By Daveen Rae Kurutz and A.J. Panian
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, June 14, 2010

U.S. Army Reserves Colonel Michael Mann was set to deploy to Kuwait in January of 2009, when his command received a last minute change of mission.

Instead the Expeditionary Sustainment Command (ESC), where Mann served as Deputy Commander, was sent into Afghanistan into an “intensely challenging theater of combat operations,” Mann’s award citation narrative states.

Mann earned a Bronze Star for his service during the 12 month deployment.

As the first ESC to deploy to the this area of operation in Afghanistan, Mann and his fellow soldiers were responsible for the Command and Control of more than 3,000 Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Civilians. And they planned and executed full spectrum logistics support throughout the area of operations.

Upon his arrival in Afghanistan, there were no operational logistics practices in place, his award citation narrative states. But working to implement their principles of “anticipation, responsiveness, simplicity, economy, survivability, and improvisation,” according to the narrative, they were able to make “huge strides” in establishing and maintaining operations.

The command inherited the daunting task of conducting logistics support of ongoing combat operations while planning and organizing rapid theater expansion in support of more than 20,000 arriving US service members representing an increase to fifteen combat and combat support brigades in 2009. And their work environment upon arrival was truly expeditionary. There were virtually no work stations, communication equipment, or computers, which are the critical tools that the 300-man unit uses to function. Over the first few weeks the personnel worked to establish this infrastructure. The temperature in their tents at times exceeded 100 degrees. But the command also played a leading role in constructing eight new Forward Operating Bases and planning for the 2010 surge of an additional 30,000 US forces across Afghanistan.

“Unit personnel proceeded to construct the headquarters while at the same time the unit was operating full speed to sustain US forces,” the narrative states.

Deputy Commander General, Mann was “fully engaged in supporting virtually every aspect of the Commanding General’s successful efforts to command and control the 4,300 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, [and] Civilians in the command, as well as ensuring the health, welfare, safety of these personnel.

” But it was Mann’s leadership that contributed so much to these successes, the narrative states.

Mann was known for mentoring and guiding the staff, which was key to the unit’s success.

Mann led the senior leadership team, he routinely promoted personnel changes to improve unit operations. He played a large role in leading the pre-deployment training, as well.

“COL Mann’s leadership and performance in executing full-spectrum sustainment operations greatly assisted in the unmitigated success of the US mission in Afghanistan,” the narrative states.

Article Source:  Hero of the Week

U.S. Army Major Todd Buchheim spent his most recent deployment to Camp Bucca, Iraq serving as a Combat Operations Officer, supporting a hospital engaged in detainee healthcare.

In the role of Operations Office, Buchheim was responsible for running all the non-medical hospital operations, he said, a task which turned out to be something of a challenge.

When Buccheim arrived at Camp Bucca in May of 2008 there were more than 18,000 detainees at Camp Bucca, he said. And with so many detainees, there were a wide range of medical issues that the hospital staff needed to treat.

While there wasn’t a lot of trauma related healthcare to provide, the hospital treated a whole range of other health issues, from standard ailments to helping treat Iraqis who had previously lost limbs in the war between Iran and Iraq, he said.

“Our hospital had radiology, a physical therapist, prosthetics, an eye doctor, a six bed emergency room, a four bed Intensive Care Unit, and a 34 bed intermediate care ward…Anything that a person can do in the states, we did there,” he said.

“It was a good strategic mission,” Buccheim said of the assignment. “I felt good about that aspect.”

The mission, in part, was based around the idea that by working with and providing medical treatment for detainees the U.S. Military can demonstrate that they are in Iraq to help, he said. Part of the detainee program at Camp Bucca also included teaching job skills to the detainees as well.

“So by treating detainees they can go back into the field and spread word, basically,” he said.

Over the course of the deployment the number of detainees at Camp Bucca dropped from 18,000 to just 4,000, he said.

The best part of the deployment, he said, was “learning how to interact with other people, learning another culture, and preventing losses in the future as opposed to having to treat them.”

Buccheim earned a Bronze Star for his service in the deployment.

SFC Christopher L. Jackson was more than an Army weapons sergeant in Iraq. He was a teacher, advisor, mentor and planner.  His various accomplishments were in direct support of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior’s mission to bring stability and security to the country.

During his deployment from May 2008, to January 2009, Jackson led and conducted 31 direct action missions which resulted in the detention of more than 37 high value individuals in the Baghdad area, including a corrupt member of the Iraqi government.

“Well, I obviously can’t talk about the particulars of the various missions, but in retrospect, I can tell you that I felt like we were really making a difference over there,” said Jackson.

His actions led to a significant reduction in enemy capability within the Baghdad area, helped develop the local Iraqi security force, and established a functional brigade within the Iraqi Ministry of Interior.

“I did a fair amount of training. I worked with the Iraqi soldiers to develop increased responsibility and ownership of their training and operations,” Jackson said as he described his teaching role.  “I was also responsible for about 150 training plans for 150 constables.  I advised the company commander on how to incorporate Mission Essential Tasks Lists into the short-range and long-range training calendar,” he said.

According to his Bronze Star medal citation, “his mastery of company-level planning and his ability to convey this knowledge as an effective mentor greatly accelerated the Emergency Response Brigade’s process of becoming a national level, self-reliant Iraqi unit.”

During Jackson’s deployment he also earned the Army Commendation Medal with “Valor” device and Purple Heart for his actions in the face of the enemy on July 19-20, 2008.

He led an assault on a large Jaysh Al Mahdi Special Groups element barricaded inside a three-story house. As he and his men entered the courtyard, the Iraqi assault force breached the front door of the building and enemy fire erupted from all three levels of the structure, effectively pinning down his men.

With utter disregard for his own personal safety, Jackson maneuvered through the courtyard to return fire and maintain control of his force.

Once his unit gained fire superiority, Jackson moved his team to covered positions outside the courtyard, continuously exposed to enemy small arms fire and grenades.  Wounded by an enemy grenade in the midst of the firefight, he continued to lead his team for the remainder of the battle.

After a lull in the battle, the ground force commander called for a cease fire to evaluate the situation. Jackson and his team re-entered the courtyard in another effort to breach the building.

Again, the enemy engaged them with small arms fire and grenades; Jackson again exposed himself to fierce enemy fire as he suppressed enemy positions on the second and third floors of the building.

When the need for Close Air Support arose, Jackson positioned himself on the first floor and used covering fire and a grenade to ensure his men withdrew safely.

Jackson’s quick decisions and calm performance, focus, and dedication under intense enemy fire prevented his team from being overwhelmed and led to mission accomplishment.

“Once the smoke has dissipated and the dust has settled all that is left is the man on your left and right regardless of nationality.  My teammates and Iraqi counterparts are all worthy of this Bronze Star,” Jackson said.

Major Michael Thiesfeld has a philosophy about his role as personnel officer in human resources (HR) for the U.S. Army.

“When you’re not infantry, you’re not the guy pulling the trigger. There’s a lot of times that HR guys feel like the redheaded stepchild,” Thiesfeld said. “But we don’t do it for ourselves, we do it to take care of [the soldiers down at the company level].”

During a 2005 to 2006 deployment to Iraq, in which Thiesfeld served the personnel officer for a battalion stationed in Mahmudiayah, in the area known as the “Sunni Triangle”. Leading a team of nine, Thiesfeld was responsible for the human resources needs for an average of 900 soldiers.

“I was in charge of all the HR related resources,” Thiesfeld said. Those resources spanned from payroll and accountability to awards and evaluations, from deployment operations to casualty operations.

“Everything in the HR related world, I did,” Thiesfeld said.

Commissioned in 1999, Thiesfeld had been working in HR for more than three years at the time of that first deployment.

But, he said, “what I was not trained or prepared for was the environment we were in. Doing [HR] in combat is a lot different from doing it at Fort Knox, Kentucky.”

One of the challenges, he said, was the limited connectivity. The battalion was broken up and spread out in a number of different locations, he said, which made transferring information difficult and complicated.

But the hardest part of the deployment, he said, was running casualty operations. When a soldier was killed in action, it was the duty of Thiesfeld and his team to handle a large part of that operation.

“It’s so easy in the schoolhouse. There’s a process for the reports you send up for KIA and WIA,” Thiesfeld said referring to soldiers killed and wounded in action.

When it becomes personal, again and again running the operations for soldiers killed in action becomes a “dreaded personal event,” he said.

“On our side of the house, it doesn’t end with the event. We end up preparing for the memorial service, sending out the letters of condolences, packing up the memorial gear to send to the next of kin,” Thiesfeld said. “Along with the commander, in some cases you end up being the face, the point of contact for that next of kin. It opens up reminders. That was the biggest drain.”

The Army does a good job, he said, of helping soldiers deal with the stress and hardships of deployment.

” We had a wonderful chaplain,” he said. “If you knew the person who was wounded or killed, he would come down and talk to our shop personally to see how we were doing.”

“It’s a tough job, but the philosophy is that we’re doing it for the soldiers,” he said. “I enjoy taking care of people. And I’ve met a lot of great people from putting them first before other things.”

“I love what I do,” he said.

Thiesfeld earned a Bronze Star Medal for his service during the deployment.

Article Source:  http://ourmilitaryheroes.defense.gov/profiles/thiesfeldM.html

As the Infantry Headquarters Company Commander of during a 2005 to 2006 deployment to Iraq, U.S. Army Major David Bursac spent much of his time in the field working with the Iraqi Police in the town of Hawijah, located near Kirkuk in Northern Iraq.

We were primarily responsible for being out there, providing security for the locals in the area, training up the Iraqi Security Forces, as well as conducting Counter Insurgency operations, Bursac said, taking a positive spin on a challenging job.

The battalion’s mission, said Bursac, “was to provide a secure environment within the Hawijah area, while simultaneously developing the capabilities of the local Iraqi Security Forces [Army and Police] so that the ISF could assume full responsibility for the securing their own area of operations.”

Daily operations, said Bursac, included dealing with IEDs, daily enemy contact, securing check points, helping the Iraqi Security Forces, and targeting insurgent forces in the area.

When he wasn’t supervising Iraqi police on patrol in the field, Bursac focused on headquarters activities, such as training Iraqi Army Soldiers, and Iraqi Army Police on the forward operating base (FOB).

It was a job which was a “combination of frustrating at times, and rewarding at times,” he said.

“It was certainly a challenging task,” he said, but it was ultimately satisfying “to see the progress we made in building up the Iraqi Security forces, and knowing we helped the Iraqis.”

Another one of the smaller challenges of the position, Bursac said, came from the language barrier between the American and Iraqi Soldiers, he said. While there were many interpreters on hand to translate and communicate, it got complicated when a third language was introduced: military terminology.

Working with and getting to know the Iraqi Army Soldiers and Police was interesting, said Bursac, who was commissioned in 1999.

“It was interesting considering that it was a diverse cross section of Iraq,” he said. “Some of them had been enlisted in the former army in the former regime. Some were the same forces that we were fighting 2003. But some were just regular guys looking to feed their families and make their country better.”

At the end of the day, Bursac said, he found they were alike in many more ways than he had thought.

“Once we were able to put the Iraqi Soldiers and Police in the lead and empower them with more responsibility, they were able to take that and go from there. That was the key overall. “Holding them accountable for securing their own country gave them a sense of ownership in the job they were doing,” he said.

“Being away from home,” said Bursac, was the biggest challenge of the deployment.

“The hardest thing about any deployment is the separation from family and friends,” he said, but cited how improved internet access, telephones and other Army support systems helped to mitigate that hardship.

“Overall, keeping everyone focused on the mission and not letting feelings of being separated get in the way of staying focused, is what’s important,” he said.

“The most important thing,” he said, “is to get the job done.”

Bursac earned a Bronze Star for his service during the deployment.

Article Source:  http://ourmilitaryheroes.defense.gov/profiles/bursacD.html

Master Gunnery Sergeant Peter Proietto of the U.S. Marine Corps was faced with a tough decision on March 12, 2003. He could leave his position and seek cover from the enemy ambush, or he could stay in position. Though it would risk his own life, if he stayed he could continue to provide suppressive fire to protect the other Marines in the forward element of the patrol.

Proietto chose to stay in position.

The patrol had been traveling outside of the village of Bara Waze, Afghanistan that afternoon when the Taliban fighters, well armed with an array of weaponry, ambushed.

Proietto had immediately manned the machine gun on his vehicle to lay down suppressive fire on the enemy and to  provide supporting fire to the lead element of the patrol, which had been pinned down by the heavy enemy fire.

As the firefight progressed, a heavy crossfire from the enemy mounted against Proietto “to a point of intensity that was amazing” states the narrative the accompanies his award citation. Proietto earned a  Bronze Star with ‘Valor’ for his actions that day.

That’s when the Team Sergeant, Master Sergeant Clopp advised him to abandon his position and seek cover, since he was firing from a non-armored vehicle on an open road, and the enemy was concentrating their fire on him.

Proietto knew that if he abandoned his position the forward element would be left on their own with no supporting fire. So he ignored his own safety and refused to leave his position even though everything around him, including his vehicle, was being shot up in the enemy crossfire.  He could continue to lay down a steady stream of suppressive fire on the enemy, which he did for almost an hour, and silenced two enemy machine gun positions.

Proietto held his position for almost an hour through intense fire and silenced two enemy machineguns.  When his machinegun ran out of ammunition, he grabbed his M4 carbine and began to engage the enemy and spot enemy positions for the gunner.

Eventually the enemy was pushed out of their positions. A running firefight through the mountains ensued until after dark at which time the patrol broke contact and reconsolidated.

“Throughout this engagement…Proietto displayed himself in a courageous professional manner and his heroic and immediate response to enemy fire and willingness to jeopardize his own safety to provide supporting fire for the rest of the team demonstrated a level of dedication to the mission and his fellow soldiers, which is rarely surpassed,” the award citation states. “His actions and selfless courage under fire was instrumental in the success of the operation and the safe return of all U.S. and Afghan militia forces.”

Article Source:  “Our Military Hereos” and to hear his interviews”

Posted by Bacon on February 4th, 2010 filed in Hero of the week

Where were you in 1970? I was in junior high school.

Sergeant Major Caffie was in Vietnam. When he first flew in, “It was 10 p.m. at night. You would see the tracers coming in, you could see the tracers going out. It makes you think ‘this is the real deal.” (From DefenseLink)

He survived Vietnam. eventually left active duty and went to school on the G.I. Bill while staying on the rolls in the inactive reserves. But he soon discovered that he missed the camaraderie of military service and joined the active reserves – officially the U.S. Army Reserves – in 1974.

Thus continued a career that spanned four decades of service, including a recent deployment to Iraq where, as Command Sergeant Major for the 377th Theater Support Command, he was responsible for 43,500 Soldiers.

He retired last month, bringing a long and distinguished Army career to an end.

Thank you, Sergeant Major, for your service. Others have the watch now, many of whom were touched by your inspirational leadership. Sergeant Major Caffie is our hero of the week.

(There is a great interview on the DefenseLink website, during which he describes his affection for the Soldiers he served with, as well as the respect he has for the U.S. military.)