July and August are, traditionally, the months when Arizonans venture out of state to cooler climes, escaping the extreme heat and higher humidity that have blanketed much of the state.

A Tucson lawmaker, however, spent much of the past month in the Georgia wetlands, traversing swampy terrain, learning hand-to-hand combat skills and battling heat exhaustion.

For Rep. Jonathan Paton, the trip was never planned as a relaxing getaway. After all, the Army doesn’t send soldiers through training at Fort Benning for vacations.

The District 30 Republican — a 2nd lieutenant in the Army Reserves — recently returned from Basic Officer Leadership training, an experience he says tops almost all others.

“It had to be the most exciting — other than serving in the Legislature — it had to be one of the most exciting experiences of my life, to be honest,” he said.

The 34-year-old Mr. Paton said he was by far the oldest person in the company and figures he was not much younger than his commanding officer during training.

“It’s not easy keeping up with 22-year-olds in formation runs at four in the morning,” he said.

Besides the early morning runs, trainees also had to contend with a land navigation course. During the exercise, pairs of officers had four hours to negotiate dense forests and soggy swamps, making their way to four of six checkpoints, with only a map and a compass.

The day Mr. Paton did the course, he said, the weather was particularly hot and muggy, the heat index rising to 115 degrees. In order to finish in the allotted time, he and his partner had to take a shortcut through some dense forest and sprint the final 200 meters, all while carrying heavy packs laden with equipment.

After crossing the finish line, Mr. Paton collapsed, succumbing to the oppressive weather, he said.

“Heat exhaustion is like nothing you can imagine,” he said. “It just hit me like a ton of bricks.”

He was transported to the base’s medical center by ambulance and said the doctors recorded his core temperature at 105 degrees. Mr. Paton said more than 70 soldiers suffered heat-related ailments at Fort Benning that week.

“The Army’s really worried about [heat exhaustion in soldiers],” he said. “They put me in the hospital. I didn’t see what all the fuss was about because I felt like I could go back the next day.”

Mr. Paton said, however, the Army is so concerned about sickness caused by heat exposure that it limits any affected soldier’s physical exercise and prohibits the use of certain medications —among them, antihistamines — that have a tendency to dehydrate the body.

He said he isn’t any worse for wear, though: “I lost a couple pounds and they took all my hair.”

It wasn’t all swamps and intravenous fluids. The trainees also got to shoot at “cool things” and requalify on assorted weapons. Among the weapons Mr. Paton said he trained with were .50 caliber machine guns and M4 carbines.

The combat training, he said, was revolutionary for Army officers. Mr. Paton said it was the pilot effort for “the biggest shift in officer training since World War II,” in that it focuses heavily on close combat operations.

One way close combat is being emphasized, he said, is in the daily physical training.

“Every morning for like two weeks, all we did was hand-to-hand combat,” he said. “You only stop when the other person taps out.”

Essentially, the members of Mr. Paton’s company — he estimates there were between 30 and 40 people — would square off, mano a mano, for two minutes or until one person gave up. After the time was up, the combatants would switch opponents, repeating the process ad naseum.

The officers were taught submission moves and holds with which to subdue their adversary. Mr. Paton joked that legislative leadership should consider daily hand-to-hand combat training at the Capitol as a way of releasing political frustration.

“I wonder if that wouldn’t be cathartic to do at the Legislature,” he quipped.

Mr. Paton said he didn’t receive any kind of special treatment because he was an elected official. In fact, he didn’t tell anyone what his day job is until training was almost over. The first person he told was a supply commander, who told Mr. Paton that it was great he was going through training — before telling him to get back to mopping the floor.

The experience — besides giving the military intelligence officer military training — gave Mr. Paton a glimpse at the lives of many of his constituents who are stationed at Fort Huachuca east of Tucson, he said. They can be called to Iraq or Afghanistan at any time.

“I think it gives me a real good empathy for what their lives are like,” he said.

Mr. Paton said the leadership training — he termed it “the best in the world” — not only gave him skills he can use in his military endeavors, whatever they may end up being, but also at the Legislature.

“It would be great if more people in elected office could have that kind of training,” he said, “because you know how your decisions affect those on the ground.”

He said it has given him a real appreciation of the effort required by and the responsibility borne by those in leadership of both parties.

At the end of August, Mr. Paton will report for military intelligence training, but won’t be straying far from home. He will be stationed at Fort Huachuca in his district until mid-November. After that, he said, he expects to return to civilian life, though the possibility of being called to the Middle East is very real.

For now, Mr. Paton is planning on beginning the legislative session in January, a prospect the first-term lawmaker doesn’t find nearly as imposing as last year.

“After spending time with the snakes in the swamp in Georgia, now the Legislature doesn’t seem so forbidding,” he said. —