Courtesy Photo | Members of 581st Quartermaster Company, 2nd Infantry Division Sustainment Brigade’s...... read more read more
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Camp Humphreys, South Korea - It has been confirmed, 2nd Infantry/ROK-U.S. Combined Division has the best Army field cooks in the Pacific. Members of 581st Quartermaster Company, 2nd Infantry Division Sustainment Brigade took first place in the U.S. Army Pacific Command’s 57th Annual Philip A. Connelly Award Competition and will go on to compete in the Department of the Army competition early next year.
The 581st QM Co., 2nd Infantry Division Special Troops Battalion, competed in the Active Army Field Kitchen category at the Division and Eighth Army levels before moving onto the USARPAC competition.
“Everyone should get the experience of a PAC evaluation because you learn a lot,” said Sgt. 1st Class John Densham, the Noncommissioned Officer-in-Charge of the 581st QM Co. team and a native of Boiling Springs, Penn. “You learn a lot from the Soldiers around you, different ways others do things, and how to work better for the team.”
The PAC Program is the personification of food service excellence executed by culinary specialists resulting in the presentation of extremely gratifying dining experiences across all Army food service platforms in garrison and field environments, according to its mission statement. The program also helps to align the civilian and military food service profession.
The competition is a training event which covers a two-day period, where the team was evaluated on their ability to quickly set-up a Modular Kitchen Trailer and Field Sanitation Station. After those timed events, the team operated the MKT to support feeding 100 Soldier with Unitized Group Rations or operational rations, Densham said.
Staff Sgt. Darlyn Birkenfeld, a native of Kapa’a, Hawaii, the teams shift leader and convoy commander, hadn’t work on an MKT for a while and a lot of her Soldiers are straight out of basic training.
“Working with my Soldier was a great experience,” Birkenfeld said. “This was my very first time doing the Connelly, and I learned a lot from my Soldiers.”
She felt like her Soldiers helped to retrain her on MKT procedures and without their support, she wouldn’t have gotten her other responsibilities completed.
“Where I came from before didn’t have an MKT and a lot of our Soldiers here were already used to work one,” she said. “So, I learned a lot from them, and without them I wouldn’t have been able to do what I needed to do. It was a really great experience with them.”
It was a lot of training and learning, but they had fun too.
“[My Soldiers] really just enjoyed working as a team,” Birkenfeld said. “Learning how to enhance their products, making new things, and building that team cohesion.”
Both Densham and Birkenfeld agree that it couldn’t have gotten it done without that team cohesion, and it was all worth it in the end. The 92G, or Army culinary specialists, work a lot in dining facilities and they need the field training too. This competition helps to priorities that kind of training.
“I am very confident that my Soldiers, and leadership are going to win the DA competition,” Birkenfeld said. “Because all of our Soldiers are very motivated. They have the drive to take it all the way.”
For more information on the PAC program, visit the Joint Culinary Center of Excellence. https://quartermaster.army.mil/index.html
| Date Taken: | 10.09.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.09.2024 06:11 |
| Story ID: | 482800 |
| Location: | CAMP HUMPHREYS, KR |
| Web Views: | 42 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Dragon Soldiers headed to DA level Field Cooking Competition, by SFC Jacob Kohrs, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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