Buies Creek-Campbell University Cadet Tony Lamboy, of Fayetteville, N.C., just completed a three-week internship in Cadet Troop Leadership Training at Ft. Lewis, Wash. It was Lamboy’s job to shadow an Army platoon leader and become an acting platoon leader on an engineering project.
Lamboy, who is a rising senior at Campbell, described a platoon leader as a sort of jack of all trades.
“You must be flexible, be able to make quick decisions based on limited information and be well-versed in all areas,” he said. “For example, I was with an engineering unit working on a horizontal engineering project. The platoon leader must know enough about engineering to be able to say that something is being done correctly or incorrectly. You’ve got to be very well-rounded.”
A horizontal engineering project is one in which ground is moved. Lamboy took on the role of platoon leader on such a project when he was required to set up a staging area for construction equipment.
“As a platoon leader, I had to figure out how many man-hours the project would take, how many people it would take and how much risk would be involved,” he said. “I asked a lot of questions and really studied the manual I was given to read.”
Lamboy joined the Campbell ROTC after meeting his two roommates.
“I saw what the Army had to offer and I said, ‘Hey, this is going to be a good thing for me because it will put me into a position where I can lead people. The Army teaches a lot of leadership and self-discipline,” he said.
An economics major, Lamboy is a member of the Adam Smith Club. He will be commissioned as an Army 2nd Lieutenant when he graduates in May 2010. He is the son of Elba and Jose Lamboy.
Established in 1971, the Campbell University ROTC Battalion has consistently out-performed other units both regionally and nationally. From 2005 to present, the Battalion was ranked in the top 15 percent out of 273 ROTC programs in the nation by the U.S. Army Cadet Command.
Photo Copy: Campbell University Cadet Tony Lamboy receives instruction on operating a bulldozer during his internship at Ft. Lewis, Wash.