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ALI AL SALEM AIR EXPEDITIONARY BASE, Kuwait – It’s dark out. A handful of Airmen wearing orange reflective vests, armed with signal cone flashlights, patiently wait in the quiet, early hours of the morning for buses filled with hundreds of incoming personnel due to arrive at any moment to Ali Al Salem Air Base.
The calm before a storm.
These Airmen are assigned to the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing Personnel Support for Contingency Operations. They are tasked with maintaining accountability over all personnel on the ground, including transients, at their deployed locations. Whenever new arrivals come in, they go through the procedure of in-processing personnel assigned to their military area of responsibility.
“Our most significant role at PERSCO is total force accountability for the wing commander,” said Master Sgt. Kelly Cortez, 386th Expeditionary Force Support Squadron PERSCO superintendent. “In-processing allows us to capture 100% of the people that are on this installation at any given time.”
Without the highly skilled Airmen assigned to PERSCO, the deployed mission would not happen. By following processes that focus on efficiency, they get Airmen where they need to be providing agility and flexibility across the theater.
The buses contain over 200 personnel. Passengers begin to unload, and the in-processing procedures begin. With only 11 members on the PERSCO team -- organized chaos ensues.
The passengers are grouped by their receiving units and are then led into the PERSCO center for the first of many in-processing briefings.
“Although the process remains fairly the same, every in-processing experience is different,” said Staff Sgt. Priya Johnson, 386th EFSS PERSCO sustainments noncommissioned officer in charge. “Our PERSCO team is versatile and flexible in every role we play.”
Once through the PERSCO line, the newly in-processed Marauders are released to their gaining units to integrate and settle into their new home for the coming months.
“From the time the buses arrived to the last person leaving the building, PERSCO processed the passengers in 1 hour and 49 minutes,” Cortez said.
Sending hundreds of personnel through a detailed in-processing procedure with limited staff is not an easy feat, but the PERSCO team strives to do the best to ensure everything goes smoothly.
“One of the things I enjoy about in-processing is that you are the one that makes the impression of their deployment. We set that standard,” Johnson said. “We try to make it quick, smooth, and painless so they are in and out and have the information they need.”
The PERSCO team here is a diverse group from both active duty and Air National Guard backgrounds. The team consists of two shifts to cover a 24 hour operation, and through constant communication they are able to sustain their daily functions while also focusing on total force accountability, casualty reporting as well as personnel program support.
| Date Taken: | 02.01.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 02.10.2021 05:01 |
| Story ID: | 388570 |
| Location: | KW |
| Web Views: | 85 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Welcome home away from home: PERSCO, by SSgt Kristine Legate, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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