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File: aacad_04.txt
B. Initial set up was difficult. Two other Services teams
arrived the night after we did to comprise a 4F9RJ UTC, 25
personnel including a commander Major Larsen. The 9 man teams
came from Mountain Home and Nellis. The first look at tent city
showed 8 rows of temper tents, 2 MKTs back to back, a dining
tent and latrine, shower tents, extremely bare base. There was
no CSG commander until Feb 91. Col Vanmeter was the WING
commander and arrived three weeks after us. Communication was
horrible to the outside world. There was no vehicle for us to use
other 728th and 712th ASOC m-series vehicles which they drove and
rarely let us use. We had to drive a mile to the Saudi Military
City to use a telephone at the ALO office. This was extremely
difficult in the beginning. We needed food, tents, personnel and
the only way to get them was bicker with Centaf daily if you
could catch a ride to the city. There was no contracting
finance, transportation or supply people until the first week in
January. We went almost a month without being able to buy
anything.
Lessons Learned:
- Plan for a month with no support - Basically we did this, but
we were hurting for cleaning supplies for food service, blankets,
pillows, pens paper, toilet paper, trash bags. The worst part
was communication. A portable cellular phone would have been a
godsend, especially for the remote aircraft accident site and
search/recovery in a sandstorm. We had no was to communicate and
could have been lost. The team never made it to the site.
Communication would have saved time, effort and perhaps lives ,
we were literally next to the Iraq border.
- Harvest Falcon training needed - Prime Ribs training is
inadequate at Det 2. Concentration needs to be centered on the
9-1 kitchen. We ended up with 2 and very little experience and no
guidance on how to set the things up. Everything we did was based
on what we saw at other sites coming in to theater. That training
class needs to be available to all SVS officers and NCOs. We also
were responsible for tent erection teams and tear down teams.
This was or should have been a CES responsibility but when you
are getting ready to fight a war...CES digs holes and we took up
the slack, another example of doing something we normally don't
do. Postal was another area we were blessed with until we got an
APO in late Jan, 6 weeks after we arrived. I've never heard so
many complaints from people about how a mail system should be run.
There were no MSSQ people so we were saddled with it...if this is
going to happen again, I would like some training...the grief was
not worth getting your mail first
- Send CONTRACTING immediately - A month is an extreme amount of
time to be without contacting. We couldn't buy anything. It was
bad enough not knowing how much your pay was and not being able
to get supply items but not having vehicles and necessities for
the mission was mission stopping. We ran out of plastic
flatware, plates, cups and napkins several times and did without
on several occassions...with lots of questions and begging to the
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