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13th
Supply & Service Battalion |
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| Battalion History | |||
| 1981 | |||
 13rd Supply & Service Bn DUI |
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| If you have more information on the history or organization of the 13th S&S Bn, please contact me. | |||
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| 75th GS Supply Company | |||
| (Source: JOBBER, March 30, 1987) | |||
| 75th Supply 'Going through them changes' by Robert Mitchem "Major changes" is the phrase that best describes what has been happening at the 75th General Support Supply Company, 13th Supply and Services Battalion, since October of last year. Since that time, the company has been through a change of command and a change in their Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E). The realignment of the company's TO&E brought a major change in its mission, a change in work sites, a change in the number of assigned personnel, and a change in the types of equipment. The company no longer resembles, even remotely, the 42nd Maintenance (Classification Reclamation and Evacuation) Company that it once was. With the transition from one type of support unit to another, especially in this degree, the officers and enlisted soldiers of the 75th have endured many hours of hard work and headaches. As a maintenance unit, "The unit used to run a material collection and exchange platoon, a Class VII yard, a forward storage site for major assemblies, several pre-stock points, an automotive maintenance section, a services section, carpentry shop, a recovery and transport section, and it handled a special mission called `Operation Ziplock'," said Capt. Bruce Creamer, company commander. "Just about all of those missions have been turned over to the 317th Maintenance Company (71 st Maintenance Battalion). The company's mission now, is the running of 19 prestock points, he said. Consequently, the occupational specialties of company personnel adjusted to reflect the change from a maintenance company to that of a warehousing unit. And the assigned equipment changed to reflect the same mission requirements. Gone are the trucks, recovery vehicles and special shop kits of the 42nd Maint. Co. They've been replaced by, primarily, forklifts. "In October, after the second change of command, we moved all of our equipment from the motor pools and bay areas into this warehouse and the parking lot out back because we lost control of our other facilities in the change," said Ist Lt. Lydia Gurley, company property book officer. "This building was full, from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, with outgoing equipment when we started," she said, gesturing towards the ceiling of her recently renovated warehouse. Gurley explained that the warehouse and parking lot had contained whole, parts or equipment belonging to three heavy equipment transports, two M88 wreckers, several five-ton tractors, 13 two-and-a-half ton trucks, dozens of trailers, a fuel tanker, and a jeep. There were also OVM and cock sets, test equipment, welding equipment, and carpentry material' all which had to be processed in and eventually out of the facility. And in the middle of that, a civilian contractor was renovating the facility, causing more adjustments. "This job has called for a lot of shifting, storing of equipment, shifting, inventorying, and more shifting," said Gurley. "We had over 300 lines of equipment listed on five property books and all of it had to go. Now I'm down to my last property book," she added with a sigh. While this activity was going on at the unit's warehouse, the company began establishing standard operating procedures for its new mission. According to Creamer, the company actually acquired responsibility for the PSPs four years ago. But, at that time, there was little activity (stocks going in or out), so it was a minor part of the company's workload. "There just wasn't any volume of activity at the PSPs up to about a year ago," he said. "Then, within the last year, supplies (basically barrier material) that the Theater Army Material Management Center had ordered, starting coming in." "We store Class I, II, IV, VII and IX items such as emergency pipeline material, MREs, machine guns, concertina wire, mine field marking kits and chemical suits," said SP4 Rite E. Shank, the material control and accounting specialist. "We are responsible for the handling of outgoing inventory and turn-in of Code H (no longer serviceable or repairable) material that we store. For instance, if barbed wire or fence posts get too rusty, we turn them in. Our battalion headquarters supplies the trucks, trailers and drivers for transshipment of materials from our central site to the other sites, while the company supplies transportation of manpower to the sites." The challenging part of the PSP mission is that the sites are spread out all over southern Bavaria. They can be found as far north as Wuerzburg and Wertheim, as far south as Augsburg, to the west in Heilbronn and Ludwigsburg, and to the east in Nuernburg, where the company is based. Unfortunately, as the company picked up such a dispersed responsibility, its TO&E change took away some of the transportation. "The TO&E designed for a general supply company does not fit the requirements of a company with our PSP mission," said Creamer. "The 75th is the only supply company of this configuration and mission in the VII Corps." "It would be better if we could keep some of the trucks we are due to turn in, but they aren't on our TO&E," said CWO 2 Wayne Sumner, the company's motor vehicle repair technician. "We have a steady flow of work coming through the motor pool though, with the services and repair of the equipment at the PSPs," he said. "But at the same time, we have a lot of soldiers who aren't happy because they aren't being kept busy with warehouse work. It would be fine if all they had to handle were PSPs in the Nuernburg area, but there aren't enough of them for that." In order to keep the soldiers occupied with the job they were trained to do, the company leadership has developed a program in which the soldiers spend time with other supply companies that have warehouses.The company has already assisted the 45th Ordnance Company, 71st Maintenance Battalion, with a 100 percent warehouse inventory, and Creamer has plans for his soldiers to continue working with other companies. SSgt. Larne Smith, platoon sergeant of the Class I Platoon, has been coordinating with the 240th Supply and Service Company, 71st Maintenance Battalion. "I feel this is the way to go," he said. "It's a good idea and, more than that, it's good for the morale of the troops and good for the company. Everybody will benefit." "The company has really been through some big changes since it was called the 45th Maintenance Company," said SSgt. Clifton Officer, NCOIC of the PSP records section. Officer had been the NCOIC of the Class VII activity (in the 45th) before that responsibility was turned over to the 317th Maint. Co. "The job we were doing back then was very localized, with our business being conducted between W.O. Darby Kaseme and Johnson Barracks. Now there is more emphasis on logistics -- setting up personnel, transportation and equipment beforehand. It's been a real learning process for most of us higher ranking NCOs. I don't think it's a job any of us have been involved with before, not to mention the younger troops. Most of them are new to the Army, Germany and the system anyway. But we're learning to make it with what we have," he said. |
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