MAJ (P) Joseph Frankie, III
Executive Officer
561st Supply and Service Battalion

Interview Conducted 25 February 1991 at Logistical Base CHARLIE, Northern Province, Saudi Arabia

Interviewers: MAJ Robert B. Honec, III, and SSG LaDona S. Kirkland (116th Military History Detachment), and SGT Dorothy L. McNeil (130th Military History Detachment)

Oral History Interview DSIT AE 054

MAJ HONEC: This is an Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM interview. My name is MAJ Robert B. Honec. I'm here with SSG LaDona S. Kirkland of the 116th Military History Detachment, Log[istical] Base CHARLIE, Saudi Arabia, with the 561st S&T Battalion.

MAJ FRANKIE: S&S.

MAJ HONEC: The 561st Supply and Service Battalion--S&S Battalion. For the record, would you please state your full name, rank, serial number, unit, position within the unit.

MAJ FRANKIE: MAJ Joseph Frankie, III; MAJ (Promotable); ***-**-****; and I'm the Battalion Executive Officer currently.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. How long have you been in this position?

MAJ FRANKIE: I've been in this position since about mid-June of '90.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. Starting with deployment from Fort Campbell, I understand, Kentucky, could you kind of enumerate how you got the word that you were going to go, the mission, a little bit about the move over here, and kind of bring it forward and elaborate a little bit on that sort of things?

MAJ FRANKIE: Surely. We received the mission in mid-August, and, naturally, after the invasion of Kuwait, on about the 2d of August [1990] you had, you know, the wafflings or whatever you want to call that, whether the United States Army was going to be involved and that kind of stuff. And that kind of was formalized on or about mid-August, with receiving a mission.

Key things in our deployment were we ended up trying to support the 101st Airborne Division's load out, simultaneously, while trying to get some of our key companies to deploy, since they were initially qued up to be the first companies to leave Fort Campbell. And that in particular was the 584th Maintenance Company (DS¹). On the TPFDL² it ended up being ahead of the 101st Division. As you probably know from talking with other units, TPFDL changed sometimes almost on an hourly basis. And hopefully historians will have a look at what kind of confusion that poses to units and people trying to control and manage units.

Our biggest aspect in supporting the outload of the 101st was we assisted in their convoy marshalling, or staging and marshalling, and then we provided all the intermediate fuel support for all their convoys moving to the Port of Jacksonville, [Florida]. The other thing that we did for about twenty-four hours a day for weeks on end was we had a lot of the MHE, material handling equipment, necessary for the outload. Since the Division Support Command [DISCOM] ended up packing up early, consequently the division was left with little or ... not little or none, but anyway with reduced ability to outload itself. Consequently, the 227th (General) Supply Company picked up the bulk or at least the major part of that supporting mission. I know because I ended up managing forklifts on an hourly basis for twenty-four hours a day through the company commanders.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. So where did you ... before we go into that, could you give me a thumb nail organization of the way the 561st is structured right now?

MAJ FRANKIE: Okay. The way the 561st was structured when it departed and the way the 561st is structured now is two different things. So I'll start with ... the departure structure was: the 584th (DS) Maintenance Company; the 227th (General) Supply (GS³) Company; the 102d General Supply POL Bulk Storage Company⁴; 541st Trans[portation] Company, which was POL transport; and HHD.⁵ I think I've got them all.

Now, two things of historical note is the units that were CAPSTONEd⁶ to us that we normally associated with, we never saw them; they never ever fit into the picture or anything like that. So from a CAPSTONE standpoint, we're not going to do it that way. And why ... why align ourselves that way. I know things are mission-driven. There's a lot of things that I don't see and that I'm not aware of.

The other thing is how we're configured right now. For the most part, our task organization has changed several times, but this is our basic outline. The 227th General Supply Company basically left us when they got on the ground because they had a general supply mission. We still maintained the 102d Bulk Storage Company and 541st POL Transport and 584th DS Maintenance [Companies]. Now, what we picked up over here was the 719th [Transportation] (Medium Truck) Company out of New York; the 2668th [Transportation] (Light/Medium Truck) Company out of the California [Army National] Guard; the 2120th Supply and Service Company out of the Oklahoma [Army National] Guard; 442d (Field) Service Company out of Pennsylvania (Army Reserves); and the 430th (Field) Service [Company] out of Puerto Rico. So at any given time we usually had about five active units and five Reserve units. And the battalion has grown from its normal about 600 to 700 peacetime working strength up to just short of 1,400 people. So, consequently, the management challenge of just trying to keep track of 1,400 people and that are ... is tough.

MAJ HONEC: I'm sure. Especially ... okay. With the Guard and the Reserve units, is there a transition period that they had to get working with you folks? Anything unusual to getting a normal active duty unit? Was there any turbulence in there?

MAJ FRANKIE: Yes, there's turbulence and there's a whole array of things because they come working under one set of procedures, and that kind of stuff to throw in. You have the learning curve on them. And in some cases the learning curve is not fast enough because you don't have time, you know, you just really don't have time to, you know, mess around and do the teaching and coaching and all that kind of stuff. Now, in all fairness to the Reserve units, some of them are really super and, I mean, can adjust immediately, and that's a real tribute to them. But it's kind of a mixed bag. Either they're really good or, you know, they're poor and it's a constant challenge.

And the active duty units are kind of right in the middle. And I think what keeps the active units right in the middle is typically their personnel turnover that you have, you're only going to get to a certain level unless you can really manage your personnel turnover. Now, over here that's not a problem. But I do want to say that we have some Guard and Reserve units that are actually better than our active duty units.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. Good point. Where did you ... coming over from CONUS where did you first get in country?

MAJ FRANKIE: Okay. We all arrived, the battalion all flew into Dhahran--airfield complex⁷--and from there we were bused to a location about ... a place called GUARDIAN CITY, which was one of these camps ... or not camps, but, anyway, terrain that the U.S. had leased or whatever, that you could put tent cities up on and that kind of stuff. And so we got to GUARDIAN CITY where we awaited on our equipment. I know that headquarters got over about the 20th of October. And we started receiving our equipment on the 31st of October, 1st of November, at the Port of ...

MAJ HONEC: Dammam?

MAJ FRANKIE: Port of Dammam, and started accumulating our equipment, preparing it, looking for equipment. A lot of key equipment you just couldn't quite find.

MAJ HONEC: Good point. All of your equipment had to be shipped on multiple ships. So did you get--do you still have--did you get all of your equipment? I think if not, the ...

MAJ FRANKIE: We got most of our equipment. A couple of our key pieces of equipment disappeared and we don't know what happened to it. And I kind of think they were absconded with, used, and then taken back to the port, because we had bulldozers that we couldn't find for weeks on end, and then when we found them the blades were just as clean and shiny as could be. And, you know, basically when we put them on the ship they were on the outside, so they should have been rusty like everything else.

MAJ HONEC: Good point.

MAJ FRANKIE: Someone had borrowed them and used them. We had the typical thing where the boat breaks down and had to go into Spain, and then waited for it to cross-load. That kind of stuff is just going to happen. What really hurts is that we got a DS maintenance company attached to us that's still got equipment in Jacksonville, Florida.

MAJ HONEC: Is that right?

MAJ FRANKIE: Yes. And they're still looking. And it's a heavy company. DS Maintenance Companies are heavy companies. So it really has a de-nuded capability here without that thing. And since this company has just come to us, I don't know whether they screwed up, I don't know who screwed up. The bottom line is they don't have their equipment, a lot of their key equipment here in order to perform the mission.

SSG KIRKLAND: Sir, what was that key equipment, do you know?

MAJ FRANKIE: Shop sets, ASL, parts, shop stock.

MAJ HONEC: ASL stands for?

MAJ FRANKIE: Gosh.

MAJ HONEC: Quite all right.

MAJ FRANKIE: [Authorized] Stockage Lists. What it is, it's the parts stock based on demands at the division or at a DS level.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. Cranes, they would be cranes to haul the engines out, things of that nature?

MAJ FRANKIE: They're just missing all kinds of pieces of equipment. And what we tried to do was patch them up, and get this piece and that piece, and we're starting to get smatterings of stuff that come in. I really don't know how, you know, because they left from Puerto Rico. So I don't have the how's and the why for's and what have you. Other than we're just trying to unscrew it up and get them going again.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. After ... once in GUARDIAN CITY, how long did you stay there? Then ...

MAJ FRANKIE: We stayed in GUARDIAN CITY and the other Reserve and National Guard units kind of came in, you know, at different points in time. That's where we picked up all our Reserve and National Guard units. Now, before we left we had some inkling as to who we were getting, and actually those things changed at different times and stuff.

MAJ HONEC: How were you getting the word, since CAPSTONE wasn't followed.

MAJ FRANKIE: I know, personally, I made a trip to Fort Bragg to COSCOM⁸ headquarters and looked at the big board, and saw who was on the list. And, you know, at the battalion level ... at the COSCOM level you don't see that because all the stuff still stays under the COSCOM flag. But at the battalion level, when you lose a company, gain a company, you know--I mean that's where the rubber meets the road and that's where all the ... property book has to be transferred to somebody else and, you know, all the housekeeping of, you know, transferring a company around. There's a lot of housekeeping associated with that to do it right.

MAJ HONEC: I see. Those issue are very important.

MAJ FRANKIE: Let's see, now, when we got in the country, we picked up the Reserve units, got things squared away, and started working with them in GUARDIAN CITY. We did training. But a lot of it was really get your equipment, get it from the port, fix the things that were broken on it. Naturally, when you load and unload ships, you have this and that, you know, getting bumped and it gets beaten and all that kind of stuff. And that was ... I was amazed, I thought there would be much more of equipment tore up than what was. As far as I'm concerned, the move went relatively well. It was just finding key equipment and that kind of stuff. And we had a plan, you know, for that, and I think we did relatively well in it.

We stayed in GUARDIAN CITY until about mid-November. Came out and did a recon of [An] Nu'ariyah, which is the town where [Forward Operating Base (FOB)] BASTOGNE was located. And we set up on the southeast side of BASTOGNE, and we had a three-kilometer or four-kilometer by one-kilometer rectangle there. We had all these companies set up there. And we were supporting all the [XVIII Airborne] Corps customers in that area from about the 15th of November to about the 15th of January. January is when we knew that we would pick up a mission out here. And then from 15 January, about 15 or 16, I brought an advance party out here. And we moved out here in the great shift west.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. Now, back up a little bit. The support you were providing was Class I, Class II, Class ...

MAJ FRANKIE: Okay. The support that we provided initially was Class I; bulk water; Class II; Class III (Class III bulk; Class III package); limited Class IV; no Class V at that particular point in time; no Class VI; Class VII, although I can't say that we all handled any bulk of that; no Class VIII; and Class IX, we did handle Class IX.⁹

MAJ HONEC: Class IX, very important. Getting in country and getting ... was fuel a problem? The type or quality fuel, adapting to the desert environment with equipment, would you elaborate if that was an issue?

MAJ FRANKIE: The quality of fuel I don't think was ever an issue, although we had quite a bit of fuel people. So we had the test kits and filter separators and all the stuff normally associated with making aviation fuel pure. And I so in that arena I think we didn't have any problem with it because we had the capability to test, screen, and filter-separate bulk quantities of fuel. And we picked up ... the earliest mission that we picked up in this country was bulk fuel. One of the companies ... we weren't here three or four days before we had them bulk-loaded and in the distribution process.

MAJ HONEC: Excellent, excellent; good point. But the mission, your mission in the beginning ... the mission, your mission as you're configured changed? Or when you got in country it did not change? You continued with the same mission?

MAJ FRANKIE: Well, when we got here we weren't configured to do a lot of services. I mean, we were only configured to do really Class IX and DS maintenance, which is ... maintenance is a service. Bulk III distribution, bulk III storage ... and we lost our one company that had ... really did general supply base operations. But back there they ran the CIF¹⁰ for Fort Campbell and all the warehousing associated with that. So once we picked up all these other companies it gave us the transport capability and the full range of services.

And one of the things that's not mentioned on there is ... I mean, we showered people. We had two baths. We had two laundries, two different laundries in two different companies. So we've done a bulk laundry. We had two companies with GREG¹¹ personnel, which are kind of sucked up and put in this great collective GREG program. And we weren't configured to offer Class II, III package, and VII, and we picked all that ... and Class I. We picked that up when we picked up the supply and service company, the 2120th out of Oklahoma.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. Graves registration, you're a Quartermaster, and that's kind of logical to get a graves registration element in the unit.

MAJ FRANKIE: Well, it's part of the supply ... it's a service aspect. And three of our companies had GREG missions, you know, as a company. 2120th is part of Supply and Service Company. The field services company, 442d out of Pennsylvania had a GREG, and 430th out of Puerto Rico had GREG. So, apparently, those assets had been combined to serve the basic corps of the GREG Mission.

MAJ HONEC: Camp BASTOGNE forward to Log Base CHARLIE ... well, first of all, in transporting, in moving from Dhahran to BASTOGNE, the move, was it smooth, was it ... how did you go about scheduling your move of all these companies out here?

MAJ FRANKIE: The move from GUARDIAN CITY up into BASTOGNE ...

MAJ HONEC: GUARDIAN CITY, okay.

MAJ FRANKIE: ... was kind of a challenge because one of the things that supply ... this battalion doesn't have is it doesn't have ... she's welcome to sit. The move from GUARDIAN CITY up to the Nu'ariyah area was a challenge from the standpoint in that when we moved up the battalion didn't have like a TriTac or MSE¹² [tele]phone or anything like that. We were out of FM¹³ communications range. We had an AM¹⁴ radio, but it didn't ... it was kind of sporadic, the shots going in and out. So what we really had to rely on was a well written plan and notes going back to the battalion, you know, on pieces of paper.

SSG KIRKLAND: Sir, could you spell Nu'ariyah?

MAJ FRANKIE: N-u-a-r-i-y-a-h. Nu'ariyah is what ... what the Arabs call it Nu'ariyah. You'll see it spelled three different ways on the maps. [LAUGHTER]

MAJ HONEC: Okay. Communications: notes, runners, if you will, back and forth?

MAJ FRANKIE: If there was a truck going back, I'd send a note to the battalion commander saying send this, send this, help with this, or delay the convoy movement for a day; you know, that kind of stuff. And so what we really ended up doing was kind of making up a plan, and you'd send up the plan so that I kind of knew what was coming up on schedule. And while we were at Nu'ariyah, until the corps support group moved forward, then came all the phone nodes. I was really--we had a rough, rough time because our reports were late, or if they needed correcting, I mean there was ... that thing is a three-hour ride. So I would say that in modern times there's no reason for a corps unit like this, that has such great responsibilities, not to be resourced with, you know, the communications assets that it needs to be part of the team.

SSG KIRKLAND: Sir, you had mentioned that you had shower and laundry services. Could you explain a little bit about that?

MAJ FRANKIE: Shower, laundry, and bakery. And, believe it or not, our biggest claim to fame down here is the cookie factory. So we came up here, and this goes to show you how missions change: "hey, you need to come up here, locked and cocked and ready to go down range." So we trimmed everything down, because you know this battalion is only about thirty percent (or less) mobile. So what are you going to need to take it forward? Well, you're going to take Class I; bulk water; ammo, which we didn't have the mission to take; and some Class IX repair parts and recovery. So that's it. So that's how we came up here. And we came up here and find out that the war wasn't going to start twenty-four hours later. So then everybody wants the laundry in operation, showers in operation--and all that stuff, naturally, had been left on the ground in Nu'ariyah and put into storage containers and forty-foot milvans and all that crap.

So we spent a week reorganizing this whole area, you know, to sustain the bakery, laundry, shower, and all of that stuff. That was a real jump-through-your-rear-end drill, with all kinds of pressure: "are you going to have it done tomorrow?" That kind of thing. So it was quite a challenge. Now, what did we have? We had basically three companies that had laundry missions, you know, configured. Two of them didn't have machines. They came over and didn't have machines, so we had to pick up machines while we were in country. And the shower thing, we had taken old laundry machines, we have gone down to the hardware store, and we have made shower systems, using old boilers off washing machines and, you know, pumps that we put together. And went down to the hardware store and got pipes and nozzles and all that kind of stuff to make shower heads for our shower system.

SSG KIRKLAND: And who was allowed to use these showers?

MAJ FRANKIE: We serviced everybody, including the division. And at our last count, I know we washed somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 people, male and female.

SSG KIRKLAND: Was there a time limit on the showers?

MAJ FRANKIE: Yes. You know, when there's a line we do that. Secondly, you have some sort of water constraint. I mean, trying to keep the showers in water and the laundries in water is a challenge in the desert. And so we were very fortunate to be located near Rafha and Rafha has one of the largest water production facilities I've ever seen. So we could keep the showers and laundries topped off. In fact, I don't think this sector could survive without the Rafha water plant, because I see people from Log Base ECHO down here with 5,000-gallon smithties¹⁵ waiting to pick up water in Rafha. So that tells me to look at water a little harder: wells, and how we can produce it and how we store it.

MAJ HONEC: Local purchase certainly has augmented your mission.

MAJ FRANKIE: Local purchase--I wouldn't have been able to get the ... the Class IX repair parts system for me is not working, to the point that I'm getting truck (tractor-trailer) loads of parts that one should be getting for all these requests that have been dropped. So the bulk of the way that I'm fixing customers' equipment in most cases is if I can get a local purchase part in the form of belts, screws, bolts And a lot of Cummings or Caterpillar type parts, you know, are over here. So we've had real good luck. We have to keep a lot of officers and key NCO's on the road. The sad thing about it is an Arab, you try to tell him that you want a part number and they don't deal that way. They just want to see it. So you've got to have the old one. And now they're pretty good; they'll bring you one that looks just like it, but you can't tell him that I need the front water pump housing to a six-cylinder Cummings 2000 engine. It doesn't work. You have to physically have it in your hand. So a lot of that goes on, but it's been very productive.

MAJ HONEC: Good point. Anything else, SSG Kirkland?

SSG KIRKLAND: Yes, sir. I would like to know a little bit more about the bakery. Why a bakery?

MAJ FRANKIE: The bakery basically has a mission to bake bread, but in modern times, I guess, with the ability to make pouch bread¹⁶ and that kind of thing is ... which is just fairly decent bread. I'm sure you've had some. Maybe the need for the bakery as far as the bread goes, but I tell you, what really has come up more than anything is cookies. And, one, it's easier to make cookies because you don't have to mess around with all that rising time and all that other stuff. You can kind of go from mix and a little bit of rising time, and get into straight production. It doesn't take long to bake a cookie. So you could put them in and get them out. So we've been producing about 30,000 cookies a day. And we never have a problem with getting rid of them.

SSG KIRKLAND: Sir, who gets these cookies?

MAJ FRANKIE: They are ... while the division was here we were supporting the division by major subordinate commands. In other words, the brigades and the division. And then our corps customers out here that are on our DSU, they get on top of their [ration] break[down] (Class I break) they get bags of cookies based on their head count.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. The 101st is the division you're talking about?

MAJ FRANKIE: Yeah. We don't normally ... we only support the 101st in limited, direct support roles, and the cookies was a direct support role to the division. And so we had days where brigades came and picked up for all their little people, like DISCOM, 1st Brigade, 2d Brigade, 3d Brigade, that kind of stuff.

SSG KIRKLAND: And how many cookies per person would you provide?

MAJ FRANKIE: We tried to get two. That was the goal. The only thing that kept us back was we really needed a floor mixer, you know, where we could mix just a bigger batch. I mean, we were doing a 30,000 cookie-day production. That's by hand, somebody kneading cookie dough.

SSG KIRKLAND: So was this a twenty-four hour operation?

MAJ FRANKIE: This was a twenty-four hour operation, and the guy that's kneading the dough was breaking a sweat.

SSG KIRKLAND: And the bakery has moved on, is that correct?

MAJ FRANKIE: No. I think we've got them shut down here today or tomorrow, but they're over ... right across the way here in a maintenance tent.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. Now ... this is ... we're covering now the operations in Log Base CHARLIE. We covered the communications issues. How about the security issues, anything in that that would be ... ?

MAJ FRANKIE: Security for us, we've had real good luck. I've got units that are as far in as six or seven kilometers, and I really haven't had any problems. Initially, we were all out there. Once we got the bakery, laundry, shower, and Class I mission, all ginned up again, you know, above MREs¹⁷, then we moved off. We moved the unit which ... the bulk of the unit back down to the MSR¹⁸ because once you get into ... those services in, that means that your traffic is going to come off the MSR. So we ended up having to make a second move here so we could get back into this business. The original mission was ...

MAJ HONEC: All right. Communications, transportation; obviously you've got that. Engineer support. Do you have an organic ... certain amount of types of engineer support. But for putting up the berms and just basically making this a base, would you illuminate.

MAJ FRANKIE: What we used here ... what we used was the CSG (or our corps support group), 101st Corps Support Group, had a bulldozer, and it was a yellow one. So they either acquired it, bought it. I don't know, it showed up. And so we used that. And in one of the companies we had two bulldozers that are organic to the company and we used them to put up some of the berms and stuff.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. The 25th ... this is the 25th of February 1991, now. From here on out, where will you displaced to and what sorts of missions will you do?

MAJ FRANKIE: Well, we have a mission in order to establish an intermediate log base, you know, forward. And we'll be doing that with a small package of people necessary to support it. And that's basically some limited Class I, some Bulk [Class] III distribution ... and just establish a presence up there at this intermediate log base. And then the battalion has a mission to move to an end-state; that is, all to another log base at some point in time.

MAJ HONEC: Could you identify the two log bases? The first would be around FOB COBRA?

MAJ FRANKIE: The first log base for us is an intermediate log base named ROMEO.

MAJ HONEC: Okay.

MAJ FRANKIE: We move up there. And the rest of the battalion, as soon as possible, as soon as our corps support group moves from OSCAR to NACHO, then the rest of the battalion will go into NACHO. NACHO is a place on the ground somewhere up around the end of MSR COLORADO.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. Okay. That's all the questions I really have. Do you have anything else that has occurred to you, SSG Kirkland?

SSG KIRKLAND: No, sir. That's all I have.

MAJ HONEC: Joining us a little late is SGT Dorothy L. McNeil of the 130th Military History Detachment. SGT McNeil, do you have any questions that have occurred to you since you joined us?

SGT McNEIL: No, sir.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. Well, I suppose this ... do you have anything that might have occurred to you, while we're going round-robin here identifying folks? Any last statements for the record?

MAJ FRANKIE: I think one of the key things, and I think we learn it all over history, is, you know, key equipment that you need. I mean, a due out doesn't do you any good. Secondly, equipment that's twenty years old and has already has had its basic lifetime kind of needs to be either refurbished or new equipment needs to be obtained. Because the time and place is not one to do without it here, or, two, try to learn how to use new technology and new equipment, you know, over here. The time to do the training is at home station. That's the essence of it.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. The level of training for the Reserves, there was a certain amount of, I would say a transition period. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there was a ... from Reserve or National Guard to active [duty] sort of thing, how would you characterize the level of training for mission, but also the level of overall training for those types of units compared to ...

MAJ FRANKIE: It's a real mixed bag, and I think it's something that is institutionalized where their units are at. Some units are very good and can compete head-to-head with active duty units. The others you can tell where it's just been institutionalized and that's what they've got away with, and that's what they haven't done. And now, you know, it puts them and their people at a disadvantage because, you know, the learning curve is straight up. There's no gap out there. That's a real disservice to the soldier. That's really not a disservice to anyone else but the individual soldier who is just trying to do what he's told to do. And if he's not used to either working the way the things are supposed to be done in their chain of command, either he ignores or is not hard enough to make that happen, then what they're doing is putting the soldier at risk, and there's just no reason for that. And I've got two Reserve units that are crack, not a problem, better than most of the active duty units; one that's just kind of back and forth; and two that are just absolutely horrible.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. I appreciate that frank input. Morale-wise, in morale, how would you characterize the overall soldier morale here?

MAJ FRANKIE: Soldier morale, I think it's pretty good. If you find a poor unit, I tell you you're going to find poor morale because those people are not getting taken care of, and the chain of command either doesn't know how or doesn't care, you know, to take care of them. You can't expect ... in other words, if you can't make something better by expecting it to be better. Do you know what I'm saying? That's got to come from the bottom; from the bottom up. That's just the essence of it.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, okay. The mail service here, how are the troops ... how would you characterize the troops getting timely mail?

MAJ FRANKIE: I know the troops feel that sometimes their mail was held by the last unit that they were attached with. I've gone over and checked, and it hasn't been there. But certainly when I talk to them they think it is, because they always ask me if it's being held at some other place. So I know the perception exists that their mail is being held. I haven't found it to be the case. I think a lot of times the word doesn't get down to the individual soldier on stuff.

The other thing is with these kind of units, you do all this cross-attaching--when you cross-attach, yeah, it's great for the mission, but all that other stuff that follows a soldier. It's not ... and it doesn't wire his mail tight, in other words. It's a special thing that somebody has got to go look for and get his pile, you know, and try to get it to him. So every time that we've moved, naturally, mail has had a lag in it, and we're experiencing a lag right now that we think we're attributing to the fact that we're hearing on fax sheets and reading it that mail is coming in only by MAC¹⁹ because civilian air lines aren't coming in. And now it's a ... twenty-day is the normal lag. And, you know, the only thing the troop realizes is that he knows his wife or girl friend is writing him every day and he's not getting a letter every day. If he gets it like me, he probably gets four or five at a shot. Sometimes he gets the earlier mail first, and then followed by the older mail.

MAJ HONEC: Okay, I believe that's it. This concludes the DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM interview. Thank you very much for your comments.

MAJ HONEC: Well, we have a few other questions from SSG Kirkland. Go ahead, SSG.

SSG KIRKLAND: Sir, I'd like to know a little bit about your laundry service, what were the hours and how many pieces of laundry people could drop off.

MAJ FRANKIE: Okay. Basically in order to get in the laundry stuff, you get on a customer list, like you do with any kind of direct support service unit. In other words, if our higher headquarters tells us who our customers are, okay? Based on that, we take our assets and then we divide the customers up. For example, I have laundry located in two locations. I give one location a customer list, you know, of the units that they were going to wash clothes for. Gave another unit over here a customer list. And that was based on the amount of production that they can potentially produce. So that's how you get on the list.

We have turn-in days, okay? A Company, 1st [Battalion] of the 187[th Infantry], would turn in laundry on such and such a day, and then 72 hours later they would pick it up. And depending on what the work load was, we'd either have one turn-in a week or if the work load is such that we can service people twice a week, that's fine too. Usually, the amount of items are restricted to ... 25 or 26 made up a bundle of laundry. And that was restricted by the amount of pins in a pin set. Because you pinned each person's clothes with these pins. If you get more than that, you're using two pin sets, and that's quote a hassle on the back end trying to get all that stuff sorted ... unsorted out.

MAJ HONEC: Two more questions.

SSG KIRKLAND: Okay. And the laundry service, was it ... was the service provided to the entire corps or just to the 101st Division?

MAJ FRANKIE: It was provided to corps units as well as the division. So our customer load at one time at the laundries was I think in the vicinity of 20,000.

SSG KIRKLAND: Per day or ... ?

MAJ FRANKIE: No, 20,000 people that we were washing clothes for.

SSG KIRKLAND: At one time? Okay. And if the laundry service wasn't busy, for example, you had mentioned that people were provided this service about once a week; then you said if they weren't busy maybe you could provide that about twice a week. Now, how did you get the word out to the people that there was the possibility of them getting the twice a week service?

MAJ FRANKIE: We would contact to the customers directly. In other words, contact like the major subordinate command and tell them what the policy is, tell the brigade S-4 what the deal is, and then he informs the battalions and that kind of stuff. So that the points of contact that you're talking with are reasonable in number. You can't call every company supply room and tell them that you can do this. But you can get to the brigades, and that certainly is an easy enough drill to do. We never quite made it to twice a week, although we had the potential to do so, because we had break-downs with the laundry machines and spare parts was a big problem. In fact, we've got one laundry machine over there that's a hangar queen.²⁰ It's made ...

MAJ HONEC: Constantly breaking down?

MAJ FRANKIE: Well, it's made ... we've used the spare parts off of it to keep the other ones going. So we had eight laundry machines, but we average about four to five operational throughout the working day.

SSG KIRKLAND: That's all the questions I have. Thanks.

MAJ HONEC: Okay. This concludes another part of the interview.