608th preps for ASP hand off at LSA Adder

Photo By Sgt. Spencer Case | Sgt. Stacey Reese of the outgoing 608th Ordnance Detachment supervises two Soldiers of the incoming 592nd Ordnance Detachment during an inventory at Logistical Support Area Adder, April 3.  

TALLIL, IRAQ

04.28.2006

Courtesy Story

207th Public Affairs Detachment

LSA ADDER, Iraq - For troops on the front lines of Operation Iraqi Freedom, few things are more important than having an adequate supply of ammunition. Over the course of the last year, Soldiers of the 608th Ordnance Detachment have taken on the demanding, and perhaps underappreciated, task of managing the ammunition supply point (ASP) at Logistical Support Area Adder.

The Fort Benning, Ga., unit arrived in country May 15, 2005. Since then, their responsibilities included: issuing ammunition to combat logistics patrols throughout southern Iraq, preparing ammunition to be shipped by air to other installations, collecting unused ammunition from outgoing units, processing over 4,000 line item requests for units that need ammunition, and conducting regular inventories.

Now that they are preparing to hand the torch to the 592nd Ordnance Detachment, the unit's leadership is congratulating troops on a job well done.

"I think they have done an excellent job," said 1st Lt. Audrey Matthews, the commander of the 608th, about her Soldiers. "Most of them have been here during OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) 1 and they knew what to expect and they performed, to my reasoning, pretty well out here."

Working at the ASP has not always been easy. The Soldiers of the 608th spent much of their work days inside metal containers resembling boxcars that the troops call "MILVAN." During inventories, the troops start working at 8 a.m. and often didn't finish until well after dark.

The forces of nature only made their job more uncomfortable. In the summer months the Soldiers worked through sweltering heat.

Other times, sand storms gave the air a murky tint, making it unsafe to operate vehicles and delaying missions. Even in the comparatively mellow winter months, rain got in the way.

"The weather has been a challenge because whenever it rains, it floods out here and our forklifts were not made for that type of weather," Matthews said.

Spc. Jake Koelker, an ammunition handler for the 608th, recalled one time when work was particularly taxing. The outgoing 4th Infantry Division turned in all their ammunition at once in January, leaving the troops to long hours in cold weather and poor lighting to sort it out.

"We worked until midnight one night, nine the next night and ten the next night - three straight nights, like 16, 17 hours of work," Koelker recall
ed. "That was probably the hardest."

The fact that the troops lived a ten-minute humvee drive away from the main part of the installation only added to that discomfort. Fortunately, that disadvantage was tempered by the availability of phones and internet access.

With the unit scheduled to redeploy mid April, the Soldiers of the 608th are eager to move on to the next chapter of their lives.

However, the troops will never forget the character-building experiences they faced during their deployment.

"I never want to come over here again, but [it was] a life experience," Koelker said. "You learn a lot and grow a lot and mature a lot."

• Date Taken: 04.28.2006
• Date Posted: 04.28.2006 11:20
• Story ID: 6163
• Location: TALLIL, IQ