FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. — An Army officer from Rocky Mount has been recognized as one of the service’s best combat engineers.

First Lt. Jonathan E. Kralick, the son of Charles and Sharon Kralick of Rocky Mount, and his teammate, 1st Lt. Tyler Knox, placed second in the service’s 2011 Best Sapper Competition, a grueling three days that tested 37 teams’ combat engineering skills, held April 7-10 at Fort Leonard Wood, the base that trains the Army’s engineers.

“I’ve been fortunate to participate for the past two years, and the excitement, challenge and camaraderie brought me out for a third time,” said Kralick, who graduated in 2005 from Rocky Mount High School and in 2009 from the U.S. Military Academy.

Competitors needed to be in top physical condition to make it through the events. The first day started before dawn with a nonstandard physical fitness test. The two-person teams ran three miles carrying their weapons and wearing full body armor. As soon as competitors crossed the finish line, they performed as many push-ups and sit-ups as possible in five minutes. Then they had to use an overhead bar and lift their bodies high enough to cross their ankles above the bar as many times as they could in three minutes.

“My partner and I trained daily by going on runs, swims and ruck marches,” Kralick said. “We also practiced the many technical skills which will be tested just as much as the physical aspects.”

Immediately after the test was completed they were loaded onto a helicopter and flown out over a small lake and dropped into the 54-degree water.

From there, they were timed and graded on every thing: how long it took to swim to shore, how long it took them to walk from one station to the next and how long it took them to complete the tasks at each event.

The first and second days tested competitiors’ skills on tasks such as evacuating casualties, map reading, guiding artillery fire onto a target, breaking through doors, creating different kinds of bombs and assembling weapons.

Kralick and the other competitors had little opportunity to sleep during the 56 hours of the event.

By the third day, the engineers were exhausted but still pushing toward the finish line.

“This competition is a showcase of our best and brightest engineers,” Kralick said. “It also represents the time and effort that thousands of engineers invest in the corps every year to make it the best.”

The final event was a series of 10 stations spaced along a nine-mile course. The competitors started the run in their gas masks, then they drove a spike, pulled a Humvee, flipped a tractor tire, dragged chains and carried concertina wire and a crater charge. They ended by breaking through two doors and sprinting to the finish line past hundreds of soldiers cheering them on.