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File: 110796_aacad_04.txtB. 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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