Fort Leonard Wood (military base)
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Fort Leonard Wood is a United States Army Basic Combat Training (BCT) post located in the Missouri Ozarks. The main gate is located on the southern boundary of St. Robert. The post was created in December 1940 and named in honor of General Leonard Wood, former Chief of Staff, in January 1941. Originally intended to train infantry troops, in 1941 it became an engineer training post with the creation of the Engineer Replacement Training Center. The post is commonly referred to as Fort Lost in The Woods amongst soldiers who have served there.
Fort Leonard Wood offers BCT for most non-combat arms soldiers; and AIT for MOS 88M (motor transport operator) and non-combat engineer MOSes and OSUT training for combat engineers and bridging engineers (MOS 21B and 21C), chemical specialists (74D) and military police (31B & 31E). All training is gender integrated as in Fort Jackson, with the exception of combat engineers (i.e. MOS 21B is closed to women).
Those soldiers who fail their initial physical fitness assessment are sent to the Fitness Training Company to get in shape. They go to the PCU (Physical Condition Unit), which is one of three platoons, the others being PTRP (Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Program), which is where soldiers who were injured in basic training and AIT go to rehabilitate and go back to training, and Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) - Completion (APFT-C) which Soldiers who failed the APFT train to pass the APFT to graduate BCT or AIT. This is an alternative to being medically discharged.
Fort Leonard Wood has been nicknamed, by some visitors, Fort Lost-In-The-Woods due to its remoteness from any major metropolitan center.
