Photo By Sgt. Khori Johnson | Sgt. Cynthia Landin, 289th Quartermaster Company, Kandahar Airfield Retro Sort Yard...... read more read more
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – She progresses through her long days of hiking along shipping-container skyscrapers by spreading her infectious positive attitude and laughter, and keeping her loved ones not far from her mind, figuratively and in a literal sense, given that she keeps a photo of her family in her patrol cap.
Armed to the teeth with a friendly smile, and maybe even a joke or two, Sgt. Cynthia Landin, whose home station is Fort Hood, Texas, with the 553rd Transportation Battalion, 4th Sustainment Brigade, spends her deployed days as the noncommissioned officer in charge of the Kandahar Airfield Retro Sort Yard, which at face value may only seem to be another average assignment for a automated logistical specialist, but it is in fact a weight-bearing keystone to the responsible drawdown of coalition forces in Afghanistan.
As U.S. forces continue its transition with Afghan National Security Forces, it must safely recover military equipment, materiel, and infrastructure from eleven years of operations. This materiel recovery initiative is known as the US Central Command Materiel Recovery Element mission or CMRE.
According to Landin, the retro sort yard is a nerve center to the CMRE mission, where tons of American equipment, supplies, and various machinery parts are salvaged, organized, and cleaned as they venture through Kandahar to be redistributed to our Nation’s armed forces to meet operational and training needs.
“We’re here to save money,” she said. “If anything is still of good use, we put it back into the supply system. The key here is always to save money.”
Landin, who is a Compton, Calif., native, spends a good amount of her work day overseeing the productivity of the RSY and personally checking on her crew comprised mostly of civilian contractors from around the world. Although Landin is in a supervisor position, she never hesitates to lend a helping hand by maybe assisting in sorting through a shipping container or helping filling a generator with fuel.
“I’m a manual labor kind of person,” she said. “So being around these hard-working people motivates me. I love being an [automated logistical specialist],”
What Landin does on the day-to-day intricately plays into a large-scale, high-profile recovery effort in Afghanistan, which recently became the responsibility of the 43rd Sustainment Brigade CMRE.
The nation-wide CMRE mission was originally set into motion by the 593rd Sustainment Brigade CMRE, appropriately nicknamed the “Trailblazers.” Since the 43rd SB CMRE has taken over the responsibility, the 43rd SB CMRE, also known as the “Rough Riders” intend to take the foundation laid by the Trailblazers and progress the CMRE mission to the next level, ensuring that the hard work of men and women, like Landin and her crew, will not be in vain.
According to Maj. Shane Upton, the 43rd SB CMRE brigade support operations officer, the Rough Riders are already seeing a significant increase in CMRE productivity, stating that the brigade will be able to move approximately 22 percent more materiel than the most productive month in the history of the CMRE mission. This spike in numbers has been due to the Rough Riders taking a fine-toothed comb to previous retrograde mission procedures, re-working some math, and re-aligning a few assets. This increase in productivity will lead to the 43rd SB CMRE being able to process and transport more materiel out of Afghanistan, which will shorten overall mission length, and will save money for the American taxpayer.
Although the Rough Riders are currently at the helm, creatively solving problems, Landin still describes the retro sort yard on KAF as being “business as usual,” tackling the obstacles of the day one at a time, such as the meticulous job of sorting through containers.
One of the most daunting tasks of the KAF RSY crew is methodically sorting through the usually unknown contents of each shipping container that passes through the yard from any number of duty stations and military posts throughout Afghanistan. Each container, a virtual Pandora’s Box, can take anywhere from a straightforward few minutes to a painstaking few hours, depending on the care taken by the unit or organization that packed the container.
According to Landin, the container issue not only has an adverse effect on productivity, but also jeopardizes the safety of crew members as well, which inspires her to spread her concerns as gospel during her briefings and tours of the yard held for distinguished visitors. In fact, during his recent visit to the KAF RSY, the International Security Assistance Force senior enlisted advisor, Command Sgt. Maj. Thomas Capel, made note of the issue and also commended the efforts of the entire CMRE team, from creative problem-solvers up at the 43rd SB to the calloused hands of the RSY crew.
“With the team that I’ve just seen out here today, I do not have a worry,” he said. “We have a lot of hard-working men and women that are going to make this mission happen, and I thank them for what they are doing.”
| Date Taken: | 04.02.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 04.02.2013 05:19 |
| Story ID: | 104455 |
| Location: | AF |
| Hometown: | COLORADO SPRINGS, CO, US |
| Hometown: | COMPTON, CA, US |
| Hometown: | FORT CARSON, CO, US |
| Hometown: | FORT CAVAZOS, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 153 |
| Downloads: | 4 |
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