A couple of weeks before we left Iraq, we packed up everything that we couldn’t carry on our backs, and shipped it home. We first laid it out for the MPs to do a customs inspection, which is what’s going on in the picture. After the inspection, we loaded the stuff into the 4 x 4 x 4 wooden boxes you can see. The boxes were then placed in a CONEX container for shipment. When I left the FOB, the CONEX with my stuff in it was still sitting there, baking in the sun.
The plan was to load the CONEXs on trucks, take them to Kuwait and load them on a ship, ship them to Beaumont Texas, put them on rail cars, and ship them to Boise. Truck them onto Gowen Field and then unload them, probably in February during our drill. If they’ve arrived by then.
All our section equipment, and most of my personal stuff, is supposedly floating somewhere right now.
Like most other Guard units, we lost a bunch of our equipment to our replacement unit. We left all the up-armored HMMWVs, of course, but also radios, machine guns and weapons, night vision devices, trucks, etc. We will not have equipment to train on when we start drilling again, and if we get called for a state mission, such as floods in the spring, we may not be able to do it, at least not well.
To my knowledge, we did not get much equipment from our predecessor unit, an active unit, but we did leave a bunch with our successor unit, an active unit. I was told that we tried for six months to get an ONS approved (Operational Needs Statement) but never got it approved. (I think we got one early with a few things, before arriving in country.) The 101st arrived, looked over our equipment list, selected what they wanted, and got an ONS approved in five days reassigning our equipment to them.
An ONS tells Dept of the Army what you need, in addition to your assigned equipment and manning, to do a current assignment. Surprisingly, the 101st, a light infantry unit, asked for our Bradleys. They don’t have trained drivers, operators, or mechanics for the Bradleys, but they got the request approved. I understand a political fight ensued, and we eventually got them back.
We have full time Guardsmen employed to maintain the Bradleys, so losing them would also mean losing jobs here at home.
2 comments:
"Surprisingly, the 101st, a light infantry unit, asked for our Bradleys. They don’t have trained drivers, operators, or mechanics for the Bradleys, but they got the request approved."
Sounds like something out of a really bad comedy about the Army.
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