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Captain Charles Armour of the HQ USAFE directorate of Air Base Operability was 
one of the first ES&ABO experts to be called to SWA. He arrived in the Saudi 
theater of operations (STO) in November 1990 when it began to become obvious 
that force would have to be employed to remove the Iraqis and combat was 
unavoidable.  Captain Armour was called to serve as the EOD Functional Manager 
on the USCENTAF staff at HQ USCENTAF, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  He  determined 
requirements of the EOD forces in SWA, ensured all bases with aircraft had EOD 
support and advised the USCENTAF staff and commander on EOD issues.  After the 
liberation of Kuwait he dispatched EOD troops to Kuwait for cleanup actions in 
the city or on the airfields and determined what EOD equipment and personnel  
could be returned to the supporting commands, as well as advising the USCENTAF
 commander and his staff on EOD issues.  He was projected to remain in the STO 
through June 1991, or as long as necessary.

The biggest combined challenge during the operations was the "throughput"
effort that funneled these troops and equipment into the SWA theater. At the 
throughput locations, which involved nearly every base in USAFE, support 
requirements were nearly overwhelming.  Billeting, messing, and mortuary 
services were doubled, tripled, quadrupled. At Torrejon Air Base (AB), Spain, 
one of the main throughput bases, Services personnel erected and operated a 
field kitchen and billeting operation to feed and board the thousands of 
troops coming through or turning the flights to SWA. Among the first members 
of the ES&ABO staff to deploy in support of DESERT SHIELD were Captains 
William Thornberry of HQ USAFE's Community Services Division, Robert Carr of 
the NATO Infrastructure Directorate and Tim Strucely of the Engineering and 
Construction Directorate.  they deployed on 15 August 1990 to Torrejon AB 
in support of Headquarters 16th Air Force, whose staff was overtasked by the  
throughput operations.  Captain Thornberry assessed the workload at Torrejon's 
401st Services Squadron and began assisting Lieutenant Colonel Bobbie Lauen's 
staff in bedding down the huge numbers of aircrews and troops passing through 
the base.  Captain Thornberry orchestrated several transient moves which 
increased billeting's ability to house aircrews and reduced room occupancy 
from three per room to two per room.  He also coordinated the move of several 
MWR offices in order to convert those spaces to dormitory rooms for additional 
MAC support personnel who had been temporarily living on the base gymnasium.  
This move also enabled the base gymnasium to reopen for physical fitness
 activities.  Captain Thornberry also evaluated Moron AB's and Zaragoza AB's 
Services capabilities in preparation for the deployment of B-52  and Mac 
aircrew and support personnel  to those bases.

In early September 1990, an inquiry from the Air Force Engineering and 
Services Center at Tyndall AFB, Florida, in response to a request from US 
Central Command Army (USARCENT), the ESRC was asked to source as much AM-2 
matting as possible, for use in SWA.   In SWA, aircraft were filling the bases' 
ramps to maximum allowed and  Army units were attempting to bed down 
helicopters in the desert, where the matting would be used.  After scouring 
the command, Chief Master Sergeant Daniel DeYoung  of the Readiness Division 
put together a 20-man team of civil engineers from 3rd Air Force (3 AF) and 
deployed to Gardemoen, Norway, where he had identified a huge stockpile of 
excess AM-2 matting that had been prepositioned but not touched since the 
Vietnam War.  In just two weeks, this team extracted the matting from a 
storage location deep in a woods at the Norwegian airfield, banded and 
prepared it for shipment, and transported it to the docks at Oslo, from where 
it was shipped to SWA.

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