363 TFW COMMANDER�S BRIEFING TO SHAW AFB

File: aaazz_01.txt
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SUBJECT: 363 TFW COMMANDER�S BRIEFING TO SHAW AFB

UNCLASSIFIED

Hello from Shaw bu Dhabi. Like everyone else here, I wish I could talk
to you face to face, but since that's not in the cards, I'll do the best I can over the phone. . .
First, let me say, in general, that everyone here is doing a tremendous
job. You should all be very proud of your spouse or loved one who's a part of
the 363d team here. Our wing has been a pacesetter in almost every area you
can think of here! In fact, when the Secretary of the Air Force visited us a
few weeks ago, he said that our wing was one of the best he'd seen in the
theater. That's quite a compliment coming from him. And, we're getting
better every day. Let me talk to you about some areas I think you'd be
interested in hearing about.

WEATHER

First, the weather here has improved tremendously--our early morning
temperatures are in the 65-70 F range with mid-day highs about 95 F, which is
not bad considering that the relative humidity runs about ~b-40 per
cent at peak day temperatures. That makes our living and working conditions a
lot more bearable than they were when the wing first got here where we had
daily highs around 120 F and nights in the high 90s!

TENT CITY

Our tent city now has about 220 tents and many of our people have fixed
them up so that they're really pretty nice! We've gotten plywood, boards,
saws, hammers, nails, etc. so that our people can do self-help projects for
their tents. Those include building wooden floors and outside porches
where they can sit and relax, or sunbathe in their off-time; some are really impres
sive! In fact, we now have a "Tent of the Bi-month" program where we pick out
the best looking tent-yard and we give them a small refrigerator and a case of
soda for their tent.
Other than the tents that our people live in, we also have a Chapel Tent,
a meeting hall tent which people can schedule to use, an AAFES field exchange
tent, which has been slow in getting supplies but we expect that to improve in
the next couple of weeks; we also have a Post Office Tent where people can
receive their mail or mail letters and packages home. Mail service has been a
real challenge all over the area here' with the large volume of mail and the
many different units and locations in the theater, mail service is slower than
we'd like to see it. We've seen mail in as early as ~ days and as long as 2-3
weeks but the average seems to run 'around 9-10 days. Our leadership at
CENTCOM has been working hard to improve that service and make it more
reliable. We also have a hospital. clinic "tent" set up at tent city to handle
emergencies" or see people who might need minor medical attention. Our Air
Transportable.Hospital.or.ATH.is located in another section of the base,
about a 1O minute drive from: tent city. Our medical folks have been doing a
great job in providing our people with emergency room treatment and most
normal in patient needs; luckily, we haven't had a lot of problems to keep
them real busy but one early outbreak of diarrhea had them ops checking their
gas masks for about a week. Our dentists are also set up at the ATH and have
two dentist chairs. They're providing our people with most dental needs
including routine cleanings. Our people only have to sign up for an appoint
ment and so far we've had almost no waiting list..
We also have an Accounting and Finance Office set up in tent city where
people can conduct normal business including cashing checks and getting local
currency for trips downtown. They can't accept second party checks so you .
need to encourage friends and relatives who might send money as gifts not to
send checks.
We have a lot of our off-duty MWR activities set up in what we call the

UNCLASSIFIED