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File: 110796_aacad_04.txt
Page: 04
Total Pages: 14

         

          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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