MAJ Gerald L. Oney
Executive Officer, 32d Medical Battalion

Interview Conducted 8 March 1991 at Logistical Base CHARLIE, Northern Province, Saudi Arabia

Interviewers: MAJ Robert B. Honec, III, and SSG LaDona S. Kirkland (116th Military History Detachment)

Oral History Interview DSIT AE 041

MAJ HONEC: This is an Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM interview. My name is MAJ Robert B. Honec of the 116th Military History Detachment. I'm here with SSG LaDona S. Kirkland, also of the 116th Military History Detachment, in Log[istical] Base CHARLIE. Today is the 8th of March 1991. With the 32d MEDSOM¹ (Forward). MAJ Oney, for the record would you please state your full name, Social Security number, your position, how long you've been in your unit and how long you've been in that position?

MAJ ONEY: My name is MAJ Gerald L. Oney. I'm the executive officer of the 32d MEDSOM Battalion and I've been the executive officer since the first day of August.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, describe the operation here. How it became ... how it was conceptualized back in Dhahran or even before that as the 32d MEDSOM came into country and found out what their mission was going to be. And then kind of a short little scenario for us.

MAJ ONEY: When we arrived in-country we had an initial mission to support a quad service unit. We were supporting the Army, the Air Force and the Navy and the U.S. Marines out of Dammam/Dhahran area. Eventually the 47th MEDSOM came in and we were collocated in the same warehouse facility. Eventually what happened was the 32d MEDSOM got the XVIII Airborne Corps support mission and we received the mission to support. It was initially a defensive operation. It involved a forward location at King Khalid Military City, KKMC. And eventually to support a fast-moving offensive operation out of KKMC with a forward logistic base at Log Base CHARLIE here and a smaller element at Log Base ROMEO.

We received the mission to support the fast-moving offensive operation. We got together with the professionals from the 44th Medical Brigade and developed a system to support the movement of hospitals forward.

MAJ HONEC: About what time was that? What month?

MAJ ONEY: The time frame was ... we were looking at the first part of December.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: The meeting took place I think somewhere around the 10th or 12th of December. We developed a list of medical supplies to be used to build push packages to push forward to different locations, different hospitals and the six task forces that was developed by the brigade.

Like I said, we got with the professionals of the 44th Medical Brigade and we developed a list. We had the list staffed with the division and the medical supply offices. After review by all of these individuals and units we consolidated the list, looked at the availability of the items, what we could get, what we could substitute. And we came up with a recommended list to build thirteen different type push packages ranging from a humanitarian aid push package which we were not sure at that time that we would get a mission to do all the way through surgical and bandage and fluids push packages.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, let's go back real quick to the push package. Describe a push package. What exactly is it?

MAJ ONEY: Generically it's a bunch of medical supplies.

MAJ HONEC: What does it look like?

MAJ ONEY: Well, it's actually a bunch of medical supplies to fit a specific function. Like a surgical push package would have items in it like sutures and suture instruments, surgical pads.

MAJ HONEC: The steriles ... the sterile stuff?

MAJ ONEY: Gloves, masks. All the things you would need to do ...

MAJ HONEC: All you would need to do ...

MAJ ONEY: Everything you would need to do a surgery.

MAJ HONEC: ... to do a surgery?

MAJ ONEY: That's right, surgical procedures.

MAJ HONEC: Sure.

MAJ ONEY: And then we have a bandage pallet which had different type bandages and ace wraps for sprains and strains and plaster casting. We even had litter straps.

MAJ HONEC: Uh-huh.

MAJ ONEY: So they were specific.

MAJ HONEC: A specific function?

MAJ ONEY: We had Riggers pallets with IV² fluids and Riggers [Lactate] IV fluids and starter sets and things like that. And then we had a combat package that had your basic combat load which is support a DMB [division medical battalion].

MAJ HONEC: Okay. These were on a pallet?

MAJ ONEY: There were built on what we call Army skids or Army pallets.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: A four foot by four foot skid.

MAJ HONEC: Great.

MAJ ONEY: They were strapped, banded with banding material and ... to the skid and placed in ... placed on trucks and brought forward to Log Base CHARLIE.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: That's how we got them.

MAJ HONEC: And could you go over ... the professionals of the 44th Med that you mentioned, they were doctors?

MAJ ONEY: Mostly doctors. We had a few pharmacists.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: One of the people that sat and talked to them about ... particularly the 6605 drugs was a pharmacist.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: Out of the 32d MEDSOM.

MAJ HONEC: Very good, classic.

MAJ ONEY: He did a lot of coordinating with the doctors on what they could substitute for different types of drugs that we felt we probably could not get for the ground offensive, so that was ... that's how the professionals went about it. When we submitted the list to the divisions for their review all the DMSOs said that they did have their physicians in the division review the lists.

MAJ HONEC: The division medical supply officers?

MAJ ONEY: Right, the division medical supply officers.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: And they came back with their recommended list of what to include in their push packages. We basically had two sets of push packages.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: We had to support the XVIII Airborne Corps hospitals--all the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals [MASHs] and the Combat Support Hospitals [CSHs]. We built what we called hospital push packages. They included Ringers, irrigation, bandages, surgical. And then to support the divisions who required different type items because they are not as large a hospital and they require different types of material, we did the same thing. We took their recommendations and we built their bandage and their division and surgical packages and things like that. And we built based on eight hospitals--or I'm sorry, seven hospitals and eight divisions. At the time we built these we had division packages for the 24th [Infantry Division], the 101st and the 82d [Airborne Divisions], the 3d A[rmored] C[avalry] R[egiment]. A couple of medical battalions that we had included in there, the 85th and the 56th Med Battalion. And at the time we built them, the 1st Cav[alry] Div[ision] was a part of XVIII Corps.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: So we built packages for those divisions.

MAJ HONEC: Now when the 1st Cav was sliced off or was attached to VII Corps what happened to their packages?

MAJ ONEY: We maintained the packages just in case someone else--the division equivalent got chopped to Corps.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: Eventually 1st Cav came by and picked up half of their stuff even though they were not in Corps. They were chopped to ARCENT.

MAJ HONEC: Interesting.

MAJ ONEY: They came by and they picked up five days supply because they knew that we had built it, you know, for them. And we supported that.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: The evacuation hospitals that were in Corps along Tapline³ Road near Log Base CHARLIE we supported through line item management. They'd bring a request in to us and we would send it to the base MEDSOM. It would be filled there and then sent back up here to be delivered to the evacs. But the MASHs (the Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals), the Combat Support Hospitals--these push packages were to be sent forward to their locations when needed. We built a 10-day supply of push packages for each hospital and each division. So we had nearly 1,200 pallets of medical supplies to be sent forward. The way we were going to send those forward is we ... after we got all this developed down at Dammam/Dhahran ... we placed the order. It was nearly a $14 million order.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, good.

MAJ ONEY: The supplies started coming in while we were still in Dammam/Dhahran. We got an order to move, to relocate to KKMC which we did. We left a contingent back at Dammam/Dhahran to ship those supplies that came in there to KKMC. We did that by truck and we did that by C-130 [Hercules]. We put pallets in a C-130 and flew them into KKMC and we also had them delivered by convoy. Once we got all the supplies in KKMC we started building the push packages. Eighty-five to 90 percent of the push packages were completed in KKMC and were banded and placed on trucks and sent on forward here to Log Base CHARLIE, the staging area. And we ...

MAJ HONEC: Go ahead. We were talking about KKMC and about building the individual ...

MAJ ONEY: Right.

MAJ HONEC: ... specialized supplies and supplies.

MAJ ONEY: Right. Even after we got to building them at KKMC, things that we thought would come in ... some items didn't come in and we did not get the quantities that we actually thought we were going to get. So we've had to go back to the hospitals at least on two occasions and divisions and say look, here's what we got. We don't have the quantity. You asked for twelve of an item and we've only got enough for six. So we went back and readjusted all the way up until the day the war started.

MAJ HONEC: So it was a dynamic process. It just wasn't fill the packages and let them sit?

MAJ ONEY: That's right. It wasn't where we completed that easily. There were changes all the way up to the day that the war actually started. And we shipped everything into KKMC by truck, line haul truck. When we got here we had to try and figure out the best way to move these supplies, this magnitude of supplies on forward to hospitals and divisions. And initially, we had made the plan to line haul forward by truck. But after listening to OPLAN⁴ briefings and seeing how fast the units were going to move, we felt the MSR⁵ would be too crowded to even move supplies by vehicle.

MAJ HONEC: You're talking about MSR TEXAS--main supply route?

MAJ ONEY: MSR TEXAS, yes.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, good.

MAJ ONEY: And confused main supply routes. So we come up with the idea to air lift supplies to designated sites.

MAJ HONEC: Sure.

MAJ ONEY: Where hospitals were located or divisions were located. We were going to fly division resupply packages by CH-47[D]s [Chinooks] using sling nets. And we decided to ... since hospitals required more supplies that we were going to fly those in by CH-47s into 20-foot milvans. So we had 42 20-foot milvans procured. We staged supplies in all 42 and we had supplies staged on the helipad to lift.

MAJ HONEC: I see about 300 or so meters from our position where we are standing in the compound, I see about ten of those packages for the first day's supply, is that correct?

MAJ ONEY: That is the first day's supply that was not sent forward. That includes both hospital and division resupply packages.

MAJ HONEC: I see. Okay, go on please.

MAJ ONEY: We got ... once we got the items built and got them in milvans as best we could. The 42 milvans was about half what we needed to provide a 10-day supply. The 42 milvans was about a five-day basic load.

MAJ HONEC: So you were figuring on getting the milvans back and repackaging them?

MAJ ONEY: The milvans would be flown into these areas. When the next milvan went into that area they would rehook the empty milvan, back haul to me, and I would fill it and send it on forward.

MAJ HONEC: I see, okay.

MAJ ONEY: We actually only flew twelve resupply missions. Ten of those were flown by small quantities. We flew them with [UH-60] Blackhawk or [UH-1H] "Huey." We flew two CH-47 missions with milvans. One to DSA 3 to support 5th MASH; the other to support the 274th Med[ical] Detachment at Objective ORANGE.⁶ That's the only two resupply packages we had to send by CH-47s.

MAJ HONEC: I see.

MAJ ONEY: We never did do a net sling into division. We never had to do that. The divisions never required medical resupply.

MAJ HONEC: Well this is a very, very large compound. How did you get the engineer support to build up the berms and ... let's digress to getting here and setting up the operation? How ... how did ... when you go there what date was it and what ... how did you go about setting up your operation so that you had ... and maybe describe the different sections of the compound that you've got here.

MAJ ONEY: Well we actually arrived here right after New Year's. We got up here in January. The 44th Medical Brigade had already had a small contingent established.

MAJ HONEC: I see.

MAJ ONEY: Actually there was an advanced party of myself and a driver. We came up here to lay out an area, to find an area that was capable of holding all the packages that we needed to put in here plus our life support, our tents and latrines and all. So we came up. We surveyed the area up and down Tapline Road. The area was kind of rocky for forklift support. About the flattest ground we could find was right next ... actually right next to the brigade. So we requested engineer support to build ... to push up a berm. The berm is ...

MAJ HONEC: And scrape off the rocks?

MAJ ONEY: Yes, we graded the rocks. We dug burn pits. We dug bunkers and he dug a berm. We had the engineers come in and build us a berm that is about 800 meters long and about 400 meters wide.

MAJ HONEC: Would you say this compound kind of looks pear shaped?

MAJ ONEY: It is. It is about pear shaped.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: It is actually quite large. We didn't know exactly what all we would be putting in here. We broke it down into ... since we were supporting the evacuation hospitals by line item management, we broke it down actually into four sections.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, go ahead.

MAJ ONEY: We had a life support area where we pitched our tents, our sleeping area, and basically our office area where we set up a customer assistance office. Then in one section we put customer supplies. And in a third section we put our push packages that had been completed. And then in the fourth section we put our push packages that had shortages that we knew we would have to rebuild and restack.

MAJ HONEC: I see.

MAJ ONEY: So that's the way we actually broke this area down.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, the customer area was for local medical units to come in as a fill, immediate fill type operation?

MAJ ONEY: Well, no, not necessarily an immediate fill. Like I mentioned earlier they would come in, place a requisition. Daily we sent a courier run back to the base MEDSOM back at KKMC.

MAJ HONEC: Oh, okay.

MAJ ONEY: We picked up supplies there and we brought those forward. The supply runs for the evacs amounted to nearly three flatbed trucks a day. Three 40-foot flatbeds a day is about what we processed in up here. And that's after we got established and all of the hospitals got on-line. So before the Combat Support Hospitals and the MASHs, before they actually deployed forward, we were supporting them the same way we were supporting the evacs. They came in ... we eventually found after ... that there were a lot of smaller customers in the area: engineer units, air defense artillery units and field artillery units that needed medical supplies also. So what we did, we decided to put up a hospital tent which we just took to the ground. We put up a hospital tent. In one section of the hospital tent we put our blood operation. We had the 448th Blood Detachment⁷ working out of here.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, good.

MAJ ONEY: With six blood reefers. We put them in one part of the tent. On the other side of the tent we had what we called basically a store. What we did is we put high demand items. We had the base MEDSOM. We did this down at the base MEDSOM and it worked out real well. So we decided to try it here. We had the base MEDSOM send us up about the top 100 high-demand items that the units had been requesting for sick call and things of that nature. And we basically set up a little country store just like they had down there. That seemed to work real well. That's basically what we have here.

MAJ HONEC: Great. Communications. What kind of communications do you have with the 44th and also with your base MEDSOM back at KKMC?

MAJ ONEY: Actually from here I have no communications equipment at all other than a field telephone link-up with the 44th Medical Brigade. They have over at tactical phone which connects them with the base MEDSOM and I can use that and that's only 100 meters away. But ...

MAJ HONEC: But to get called to a tactical phone you have to walk 100 meters over there?

MAJ ONEY: That's true, that's correct.

MAJ HONEC: I see.

MAJ ONEY: And that happened quite a bit.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: We were supposed to get a tactical phone here.

MAJ HONEC: You were? Okay.

MAJ ONEY: For some reason it never materialized.

MAJ HONEC: Well, when was the original request in for your communications and ... ?

MAJ ONEY: The request was submitted on the ... oh, somewhere in mid-January right after we got established up here. The brigade actually ... their allocation was four, I think. Their Op[eration]s, TOC⁸ and other areas. They had a need for more than four and so we did not get a tactical phone. The MEDSOM by TOE⁹ is not authorized any FM¹⁰ communications. We don't have any organic to the unit at all. We submitted a request early on while we were back in Dhahran, but I guess FM communications equipment was critical to the theater at that time. And since it was not an MTOE¹¹-authorized item for us we didn't get any. However, it would have saved us a lot of ...

MAJ HONEC: Yes, please go into ...

MAJ ONEY: It would have saved us a lot of coordinating and a lot of time if MEDSOM had been authorized FM communications. Because on the sling load missions to be able to talk to the helicopter you need some type of communications and we had none at either forward site. Here at Log Base CHARLIE or at Log Base ROMEO. So we had no capability of talking to aircraft when these sling loads were coming in and going out.

MAJ HONEC: A good point.

MAJ ONEY: We used hand and arm signals the best we could. It caused us a lot of delays. Helicopters would land in wrong locations and we would have to go back to the 44th to find out what was going on. It causes a lot of problems. FM communications for MEDSOM is a key issue, along with organic transportation. I think that's the two really major problems.

MAJ HONEC: Good.

MAJ ONEY: With the ... organic to the MEDSOM is we do not have enough organic lift to move medical supplies.

MAJ HONEC: Lengthened supply lines or communication lines.

MAJ ONEY: Even though we're short ... short ones, we're authorized only five five-ton vehicles, and that's not enough to move anything. We have the requirement ... to move supplies to the customer is actually not doctrine to the AMEDD, the Army Medical Department. The doctrine is customers pickup from the MEDSOM, but we found that the customer had ... was spread out over such a wide range of distances that it was best for us to go ahead and try to procure--not procure but request--external lift or external transportation and move to the customer. And it caused us a lot of work, but for the customer I think it worked out fairly well. It was a lot of equipment.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. In the transportation arena with material handling equipment, here you have a commercially bought piece of MHE equipment. Is this all you have here? Is this one forklift?

MAJ ONEY: Oh no. I have ... right now in this compound I have four.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: Three of them are commercial lifts. I have one 10,000-pound forklift which is my TOE, one of my TOE forklifts. I'm authorized three 4,000-pound rough terrains and two 10,000-pound rough terrains. I have one 10,000-pound rough terrain here with me. I have one 4,000-pound rough terrain ... it went down for a flywheel. We had to infiltrate it back to see if we could get it repaired. The commercial forks have been a lifesaver. We ... one of the problems with the MEDSOM is there not MHE to support an operation out of two different locations. The commercial forklifts have been a big help. We had five when the war started.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: Five commercials plus my two by TOE. We certainly needed them. You know a lot of this stuff is going to be fixed when we convert to the medical logistics battalion.¹²

MAJ HONEC: My next question was ... could it alleviate these problems that you've run into?

MAJ ONEY: The medical logistics battalion ... when we convert to that we are authorized ... compared to now we'll be authorized five tractor-trailers, seven [UNCLEAR]. Instead of the five forklifts we have now we'll have fifteen forklifts. So MED LOG and the battalion forward is designed to support customers out of three different locations. Plus, we also pick up the blood mission. The blood mission for the MEDSOM is not a ... is not part of the logistical battalion and the blood mission comes with that battalion.

MAJ HONEC: Speaking of the blood mission could you say, do you have enough refrigerator space for the blood, storing the whole blood products?

MAJ ONEY: Not currently. I don't know how the medical logistical battalion will accommodate that. We used ... by MTOE I have two 600-cubic-foot refrigerators that are for storage space. I have two 150-cubic-foot refrigerators that will hold 800 units of blood each. So that's basically my capability for storing blood is 1,600 units. Now we had a commercial refrigerators--150-cubic-foot refrigerators--that were sent to us from here on out.

MAJ HONEC: Oh, okay.

MAJ ONEY: And we have at least 40-foot reefer vans that our mess hall used which freed up my two 600-cubic-foot reefers for blood storage. So we did have adequate blood storage for the exercise through the MTOE and leased equipment.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, what about medical oxygen?

MAJ ONEY: Medical oxygen was ... the plan was on oxygen was to generate oxygen out of two locations.

MAJ HONEC: Good.

MAJ ONEY: KKMC would be the power plant location.

MAJ HONEC: Uh-huh.

MAJ ONEY: And then we would have a recharge ... what they would call a recharger and a buffer tank on the back of a five-ton which is run by a 30-k[ilo]w[att] generator and it would fill the oxygen systems, the ROSE systems for the evacuation hospitals on the Tapline Road here. The three evacuation hospitals we had here at the KKMC area.

MAJ HONEC: In Log Base CHARLIE?

MAJ ONEY: I'm sorry, Log Base CHARLIE. The KKMC area would be run by the ... be serviced by the power plant itself. For the hospitals forward we use cylinders, totally cylinders.

MAJ HONEC: Standard?

MAJ ONEY: Well H-size cylinders.

MAJ HONEC: H-size cylinders? Okay.

MAJ ONEY: And D-size cylinders for the divisions. They used the smaller tank. Hospitals use [H-size].

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: The way we were going to support the hospitals and divisions forward was we were going to push oxygen cylinders to the hospitals and back haul their empty cylinders to be filled here at Log Base CHARLIE. And once filled they would be available to push forward again to whoever needed ... another hospital. The same way with the division on the D-size. We'd push D-sized cylinders to the divisions. When they were empty we would back-haul the empties and send up fulls. We would do basically an exchange, an oxygen exchange.

MAJ HONEC: Was there any safety considerations with that? You all had pallets to secure the oxygen?

MAJ ONEY: We had crates.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: The oxygen was in crates and we had coordinated with the Army Aviation people to make sure that it was not a hazard to air lift. They said they had done that before and that was not a problem to air lift oxygen.

MAJ HONEC: Good, okay.

MAJ ONEY: So I think we all had the feeling that we were short cylinders. We had 880. We felt that in order to support the hospitals for up to ten days we probably needed around 1,200, but with the capability to back haul and refill we felt that we could have kept that up for quite some time before we had all of our oxygen cylinders hung up in transportation somewhere.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: We think we had it covered.

MAJ HONEC: Communication, transportation. And just the physical environment here. Would you describe trying to run operations in this area with the dust storms and the wind storms that come. Your tentage--go into that real quick.

MAJ ONEY: Yeah, we ... actually we fared probably ... actually a little better than I expected to, considering what we've gone through here. We've had a lot more rain than we expected.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: We've had ...

MAJ HONEC: Hang on. Let's go to the next side here.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, you were talking about more rain than expected?

MAJ ONEY: Yeah, we had received a lot more rain here than expected--a lot more of it. We had one day where the wind and rain ... we had five tents set up. It took one tent down and fortunately no one was hurt. We had ... we did not have enough plastic to cover all the medical supplies out here and we had a lot of water damage due to the rain.

And once the rain destroys the outer packing of the box, the supplies inside got blown around by the wind so we did police call for a couple of days. And it seemed like the very next day after that the wind blew and it dried up everything in the morning and then the dust was a problem. We ... for two days we almost couldn't do anything because the dust blew so bad, the sand. It blew so hard. I would guess that at this site we probably had only about a five-percent loss rate though, and that was real surprising with all the rain and sand that we had.

MAJ HONEC: That's excellent considering that everything seems to be in an open storage area except for what is in Conexes.

MAJ ONEY: Yeah, we ...

MAJ HONEC: About half the supplies I see is in open storage or more than ... about 60 percent of them.

MAJ ONEY: Yes, at this point it is. Now that the war is over. Before the war started we had about 80 percent under plastic.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: The other ... either under plastic or in milvans. The other 20 percent we just did not have enough plastic to cover so we had to make a decision on what would ruin and what would not ruin, and cover the more critical items that we felt we had to protect from the rain. But all and all it fared fairly well. I would say no more than five percent loss.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: If we would have had to sent it forward to support the medical operations we would have had to rebox it, but it would have been good.

MAJ HONEC: You would have had adequate supplies to ...

MAJ ONEY: Adequate stuff to ... that's true.

MAJ HONEC: When all the packages are considered.

MAJ ONEY: We would have had the supplies and mostly what you find ... the outer box would be damaged by the rain and the sand, but the inner packages would be coated ... most items are covered with either plastic or inside another smaller box. We found that the damage to the internal pack was not all that bad. So we felt we could have reboxed it and sent it forward.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, moving from material now to personnel. How did ... how long ... what were your personnel's work hours like up here at Log Base CHARLIE?

MAJ ONEY: Well, early on, when we had our push package shortages, we put in probably 14-, 15-hour days. It was ... we would get up early, work from first light until about 7:00 or 7:30 to where we would go up to the 44th Brigade and have breakfast. Come back and build push packages, get our area straightened up, start netting. We would do that until dark. And basically the operation shut down at dark. We had no external lighting.

MAJ HONEC: Yes, I see.

MAJ ONEY: With the light discipline--the closer we got to the offensive operation the more strict that they were on light discipline, so our night capability was very limited. Like you just said you don't see any lights out here. We have no external lighting.

MAJ HONEC: You are close to the road though, Tapline Road. You're approximately ... I'd say 500 maybe 600 meters in from Tapline Road. Is there any ... was there any security consideration in there? Any driveby shootings or anything like that that you considered?

MAJ ONEY: No, we actually ... well, obviously, we didn't experience anything like that. I mean it was a concern, but we ... with the engineers building us up a berm and us using triple strand concertina wire and posting two guards at the gate and two roving guards at night, we felt like we had it covered.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ ONEY: But you know, with the guards and the details that have to be done to maintain your camp we actually wound up with more people up here than we thought that we would have to have. We thought initially that about fifteen people would be all that we needed. At one point prior to people leaving here and going to Log Base ROMEO we had twenty-eight. We had a lot of people here doing a lot of work getting these packages ready to be sent forward. The work actually increased when we started getting the milvans. We got those late.

MAJ HONEC: How late?

MAJ ONEY: We got the milvans ... we started getting our first milvans about eight days before the ground war started. And in that eight-day period we had procured and obtained all forty-two milvans and loaded them and staged them for air lift. So we put in some long hours and the soldiers here in this unit have done a lot of good work and thank goodness that we didn't have to use it. But it was there. It was ready and ...

MAJ HONEC: Oh, yeah.

MAJ ONEY: ... they made it happen. They did all the work.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. Okay. Anything else that you can think of?

MAJ ONEY: No, I think that about covers it all.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, great.

MAJ ONEY: I've got to go load a truck.

MAJ HONEC: Yeah, this will conclude this portion of the DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM operations interviews.