130 th Support Center (Corps RAOC) The Forrest Critters Newsletter. April 11 th This is the last issue from the Continental United States

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1 130 th Support Center (Corps RAOC) The Forrest Critters Newsletter April 11 th 2003 This is the last issue from the Continental United States From the Commander: 27 Go 27 Come Back. Louis P. Friedmann Commander Forrest Critters! Remember Kuwait and Iraq are now 8 Hours ahead of Central time. We still do not have an APO mailing address for overseas. I will send in out in the newsletter as soon as possible. Due to security concerns US military personnel can no longer receive mail addressed to Any Soldier. A specific solider must be addressed on every envelope and package. The Latest News Sunday night the RAOC was informed of the details of our deployment. We can now release the following information. The RAOC will manifest at Fort Campbell s Hanger 2 at 0100 on 15 April. At that time we will go through a unit inspection, immunization review, and be issued atropine and 2 Pam Chloride injectors along with doxycycline antibiotic. All these activities will take until approximately 0530 when we will board a bus. At 0530 we will depart by bus from Fort Campbell to our Aerial Port of Embarkation at an East Coast city. Yes, 30,000 troops have left from the C-5B capable runway at Fort Campbell, yet the RAOC will take Greyhound on a long bus ride to a distant airport. No one ever said the army made sense. We will depart CONUS on a flight to Kuwait at approximately 2330 on 15 April. With all the knives we carry, we just hope we don t have to go through security. From Kuwait City we will move to our Assembly Area at a camp in the western Kuwaiti desert. For security reasons, we cannot say exactly where we are going. But we will form with other Task Force Ironhorse units at that camp and prepare to move into Iraq. Sunday s Farewell On Sunday, 13 April, the RAOC will hold our farewell with family and friends. Our current plans are to meet at 3:30pm in the Ft Campbell Education Center. This is a large brown stone building on the left at the first traffic signal after you come in the main gate (Gate 4). For those families that do not have a DoD decal on their vehicle, you will have to register your vehicle at the Fort Campbell visitor center at Gate 4. You will have to present a valid state driver s license, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance at the vehicle registration building. NO EXCEPTIONS! Armed guards do man the gates and they will not let you in without a pass. Plan to arrive early as this may take up to one hour. We will meet from 3:30 to approximately 4:30. After that, soldiers are released to go to dinner in the Clarksville area with family and friends. All soldiers must report back to Bldg 6709 at 8pm.

2 The Past Week s Events Sunday evening we received information on our deployment. Although we are fortunate to have more than six hours notice, the method of travel and increased requirements and duration were a bit of a surprise to most soldiers. Monday we tried to break from the Fort Campbell regimen and headed to Dover, Tennessee to tour the Fort Donelson National Battlefield. ( We were able to get a tour guide for ourselves and spent the morning and early afternoon learning about the Confederate defenses and how the Northern Army defeated them and opened the Cumberland River and the road to Nashville. Sergeants First Class Roberts and Yates also departed for the port to ensure our vehicles are properly loaded on a US Navy ship for transport to Southwest Asia. They will follow us to the war zone after that is complete and they have been issued their Extra Large chemical defense uniforms. By Tuesday we started to wind down on the training and spend more time just preparing ourselves and our gear for deployment overseas. In the morning we repacked our protective masks cases to the Ironhorse standard making room for the injectors and other defensive gear. Then a large chunk of the morning went to just figuring out what all we need to take on the bus/plane and how we will get through the manifest next week. At the Tuesday evening formation, we presented LTC Friedmann with his official RAOC tomahawk. Wednesday we got our glint tape and Velcro sewn on our uniforms. (That s GliNt tape...) These are 1 x 1 square pieces of reflective tape we will wear so that we are more easily identifiable as American soldiers through night vision goggles. We also worked on more of the logistics of packing up weapons in Tuff boxes. Thursday we continued our personal packing. We were issued seven magazines each for our weapons, continued to take care of personnel business, and received mandatory pre-deployment briefings. Specialist James Mullinax Specialist James D. Mullinax was born in Franklin County, Tennessee and lived in Hillsboro in Coffee County until his was 20. He first joined the Army in 1983 and attended Basic Training at Fort Jackson, SC, and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Gordon, Georgia where he trained as a radio and teletype operator. His first duty station was at Ft Riley, Kansas where he served as a radio operator for the 121 st Signal Battalion in the 1 st Infantry Division, the Big Red One. After numerous NTC rotations he transferred to Germany where he served with the 8 th Signal Battalion, 8 th Infantry Division but decided to leave the Army after that tour. In 1991 he reenlisted in the Army and served in the 10 th Signal Battalion, 10 th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, NY. He deployed numerous times with the Division including Operations HURRICANE ANDREW, Operation RESTORE HOPE in Somalia, and Operation UPHOLD DEMOCRACY in Haiti. Specialist Mullinax left the Army again in 1995 and currently resides in Hillsboro with his wife Tina and their children. He works in Tullahoma where he is in the commercial glazing industry. Specialist Mullinax joined the Tennessee Army National Guard in August 2001 and served for a year and a half in the 1175 th Transportation Company (HET) in Tullahoma. However, as deployment loomed for both the 1175 th and the 130 th RAOC, he decided to transfer to the RAOC. SPC Mullinax will serve as a radio operator and communications specialist during this deployment.

3 Some of the quotes captured during this mobilization: (most of them cannot be published.) I ve got three bullets in my pocket one for you, one for you, and one for me - MAJ Hollister No only means No for mediocre units - LTC Friedmann Is Great White playing here? CPT Erdley, (while crowding into a briefing room with 800 people) I shall call him, Mini-Me - LTC Friedman (about CPT Rick Lewis) Step away from the crack pipe - MAJ Hollister If you ain t Cav, you re deployed. And you take our stuff A 278 th Cavalry Officer The RAOC has been renamed the Forward Area Operations Command Unit : The FAOC-U This unit is not authorized hand grenades - LTC Friedmann (after the attack on the 101 st Tent) We don t need an interpreter. They ll speak CPT Lewis (5.56mm bullets) When asked by a reporter what he thought Americans would bring Iraqis, and unknown Iraqi civilian replied, They will bring us democracy, whiskey, and sexy [sic]. Bring it on. All right General, we re here but we don t have our gear, it s still on the ocean and we had a 400 pound weight limit on the flight over, including our body weight, weapons, and all our gear. I ve got a government-issue pen and an index card. What do you want me to do next? CPT Erdley Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without an accordion. Strange Facts about the RAOC: The average solider carries four knives: a Swiss Army type, a Leatherman/Gerber, a locking blade, and a straight blade. It s a RAOC thing. Yes, we know we re disturbed. SFC Roberts, SFC Thomas, and 1SG Calabrese have been in the RAOC since DESERT STORM 13 years is an unheard of tour of duty in one unit. Although we have already qualified on 9mm pistols, M16A2 rifles, and M249 Squad Automatic Weapons, the RAOC is planning to run a tomahawk qualification range in theater. The soldiers of the 130 th RAOC now have a decision to make that members of the 278 th Armored Cavalry Regiment will never face: Which combat patch do we wear?

4 The soldiers of the RAOC at the Fort Donelson Visitor s Center and around a 32-pound shore battery cannon looking north on the Cumberland River Captain Brian Tomblin presents the official RAOC Tomahawk to LTC Friedmann

5 History of the Forrest Critters This week s newsletter is already pretty lengthy, but it is likely to be the last one for a while. In spite of the length, as the 130 th prepares to deploy and make history once again, I thought it was appropriate to let everyone know what the unit has done in the past. The narration below was complied from several reports. Over the next few months we will certainly add to this proud history. Although some family and friends may not appreciate this background, those military and formermilitary personnel will surely be able to relate to it. CPT Erdley The 30 th Division is the grandfather of the 130 th RAOC. The Division was constituted on 18 July 1917 from National Guard Troops in Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina and called to duty at Camp Sevier, South Carolina in August The 30 th Division later fought at Flanders, Ypres-Lys, and in the Somme Offensive of World War I. After war service, the Division was demobilized at Camp Jackson, South Carolina in In 1926, the Division was reconstituted and moved to Atlanta to reorganize, were it remained in the National Guard until September In preparation for World War II, the 30 th Division was federalized. In 1942 the Division reorganized again as an Infantry Division and was renamed the Old Hickory Division in honor of its Tennessee roots. But the Germans soon nicknamed them Roosevelt s Shock Troops since the 30 th spearheaded many Allied assaults: Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, and Ardennes-Alsace. The Division earned two Order of the Day citation from Belgium, the Belgian Fourraguerre (representing two Croix-de-Guerre awards), two Croix-de-Guerre awards from France, and the FRANCE streamer from the US Army. Symbols of these awards are integrated into the current Forrest Critter distinctive unit insignia. After World War II, the Division was briefly inactivated once again, but in 1947 reorganized with half the unit in Nashville and the other half headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina. However in 1954 the split become permanent as the Infantry Division moved to Raleigh and the 30 th Armored Division was formed in Nashville. The 30 th Armored remained a National Guard Division until 1973 when the military suffered from more strength reductions and the 30 th was retired and fragmented into units scattered throughout Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The soldiers of the Headquarters element of the Division were used to form the 130 th Support Center (Rear Area Operations) on 1 September This was the official beginning of our present day RAOC. In 1980 the unit moved to Smyrna, and was officially named the 130 th Rear Area Operations Center on 1 November 1983 and was granted its own colors and distinctive unit insignia. Over the next 10 years the 130th was instrumental in writing the book on RAOC operations. The unit served overseas with the 3 rd Infantry Division, 2 nd Corps Support Command and VII Corps in Germany.

6 Upon implementation of the CAPSTONE concept, the 130 th RAOC aligned with the VII Corps. This honor was bestowed on a very small number of National Guard units and enabled the RAOC soldiers to proudly wear the VII Corps patch above the right breast pocket of their Battle Dress Uniforms. The RAOC continued to support every major exercise that VII Corps conducted. In 1990, the 130 th RAOC continued its tradition of wartime service and was one of the first National Guard units to be federalized. The unit mobilized at Fort Campbell on 27 August 1990 and was the first unit to be validated for deployment. On 16 September 1990, the RAOC became the first National Guard unit to deploy to Southwest Asia and deployed to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia as the RAOC for the 22 nd Support Command (Theater Army). Detachments from the RAOC also served in Riyadh and King Khalid Military City. The unit served during DESERT STORM with distinction before the main body returned to the US on 11 March 1991, with a 20-person rear detachment returning 10 days later. The last of the unit was released from active duty on 29 March After DESERT STORM the RAOC reorganized and reduced from 86 to 27 soldiers and in 1992 was redesignated as the 130 th Support Center (Corps RAOC). Despite this loss of manpower, the RAOC has remained the most-deployed unit in the Tennessee Army National Guard. The unit has become an integral part of the Corps and Japanese Self Defense Force Exercise Yama Sukura in 1993 and has participated in this exercise almost every year. The RAOC also served in an NTC rotation, three PURPLE DRAGON exercises, and Warfighters at Fort Lee Virginia and Fort Riley, Kansas. In 1997 the unit s location was again changed to Tullahoma. From 17 July 2001 to 16 January 2002, the RAOC was once again federalized and deployed to Europe as part of JOINT GUARDIAN. The unit was split in two with half the personnel stationed at Camp Able Sentry in Macedonia and Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. After just one short year of recovery, the call came once again for the 130 th RAOC to serve America s needs. On 19 February 2003 the unit was called to active duty, and federalized on 24 February Once again as the war loomed the RAOC mobilized at Fort Campbell, Kentucky to prepare for war in Southwest Asia. The RAOC was able to once again quickly validate for deployment as part of Task Force Ironhorse to Turkey, but political issues delayed this move and the RAOC continued to train at Fort Campbell as war broke out. However orders finally came for a new deployment location and the 130 th quickly loaded out all its gear and prepared to move to its assembly area in Kuwait to form with the 64 th Corps Support Group. The RAOC will leave CONUS on 15 April 2003 and fly into Kuwait City to prepare for future military operations. FORREST CRITTERS!