Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Sinthia Rosario | Spc. Rebekkah G. Young a human resource specialist assigned to 716th Military Police...... read more read more
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FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - Soldiers assigned to 101st Sustainment Brigade “LifeLiners” graduated the Postal Operations course at Fort Campbell, Ky., Dec. 14, 2012.
Postal service plays an important role within the “LifeLiners” Brigade, especially while in combat. It assures soldiers have the means for their mail to be received and delivered once they deploy, which in turn helps with morale while away from home.
“This training is about postal management where we teach students how to operate a full postal office, the same as they do with the U.S. Postal Service,” said Hayward C. Seymore a civilian postal instructor with Interservice Postal Training Activity from Fort Jackson, S.C. “The only difference between us is we’re training our soldiers to go out to places where our civilians won’t go, such as to Afghanistan, overseas and other locations like that.”
This postal training does come at a faster pace than what soldiers might expect at a school house explained U.S. Marine Gunnery Sgt. George E. Dobison, postal instructor with Interservice Postal Training Activity from Fort Jackson.
“There’s a lot of students that don’t have the opportunity to come to the school house so they request us to come out and provide a postal course, which normally takes five weeks at the school house, but when we come on Mobile Tactical Training we have to do it in four weeks,” said Dobison.
Dobison also stated, what the students get is a basic course, but once they get deployed they pick up more stuff as they go. They build on from what they learned during the course. He recommends that when they take the course they take as much notes as possible and when they do actually go out and do postal work, they pick up as much as they can.
Although, learning the basics of postal operations is mandatory in understanding the principles and the basics regulations behind what they will be doing each day while they’re deployed, learning through real-life experience helps soldiers learn the postal system as it continuously changes.
“From my understanding,” said Seymore, “back when we had Desert Shield, a lot of the training was kinda lacking at that time because we weren’t really prepared for how to manage postal facilities in a wartime environment. Once we got into that mode, we realized just how important postal was to all the soldiers.”
It was then decided that all the soldiers needed adequate postal training, that way, whenever the Army needed to pull some of these soldiers to work in a post office, they new exactly what they needed to do when they got there, added Seymore.
Pfc. Michael T. Reid an eager human resource specialist with “LifeLiner” Brigade said this training is harder then he thought it would be, but he is confident he can perform postal duties once he deploys.
As a soldier it is important to have some type of communication with the outside world, because not every one will have a cellphone when they’re deployed, most depend on mail.
“Having someone trained on postal services will keep the soldier’s morale up,” explained Reid.
Seymore talked about the sense of accomplishment and pride that can come from performing postal duties in a deployed environment.
“It helps sustain mission readiness. It helps the soldiers feel a sense of pride in what they’re doing. I love it. I think its one of the best programs that I see that shows the soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines exactly how the command feels about them,” said Seymore. “It shows them that they are concerned about them getting qualified training, shows that they are concerned about having soldiers who are mission ready.”
| Date Taken: | 12.14.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 01.09.2013 20:32 |
| Story ID: | 100166 |
| Location: | FORT CAMPBELL, KY, US |
| Web Views: | 76 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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