67 COMBAT SUPPORT GROUP TRIP REPORT

File: aacad_05.txt
Page: 05
Total Pages: 14


            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