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Warriors in Peace Operations - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

Warriors in Peace Operations - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

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gave the mission to two company commanders and let them<br />

conduct assessments and develop plans. We created a<br />

problem for the BSB by secur<strong>in</strong>g the <strong>in</strong>stallations. Although<br />

it was a requirement for civilian employees to have<br />

identification cards, the practice had not been enforced <strong>in</strong><br />

several years. Therefore, we began requir<strong>in</strong>g civilians<br />

without the proper documentation to be signed <strong>in</strong> until<br />

cards could be created. This caused some friction between<br />

the BSB and the battalion, but ultimately the procedures for<br />

security were revitalized throughout the Area Support<br />

Group and on other <strong>in</strong>stallations <strong>in</strong> Europe. Ironically, they<br />

adopted procedures similar to the ones we created.<br />

Another issue with the BSB was control of the railheads.<br />

Accord<strong>in</strong>g to the plan, the BSBs were <strong>in</strong> charge of railheads.<br />

However, BSBs do not have any soldiers to speak of to<br />

perform such tasks. All the expertise on how to rail-load<br />

rests <strong>in</strong> the units who do it all the time, not the BSB who<br />

never does it. So it made no sense for the BSB to run the<br />

railheads with all the labor provided by non-deploy<strong>in</strong>g<br />

units. Fortunately, the company commanders I assigned to<br />

run railheads and the capta<strong>in</strong>s whom the BSB assigned to<br />

be <strong>in</strong> charge worked out arrangements on the ground to<br />

break out responsibilities. Basically, the company<br />

commanders took charge of the unit-related activities and<br />

th<strong>in</strong>gs they had resources for: marshal<strong>in</strong>g, upload<strong>in</strong>g,<br />

medical support, security, etc. The BSB leaders were<br />

responsible for the transportation-related activities: liaison<br />

with the movement coord<strong>in</strong>ation teams, schedul<strong>in</strong>g, tra<strong>in</strong><br />

<strong>in</strong>spections, manifest<strong>in</strong>g, etc.<br />

As we cont<strong>in</strong>ued to work, there were other issues that<br />

began to surface that made it clear the concept of “force<br />

tailor<strong>in</strong>g” had not been completely thought through. The<br />

<strong>Army</strong> <strong>in</strong> Europe had not prepared for deploy<strong>in</strong>g units to<br />

leave beh<strong>in</strong>d portions of their organizations. A good<br />

example was ma<strong>in</strong>tenance. With the brigade’s Forward<br />

Support Battalion and the division’s Ma<strong>in</strong> Support<br />

Battalion deploy<strong>in</strong>g, we did not know who would provide<br />

ma<strong>in</strong>tenance support to the battalion, the two companies<br />

97

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