Page 5 - FCA Diamond Point Dec 2022

FROM THE CSM OF THE CORPS

Season’s Greetings to all fellow Finance and Comptroller Soldiers and Civilians,
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currently serving or supporting!

This has been another banner year for our Finance Corps and a significant one
for the school as well.

This summer, we witnessed the activation of three Finance Battalions: the 106 th
in Kaiserslautern, Germany led by LTC Benjamin Ecklor and CSM Larry Hill;
th
the 125 in Schofield Barracks, Hawaii led by LTC Leviticus Pope and CSM
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Craig Rodland; and the 15 Finance Battalion in Fort Hood, Texas led by LTC
Ralph Schneider and CSM Ronald Oyardo. These three activations follow the CSM Dodge
82 nd’s activation last year at Fort Bragg North Carolina and currently led by LTC
Adrian Plater and CSM Jennifer Boynton. In a significant evolutionary redesign, these four
battalions will comprise the core structure of how the Finance Corps will support the Army of 2030
in large scale combat operations.

It is at these battalions where NCOs primarily hone their craft. They acquire progressive technical
mastery in all aspects of deployed finance operations with an emphasis on disbursing, commercial
vendor services, and internal controls. They will exercise their chevrons as team, squad, and
platoon sergeants by way of the infinite variety of real-life experience those roles will immerse
them in. They will grasp Army and Sustainment operations as staff NCOs in the S3 and Support
Operations shops. These battalions represent the forge that will produce a dynamic and
competent Finance NCO corps and further refined by assignments in resource management up to
the strategic level.

At the school, we’ve done much to prepare our NCOs for this reality but have far to go. Significant
revisions in our programs of instruction in both the Advanced (ALC) and Senior (SLC) Leaders
courses are a solid start, but we can never be content with steady state. Due to the constraints on
course length and content, NCO training and development must be grounded in the operational
domain at home station and then validated in Professional Military Education (PME). PME schools
epitomize leadership gates in a Soldier’s developmental path. It marks the beginning of a new
phase in their growth. While at home station, NCOs must remain informed about training
opportunities outside of PME. I am dismayed when I hear NCOs say they’ve never heard of a
course offered, but it is even worse if they have and but lacked the motivation or encouragement to
pursue it. Leadership should at times be intrusive to deliberately set our Soldiers on a correct
azimuth.

Going into this season, I am reminded of the many NCOs and officers who’ve supported my
journey. Very recently, I was glad to reconnect after many years, with an NCO who helped set my
azimuth as junior Soldier. Conversely, I also felt the loss of CSM(R) Mark Sullivan who was always
present and accessible at critical junctures on my timeline from PFC to present. I will always
appreciate the Finance Corps Association’s role helping to maintain the generational linkage of our
great branch.

I wish for each of you, and our Corps, a very prosperous Holiday Season and New Year

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