple aptitude testing. Second Mod was small vehicles like jeeps and such. And so it went to the end of the course. The final Mod was the Final Test Module where the students took written tests one materials they had covered and then took a driving test in the largest vehicle they had learned to drive. In most cases that was the five ton tractor and thirty foot trailer.

The change was to the instructor team concept, where a team of instructors picked up a new class and stayed with them from Mod to Mod so they were never passed to another group of instructors until it was time for the final test. This was the system I had been in at Fort Ord in the 70s...but had also been in the Mod system as an instructor at Fort Huachuca in the 60s. I like the team system better so I was anxious to see it work.

. The truck pulled out and the one in line behind it started making a grinding sound. We watched for a few seconds while the student tried to get the truck in gear but each effort was met with a terrible grinding. There was a set of bleachers set up near the test facility, some of the instructors from the team who owned the class being tested were sitting in the bleachers watching. We were not allowed to be around the students while they were being tested. Finally, no doubt in great frustration, one of the team watching from the bleachers started yelling at the top of his lungs..."CLUTCH !!! CLUTCH IT YOU &*%%*# IDIOT!!! USE THE &&*%@# CLUTCH". The student in the truck couldn't hear him but a fellow student on the ground near him relayed the message. The student behind the wheel got an enlightened look on his face, depressed the clutch and shifted into gear, then pulled forward to the start point. I wasn't able to watch the whole test, but I heard that he passed. I remember hoping at the time that somewhere in Korea or Germany there was a patient NCO who would become this guys squad leader and knew how to guide him on the proper application of the &*%$#@ clutch.

And as a side note, whenever our team came up against some problem or the other that defied our best efforts at solution, invariably one of them would ask calmly, "Did you use the Clutch?"