By Amy Newcomb
GUIDON staff
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Col. Phil Visser, the 26th Chief of Chemical and U.S. Army Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear School commandant, is scheduled to relinquish command Tuesday.

Visser said over the past two years of his commandancy, the most interesting and gratifying effort has not only been the ongoing work to shape the future of the regiment and the Chemical Corps and how these entities will provide CBRN support to the Army of 2020 and beyond, but also spending time with Soldiers.

“Probably the greatest privilege as the commandant is you have full latitude to involve or inject yourself in any aspect of the training that goes on here,” Visser said. “For me, I enjoy being in the classroom with the officers and noncommissioned officers and Soldiers that are here training.

“I think we have a great team here in the school, and it’s always a pleasure to be able to interact with them doing their job as well. Whether it’s inside the classroom or out in the various training areas, being around our Soldiers when they are learning their trade … that’s always a plus,” he added.

Regimental Command Sgt. Maj. Gabriel Arnold, USACBRNS, said Visser is one of the most outstanding officers he had ever had the pleasure of serving with because he is a Soldier’s commander and puts the Chemical Corps and its Soldiers above anything else.

“Col. Visser has more passion about advancing our regiment than anyone I have ever known in my career,” Arnold said. “He has done a tremendous amount of work for our corps. He has vision and has set the conditions for our corps to be relevant and ready as part of the Army of 2020 and beyond.”

Visser said he is proud of the team the corps has built at Fort Leonard Wood and takes pride in their volume of accomplishments.

“As a team and working in concert with operational CBRN forstructure across all three compos, we have mapped a campaign plan, a regimental strategy to take us to 2020 and beyond,” Visser said. “Taking into account all of the CBRN missions that we have — that are necessary in order to enable those units in the future, to enable what we envision to come to fruition, all of the effort and synchronizing — all that has been a huge task, and our team here has done very well at working through those dynamics.”

“We have had a lot of success recently from the institutional standpoint here in the school reaching out and supporting the operational force. We supported Operation Tomodachi (U.S. humanitarian mission in Japan). We have supported a myriad of operational requirements ongoing previously in Iraq and now presently in Afghanistan,” he added. “We have supported some other initiatives focused on countering weapons of mass destructions and/or CBRN related things — I am proud of all of that effort.”

Visser said while he will take many memories with him as he moves forward in his career, one of the best memories is conducting physical training with the officers, noncommissioned officers and Soldiers.

“I try to have the opportunity to do physical training with one company a week here, varying that across all of our companies, which there are a lot of them,” Visser said. “Those kind of esprit de corps activities across the entire organization are, I think, some of my favorite memories.”

Visser said he also enjoyed taking runs with Arnold, who said he will miss doing PT with the boss.

“He is 50 years old and still gets out there with the youngsters and does PT every day,” Arnold said. “He believes in discipline, standards and fitness, and he sets the example in all three every day.”

Working toward the future to determine the capabilities to enable the Army of the future, while the Chemical Corps tries to work toward the future concurrently with the Army’s mission has been the biggest challenge, Visser said.

“Obviously you can’t really set the things we need to do without the Army’s pieces being set because the Army will define the base of what’s required for us to support and enable and then from that we must be able to draw the correlation, and that’s extremely challenging right now,” he said.

However difficult the mission, Arnold said that Visser is the first commandant he knows of to give the Chemical Corps a Regimental Campaign Plan, which provides every CBRN warrior with a mission, vision and end state.

“Our campaign plan will ensure that we are nested with and prepared to support the Army and Joint Force now and well into the future,” Arnold said.

Visser and his Family are relocating to Fort Eustis, Va., where he will join the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command headquarters at the Army Capabilities Integration Center on the Task Force for Human Dimension.