The National Guard has something it has never had in its modern era—a drill sergeant.
Staff Sergeant Tyler Ritenour of Maysville is a fulltime maintenance technician for the 1128th Support Company in Marshall. He’s a National Guard soldier in addition to being a civilian employee of the Guard.
As the Missouri Guard’s first graduate of Army Drill Sergeant School, he’ll be training civilian recruits before they go to basic training, giving them a leg-up on other recruits, and he’ll be providing his unit with the latest training techniques.
Ritenour says he was inspired by his drill sergeant at Fort Jackson, South Carolina eight years ago, someone who seemed like Superman. “I’ve been wanting to be a drill sergeant every since I met my first drill sergeant,” he says.
Ritenour went through the Army’s two-month program that he says was like going through basic training three times in a row. . He hopes to go through a four-month summer program with the army that will let him to be a drill sergeant more than just one weekend a month.
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