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File: aabhf_09.txt
contact person, and that was the logical person so that
worked well. We had meetings twice a week, and that was
absolutely necessary [because of] the government and
everything that might be happening here that had a lot of
visibility. There were a lot of interviews and people
coming out here; there was just a lot of traffic. There
were roads that needed to be paved and a lot of things that
had to happen, so I think our communication was good.
I think there was probably some misunderstanding at the
AECE, in a sense, because the operations were to take place
that way, but the command and control was still supposed to
be an autonomous thing in each element. I'm not sure that
always took place. Although the command and control was
supposed to maintain its autonomy, I'm not sure that always
happened. That became a little difficult for some of the
elements. The NCOIC of the AECE also saw himself as an
extension of the OIC. That was a limiting factor for many
of the NCOICs out here.
I think that if we were to do this again, it would be
important to keep the hubs, but even a geographical
separation would have helped. For example, when we came up
here, we were the first element. We were working with the
MAC ALCE and were getting along just fine. We had our own
tools. We were building things. We were getting our own
supplies. Everything was working fine. I attended a
meeting every night with the wing commander and all the
other commanders out at Tent City. We had great
communication; tremendous support up here from the 4410th
Operational Support Wing. Anything we needed, I mean it was
done the next day. We had field latrines, and we were doing
our own stirring and all of that, which was labor intensive.
All I did was tell the wing commander, and the next day we
had the SST machines [trucks which suck out the latrines'
9
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