Soldiers provide laundry, shower facilities

Photo By Sgt. Marshall Thompson | Sgt. Sharlette Castine, a cook turned laundry, bath and textile repair specialist in the Detachment 2 of the 506th Quartermaster Company, helps clean the shower tents on March 12 at Forward Operating Base Hit. Sharlette said she likes being able to provide warm showers and clean laundry to the Soldiers and Marines who live and work out of FOB Hit.  

AL ASAD, IRAQ

03.30.2006

Courtesy Story

207th Public Affairs Detachment

AL ASAD AIR BASE, Iraq - After spending weeks in the western deserts of Iraq without showers or clean clothes, Soldiers and Marines are thankful when they can go back to their bases and use the 506th Quartermaster Company's laundry and shower facilities.

"The biggest things we provide are morale and health aspects to the Soldiers," said Capt. Charles Reese, commander of Detachment 2 of the 506th. "Some people haven't had a shower or washed their clothes in 30 days."

The 506th Qm. Co. is divided into different detachments to provide laundry, bath and textile repair to bases all over Iraq.

Based at Al Asad Air Base, Det. 2 is responsible for all of western Iraq. To cover such a large area, the unit has sent out teams to different forward operating bases and combat outposts like Camp Rawah, Camp Hit, and Camp Ghannon, which sits right along the Syrian border.

"You can actually look over the HESCO barriers and see the welcome sign, "Welcome to Syria,"" said Pfc. Dennis Ford, a laundry and bath specialist from the 506th stationed at Camp Ghannon. "It's what I signed up for. I like the adventure of it."

Det. 2 of the 506th has been busy since arriving in Iraq on Aug. 18. As of March 4, they have laundered about 2 million bags of laundry, and provided almost 100,000 showers.

Many of the 506th Soldiers said the hardest part of their job was sorting through the dirty laundry and inventorying each piece. They wear rubber gloves and surgical masks during the process, but sometimes that's not enough.

Still, the Soldiers and Marines they serve are thankful for the services they provide.

"It's great when I can get to it. I can't get a shower every day," said Capt. Mathew Miller, a signal officer with Task Force 136.

Although Miller had to use a canteen cup to shave outside the shower tent at Camp Hit because it was the females" turn for the showers, he was still thankful for the warm showers being available.

"I'm glad they're here," Miller said.

Another challenge the unit faced was a lack of Soldiers who had received formal training on laundry, shower and textile repair before the deployment.

"A lot of Soldiers here are doing jobs that are not their MOS [military occupational specialty]," Reese said. "My company was stood up on the 10th of August, 2005. We were activated on the 12th of October and were deployed on the 2nd of November. There were some challenges to get the number of Soldiers together, get the training done, and deploy within 90 days."

Soldiers said that their training was easier because they had a few MOS-qualified Soldiers who helped the rest understand important equipment, like the water heater.

Pfc. Bhattarai Sateesh, an MOS-qualified laundry, bath and textile repair specialist in Det. 2 of the 506th, was a newspaper journalist in Nepal before coming to America and joining the Army to help get citizenship. He said the job is straightforward as long as the equipment runs well.

"I'm the only one who was trained in shower and laundry over here [in Camp Hit]," Sateesh said. "I've trained a lot of people."

Miller said having trained laundry and bath specialists on the remote bases is more important than morale. It's also a matter of hygiene and preventive medicine.

"It's good for hygiene. It keeps down infections," Miller said. "If we just wanted something for morale, we"d build a swimming pool."

• Date Taken: 03.30.2006
• Date Posted: 03.30.2006 07:53
• Story ID: 5899
• Location: AL ASAD, IQ