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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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get ready to deploy and to create a deployment operations<br />

center. I went back to see Colonel Brown, told him the DOC<br />

required a lot of work, and that I needed to get some more<br />

folks from the battalion down to help me, and needed more<br />

phones and computers immediately. He said to get<br />

whatever I needed, and to br<strong>in</strong>g down whomever I thought<br />

was necessary. So I set out to create someth<strong>in</strong>g I had never<br />

even seen before.<br />

I called Major Henderson and told him to get Major<br />

Tracy, 1st Lieutenant Chris Hsu (my S-3 Air), and some<br />

other staff officers down that afternoon. I talked to the DTO,<br />

Major Jay Warren, and immediately determ<strong>in</strong>ed he did not<br />

have the assets <strong>in</strong> the DTO’s office to run the deployment.<br />

He was overwhelmed with solv<strong>in</strong>g immediate crises and did<br />

not have a clear picture of the entire situation. I saw a G-3<br />

planner and found out the G-3 was not really controll<strong>in</strong>g the<br />

deployment process either. I tried to piece together what the<br />

deployment process was, and was surprised that there was<br />

no one <strong>in</strong> the headquarters that knew more than I did.<br />

That even<strong>in</strong>g, I went to my first “real” Battle Update<br />

Brief<strong>in</strong>g (BUB). The Division had set up a command post <strong>in</strong><br />

the recreation center on post. The CP had been significantly<br />

revamped s<strong>in</strong>ce I had seen it at Grafenwoehr. It had a large<br />

map board with the division sector <strong>in</strong> Bosnia on it, and a<br />

couple of large monitors where <strong>in</strong>formation was displayed.<br />

In pr<strong>in</strong>ciple, the area around the map board was an<br />

expanded version of what I had seen <strong>in</strong> the CP at<br />

Grafenwoehr, with the addition of a VTC capability and<br />

additional monitors. The big difference, however, was<br />

beh<strong>in</strong>d the Command<strong>in</strong>g General’s (CG) seat. The division<br />

staff was seated at tables tiered beh<strong>in</strong>d the CG <strong>in</strong> a<br />

semicircle that looked like a bandstand. Each staff officer<br />

had a computer that was hooked <strong>in</strong>to the classified local<br />

area network, a telephone, and a small work area. I would<br />

later become very <strong>in</strong>volved <strong>in</strong> this setup, but for now the<br />

only th<strong>in</strong>g I could th<strong>in</strong>k of was how noisy this place must be<br />

<strong>in</strong> a crisis.<br />

99

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