IRAQ — For over a dozen Army and Marine support personnel at an isolated forward logistics element in Iraq collaboration is helping them better accomplish their respective missions.
The Army and Marine support and maintenance personnel work under the same roof, in cramped offices that are right next door to each other. The Marine office is lined with action-thriller fiction, and the Army office has “thank you” notes from school children taped on the wall. Members of both services relax together in the joint break room, which has care packages, a microwave and television.
“Our mission is support,” said Army Staff Sgt. Pheon Bright, section sergeant for FLE operations with the 24th Composite Supply Company, 17th Sustainment Brigade. “We are a logistics element. We are here to sustain. We have forklift personnel. We have water personnel. We have maintenance, and of course, we have fuel and supply.”
The mechanics share a single maintenance bay and storage yard. Instead of splitting the bay in half or trying to stay out of each other’s way, the servicemembers view the work that comes from either branch as “theirs.”
The Marines are “our counterparts,” said Army Sgt. Robert Flynn, a cargo specialist with the 623rd Inland Cargo Transportation Company, 17th Sustainment Brigade. “They need stuff done, we help. We need stuff done, they help us. They’re eager to work. They’re always welding something or helping our guys out.”
The Soldiers “helped us with an engine swap,” shared Marine Cpl. Jordan Thomas, a motor transport mechanic with 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. “They helped us change a starter.
“Every day we work together.”
Recently, a Marine unit had a high priority job — an engine swap for a vital piece of equipment. The Marine and Army mechanics “worked until three in the morning a couple nights in a row,” recalled Gunnery Sgt. Vernell Jones, motor transport maintenance chief with the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. “Next day, they were right back at it at 0800.”
Working together means not just sharing the work but the space.
“This is our lot,” said Thomas. “It’s not just one or the other. This is ours.”
With the sound of outgoing artillery rounds pulsating through the clangs coming from the mechanics, a tour of the lot reveals a yard full of Army and Marine vehicles sitting side-by-side after getting repaired by mechanics from both services.
Near the entrance to the bay, a Marine uses a welding torch to straighten out the lid of an Army flat rack. Later in the day, Soldiers and Marines work together to complete the repair.
The cohesion didn’t happen by accident. It came from a vision first cast and implemented by Jones. When he first arrived at the FLE six months ago, the Soldiers and Marines were a bit “standoffish.”
He didn’t think that would work and approached the Army captain about treating the small element as an integrated platoon.
“From the day we got here, we established this shop as a shop in the rear,” said Jones. “You have a captain, a gunnery sergeant as mechanic chief and a staff sergeant as operations chief. You have every element of a platoon here.
“You don’t look at the different branches.
“That was our biggest success right there. Leaning on each other for what we needed or couldn’t do.
That mindset has helped each branch overcome a shared challenge — the less than timely delivery of supplies.
Those delays are “the nature of the beast,” said Bright. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
By working together, though, we’ve allowed “each unit to continue its mission and be effective,” said Jones. “We haven’t taken a capability away to where it’s a dire need.”
That teamwork has been noticed and appreciated by the servicemembers depending on those repairs.
“We started something here,” said Jones. “We have outlying units coming to us for help. They don’t just come to the Army. They come to whoever is here.
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here.”
