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File: 110796_aacad_05.txt
Army. We begged CENTAF to send us centracting help and they sent
someone from another site but it was eight hours away and getting
to a phone to follow up was a chore in itself. It was very
frustrating having no TV/VCR for entertainment, pillows, ice
chests for SR, vehicles etc...when every other place in theater
had more than their fair share. After I made an initial visit to
King Fahd, I was in shock at the things they had ....we were
definitely the step-children of Centaf. They had large screen
TVs, VCRs in every work tent, mattresses stereos, weights,
desks, linoleum, ice cream machines, Honda rentals, Suburbans,
asphalt roads etc... it was another world. We lost two months
time by the time we started getting orders in, morale at our site
was the worst in theater, and understandably why.
C. Obtaining A-rations at our location was next to impossible. We
struck it lucky for Xmas, Centaf sent our dinner by truck. It
took us three days to prepare it on the MKTs, but it was well
worth it..we even snagged some near beers from the Army
contractor in the area. The Army contractor was our first shot
in the dark. We asked, begged, pleaded with the Army to order us
meats and vegetables but we didn't get our first shipment until
after the war, a little late. The Army had a huge warehouse open
up in February. We were able to get canned food, MREs and soda
from them throughout our stay...the Army gave us a slight variety
but we were last on their list for A rations and obviously never
got them. Centaf was another strike they couldn't or wouldn't
help us at all...thus we had an irate Wing Commander that was on
our case for months, he even tried for us a Centaf but we were
to remote for them to help us. We were exempt from going Mess
Attendant contract because the Wing Commander believed the labor
(foreign nationals) were to great a security risk for site. After
the war, Saudi Catering contracted food to us by bumping off King
Fahd's contract and then we negotiated our own contract to have
the dining hall contracted for remaining tent city personnel (the
planes were long gone) thus Saudi Catering moved in and we left
one week later. It was the break we needed to get out of that.
place.
Lessons Learned
- Find your own contractor and work it after the fact - The
quickest way for us to get A-rations was to look at other
operationsand copy them, thus a King Fahd visit, and bumping off
their contract. We waiting too long for the Army to meet their
promises and relied too much on headquarters to help us. The
thing to do is hit a large city with a contractor in it that will
deliver to your area and call your nearest AF Contracting office.
Doing the leg work for contracting saves them time in a war
scenario only and speeds up delivery of that food.
- Put CES in charge of the water- We did not have the manning nor
the time to hand water bottles out to every person on base. We
were also stuck with picking it up, storing it, cleaning up
busted pallets after a rain storm and keeping inventory. Water is
a civil engineering responsibility. We made the mistake of
picking up two pallets in the beginning days and thus bore the
responsibility forever. They had folks sitting around in their
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