Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Neil W. McCabe | Army Reserve Medical Command Soldiers look on as Lt. Col. Brett H. Venable (left),...... read more read more
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JOINT FORCES TRAINING CENTER CAMP SHELBY, Miss. - After 10 years in operation, the Soldiers assigned to Medical Task Force Shelby stood in formation June 4 as its guidon was cased ending its mission at the Armed Forces Museum courtyard here.
“The ball keeps rolling ... Camp Shelby was here before I came, it will be here after I am gone, but I am happy to be a part of the legacy here.” said Lt. Col. Linda Fisher, executive officer of the Medical Task Force Shelby, and the commander of the 7244 Medical Support Unit from Kingsport, Tennessee.
Fisher said she was impressed by the how well the two teams came together in the eight months they were part of the task force.
The medical surgical nurse said she was also proud of how her Army Reserve Soldiers impressed the active-duty component personnel at the camp.
“The active-duty folks found out that we are just as trained and prepared for our mission as they are, but they also learned that those of us in the Reserve have to balance our civilian lives and jobs, too,” she said. “I don’t think they realized that Army Reserve Soldiers across the country have complete separate lives.”
Colonel John P. Lamonureux, the commander of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center, Fort Gordon, Georgia, in his remarks at the ceremony said, “While we are here to say good-bye to the mission and the people, who made it happen, I submit to you that the effects of what was accomplished here will go on for the lifetimes of those who passed through here.”
Although the task force was actually a subordinate element of Fort Gordon, Ga., stationed at Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center, it was manned by "Warrior Medics" from the 7244th MSU, and the 7241st MSU from Lexington, Kentucky, both units belonging to the Southeast Medical Area Readiness Support Group, Army Reserve Medical Command stationed in Nashville, Tenn.
Lamonureux said the task force was part of history and its work was historic.
The task force’s commander Lt. Col. Brett H. Venable said before the ceremony that closing the mission is bittersweet for him.
It is very sad to shut down the task force, he said. “But, at the same time, I am very happy that we accomplished our mission.”
Venable, a native of Portsmouth, Virginia, said, “Over the past decade we have medically processed more than 200,000 servicemen and servicewomen in support of overseas contingency operations — it was a tremendous accomplishment.”
The colonel said that the facilities at Camp Shelby were first-rate.
“It was the perfect place to have mobilization operations,” he said. “It was a great place to be trained and a great place to be stationed."
The casing of the task force guidon was “cased” as Venable and Lamonureux faced each other in front of the formation. The guidon was lowered between the two men by Sgt. Donna L. Krienhn, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Lamonureux looked on as Venable rolled the maroon banner on to the pole and then the two officers tucked it into the green cloth case. Once the guidon was cased, Krienhn was dismissed to the rear of the formation.
Spc. Felicia M. Noel, a medical logistics specialist for the task force, said the workday began at 5 p.m., for the Soldiers each day they processed sometimes 300 or 400 troops either deploying or returning home.
Noel, a Charleston, South Carolina native, said her duties included ordering vaccines, regular medical and office supplies and fuel and maintenance for the vehicles.
Before the end-of-mission ceremony, Noel was one of the handful of Soldiers recognized with a commander’s coin by Command Sgt. Maj. Harold P. Estabrooks, the senior enlisted advisor to Maj. Gen. Bryan R. Kelly, the commanding general of the Army Reserve Medical Command, Pinellas Park, Florida.
In addition to the troop processing mission, Noel said she also supported the camp’s troop clinic and Medical Simulation Training Center, which everyone called by its acronym: “MISTIC.”
Sergeant 1st Class Kevin M. Reynolds, a resident of Lexington, Kentucky, said he was the noncommissioned officer-in-charge of the camp’s troop medical clinic, which provided care to the deploying and returning Soldiers, as well as the camp’s permanent party.
“As a combat medic, the most important thing to me is taking care of Soldiers,” he said. “At the clinic that was my focus every day.”
Reynolds said the terrain of Camp Shelby is flat compared to his part of Kentucky and when he leaves, he will not miss the camp’s intense heat and humidity — but, he will miss the people he met in at the camp, who were friendly and welcoming.
| Date Taken: | 06.04.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 06.08.2014 16:29 |
| Story ID: | 132482 |
| Location: | CAMP SHELBY, MS, US |
| Hometown: | PORTSMOUTH, VA, US |
| Web Views: | 452 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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