Photo By Sgt. Bob Timney | Soldiers received hot meals twice a day provided by the 109th Regional Support Group,...... read more read more
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FORT HUNTER LIGGETT, Calif. – Most days, dawn awakens the guardsman or reservist at home in a warm, comfortable, familiar environment. But for hundreds of Soldiers from around the states here for the Combat Support Training Exercise, the days did not begin this way. They began far away from the comforts of home as can be.
“A guard or reservist day is wrapped in a forced structure of when, where and how to do all the basic functions of daily life and is stripped of nearly all personal privacy,” said South Dakota National Guard Col. Thomas Croymans, commander, 109th Regional Support Group. “Every aspect of the day is overlaid with the purpose of functioning safely and productively in a war zone.”
This reality shifted quickly for Army Reserve Spc. Austin Little, truck driver for 645th Transportation Company, of Las Vegas, and hit hard at first awakening to the sound of others dressing in the dark tent, as opposed to the usual sound of his 5-year-old son Cameron’s door squeaking open and the muffled pounding of his small feet headed to the bathroom, just before a “Good morning, daddy.” He then winced at the thought of his sister temporarily burdened with his single-parent responsibilities of family and home.
The firm, narrow cot keeps him two feet from the dirt floor and unwanted critters. The cold seeped through the fabric at night and kept him chilled until dawn. Putting his clean feet to the dirt, he remembers the feeling of plush carpet in his room. The feeling quickly fades. He wipes the dirt from between his toes and bottom of his feet and pulls up his green Army issue wool socks.
Even shaving becomes a different task in the field for soldiers like Army Reserve Spc. Chris Morgan, a turret repair specialist, 1015th Maintenance Company, of Atlanta, Ga. He shaved outside at a row of sinks with a view of the mountains.
Army Reserve Spc. Heather Bordeau, laundry and shower specialist, 1008th Quartermaster Detachment, Peru, Ill., said, “The showers take getting used to and it feels like you are imprisoned by the half-mile walk to the tent with mud floors and open plumbing with only an on-off lever. Not to mention no privacy if someone has a tattoo in a private place, everyone knows it.”
“Trying to dress in your own little space in the dirt floor area while looking for snakes and keeping what you just washed, clean, can be acrobatic,” Bordeau said.
At one point they shut down the showers for 45 minutes to clear a king snake out of the dressing area.
However, the trek to the showers was not the first venture outside. Just going to the bathroom in the middle of the night was a full-scale mission for soldiers.
Army Reserve Spc. Joshua Boone, ammunitions specialist, 351st Ordinance Company, Morgantown, W.Va., attempted to quietly get out of his creaking cot one morning, put enough clothes on to walk outside, check his shower shoes for critters before putting them on his feet, walk to the nearest port-a-potty, wash his hands at the wash station, retrace his steps to enter the tent without the Velcro fastener making a ripping noise in the darkness, undress and get back into his sleeping bag on the creaking cot and try to get comfortable without waking up everyone in the tent around him.
Spc. Erich Maxey, also an ammunitions specialist in the 351st Ord. Company, said “Most people probably wouldn’t want to deal with any of this, and personally, I’m not sure I’d be able to, or even want to, without the outstanding bond between me and my fellow soldiers of the 351st.”
Soldiers felt the 1008th QM Det. did a great job of providing two hot meals a day, but the lack of personal choice was still hard to cope with.
“When you cannot get your favorite foods, or ones you normally eat, you seem to crave them more,” said Pfc. Amy Divo, human resources specialist, 376th Adjutant General Company, Riverside, Calif. “You don’t realize how good or comforting food is until you don’t have a choice of what or when to eat. If we miss the hour and a half designated for chow, you have to wait until the next time. But don’t get me wrong, we are glad to have the hot meals!”
This is the reservist world even before beginning work for the day.
“One of the major differences is the structure here that we don’t have in our own personal lives, or the lack of individual flexibility. The determination of what time we get out of bed in the morning, what we do next, step by step our day is planned and organized based on the mission that we are doing and there’s really not a lot of room for flexibility in that regard,” said South Dakota National Guard Lt. Col. Mike Oster, executive officer, 109th Regional Support Group (RSG), Rapid City, S.D.
“It’s a major change to only having very specific hours we can do certain things. There is always a place we need to be and all the things we have to do are set by someone else, even down to what we wear and how we wear it,” he said.
“We want to train as we would fight in a war, so the parameters and conditions that we work within are very different,” Oster said. “For instance, the maintenance unit is working in the middle of a dirt field in a tent, are carrying weapons, have a perimeter structure set up, and they have an [escape] plan in case they are attacked. All things you don’t think about working in that nice building back home.”
"People think ‘warrior citizens’ at all levels just do their job in a green suit,” said South Dakota National Guard Col. Thomas Croymans, commander, 109th RSG.
“I’m a civil engineer by trade and … everything is wrapped around the nine-to-five business day and quite easy to maneuver in freely, but when coming to duty on an annual training period like this … we’re constantly thinking about every aspect, every minute of the day and all the different things that we have to take into account to basically be able to respond effectively to everything,” said Croymans.
“The soldier support needed is nonstop and leadership response must be unfailing,” he said.
Reservists have intermittent shifts to this other reality, but it is the extended annual training or deployment that brings about the starkest contrast to their normal routine. The familiar sights and sounds of home and family members are the basis of one reality built over time as life progresses. The other reality is one waiting on them as they respond to their calls to duty.
But there is also one more transition. Duty ends and the warrior citizen reality shifts again as soldiers return home to that warm, comfortable, familiar environment where no one really notices or even wonders why they smile and rub their feet on the plush carpet of their home.
| Date Taken: | 06.16.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 06.17.2011 12:22 |
| Story ID: | 72265 |
| Location: | FORT HUNTER LIGGETT, CA, US |
| Web Views: | 282 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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