Photo By Mark Olsen | U.S. Army Soldiers with Alpha Company, 1-114th Infantry Regiment, New Jersey Army...... read more read more
Washington – During the peak of the National Guard’s support to the 59th Presidential Inauguration there were approximately 25,000 National Guard members in Washington.
While many military planners were focused on the mission Guard members were in the District to support – the peaceful transition of power – U.S. Army Master Sgt. Michael Bellamy, the noncommissioned officer in charge of logistics for the Guard’s inauguration support, was focused on the mission within the mission.
“We had to focus on how to support the mission,” Bellamy said. “Everybody here had to get two hot and one cold meal every day, they had to be housed, and we had to coordinate how to get them where they needed to be.”
The job of the military logistician is to focus on the mission within the mission – supplying, transporting, maintaining, feeding and housing troops.
“We have to identify problems and solve them before they even happen,” Bellamy said.
Bellamy and his team provided logistical support to what was arguably the military’s largest mission at the time, with more troops deployed to support the inauguration than all troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
Guard members came from all 50 states, three territories and the District of Columbia, creating a few logistical challenges, said Bellamy.
Notably, supplying cold weather gear. Some Guard members came from warm-weather states, where cold weather gear isn’t issued. Bellamy and his team had to see that all troops were supplied with proper gear to perform their tasks safely.
There was also the added challenge of coordinating the movement of large numbers of people within a COVID-19 environment. All Guard members who supported the mission had to be housed in a manner that minimized the spread of COVID-19 within the ranks.
Bellamy and his team coordinated the solution – tens of thousands of individual hotel rooms for troops deployed to the District. That was in addition to 402 charter buses for mass movement of troops to locations throughout the area, 125 government vehicles to transport smaller groups for everyday tasks and the coordination of millions of meals.
Meals were one of the more appreciated logistical feats Bellamy and his team pulled off.
“When I got here, I was prepared for typical Army meals,” said Sgt. Larry Davis, a motor transport operator with the Virginia Army National Guard. “I had my own meal plan to get through the first 30 days. Then, when we got here, I saw that we had catered meals. That changed things.”
Catered meals were no accident.
“When we’re planning, we have to think about the mission within the mission,” Bellamy said. “We don’t just think about what people need, we also try to provide a measure of comfort so the mission can go well. It’s about providing sustainability through comfort.”
| Date Taken: | 02.11.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 02.14.2021 12:31 |
| Story ID: | 389047 |
| Location: | WASHINGTON, DC, US |
| Web Views: | 210 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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