Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Lemons and Major David Sierakowski, both members of the Illinois National Guard, have served on active duty fulfilling a two-year tour of duty training various Reserve Component and National Guard units being mobilized in support of the Global War on Terrorism. Both officers with 1st Brigade of the 85th Division (Training Support), they were cross-leveled to 1-340 Training Support Battalion of the 2nd Brigade in Fort McCoy, Wisconsin. Their first task was to act as unit assistors to the mobilizing 1st Brigade of the 34th Division (1/34), deploying with the brigade to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, for six months of comprehensive individual and collective training. In addition to training, as senior officers they took it upon themselves to mentor their unit's leadership so they could better function as cohesive organizations. When they returned to Fort McCoy, based on their experience with the 1/34, they helped form the Observer Trainer Mentor (OTM) leadership training team. The OTM team was intended to expose mobilizing leaders to changes in doctrine and build basic leadership skills that do not get exercised by weekend drill. The units Lemons and Sierakowski mentored were from four functional areas: adjutant general, finance, medical and engineer, including active duty Air Force engineers. While generally technically proficient, these units needed help with the basic military skills which would allow them to succeed in Iraq or Afghanistan. In addition to providing guidance on counterinsurgency and effects-based operations, they taught a "why we fight" class to better explain to the soldiers, their families, friends and coworkers that their mobilization and deployment was a good and necessary measure. They state that the most important part of mentoring National Guard and Reserve Component soldiers is the initial unit assessment because the capabilities of each new unit can vary widely across the entire spectrum. They note that, despite occasional horror stories to the contrary, most employers of National Guard and Reserve Component soldiers are very supportive of them and that a major part of these good relationships is continual communication with the employer. Lemons, who does sales and marketing for Caterpillar, and Sierakowski, a construction engineer for a consulting firm, add that businesses, like the military, want to effectively manage their manpower, and the military could aid the employee-employer relationship by providing more advance warning of mobilizations and extensions.

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