Photo By Staff Sgt. Nelda Pehrson | An Iraqi army soldier does some hands-on welding training May 29 at Forward Operating...... read more read more
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By Sgt. 1st Class Tami Hillis
4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Public Affairs Office
FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Iraq – Ten 8th Iraqi army division soldiers graduated from the Unit-Level Maintenance Certification Course Class 01-08 May 29 at Forward Operating Base Kalsu, 60 kilometers south of Baghdad.
"Today marks an important start to the building of the future of Iraqi army logistics," said Lt. Col. John Chadbourne, commander of the 703rd Brigade Support Battalion. "I want to thank all the instructors and the students for all their hard work and diligence that made this past week such a success."
During the five days of maintenance training the IA soldiers – ranging in rank from private to master sergeant – were taught basic motor pool operations and capabilities; petroleum, oils and lubricants storage; preventive maintenance checks and services; small arms maintenance; welding; and vehicle recovery operations.
"This is the first time that we've gotten this type of training," said Cpl. Muhamed Mutashar, with 2/30/8 IA Div. "We found a lot of benefits in this training. We are facing a lot of problems in our operations and in our missions so we need to know something about these vehicles and how to deal with broken vehicles."
Soldiers from 703rd BSB, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, taught the five-day course to the IA soldiers representing the 30th, 31st, 32nd and 33rd Brigades in the 8th IA Div.
The train-the-trainer program was developed so coalition forces could train IA soldiers who then turn around and train Soldiers back in their units.
"This is a great day where we have developed a course of train-the-trainers; trainers who can go forward and train the Iraqi army on three key things - vehicle maintenance, weapons maintenance and generator maintenance," said Col. Thomas James, 4th BCT commander. "We all have one common goal and that is the security of the Iraqi population to allow governance and economics to grow."
The goal of the program is to build IA logistic capacity and knowledge to improve IA self sustainment.
"Maintenance and logistics is the life blood that together allows our systems to perform so that we can secure the population; it's critically important," James said. "It's important that after this graduation you return to your assigned units and train other jundi on preventive maintenance, leading to the increased capability of the 8th Iraqi army division."
This is the first class in the Battalion T3 Log Program, with additional logistic classes to be taught in the future. The students requested future training to include digital power generation, A/C and fiberglass hood repair.
"They were very motivated and it did not take a lot of prodding to get them to start interacting with the hands-on training," said 1st Lt. Victoria Marshall, training officer in charge. "They're very knowledgeable and have a really good general idea of what they are working with. I think they're getting a better look at how we as U.S. Soldiers are doing maintenance, in contrast to how they do it."
| Date Taken: | 06.01.2008 |
| Date Posted: | 06.04.2008 05:29 |
| Story ID: | 20091 |
| Location: | ISKANDARIYAH, IQ |
| Web Views: | 80 |
| Downloads: | 66 |
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