A Corps Support Battalion's experience in Operation Iraqi Freedom

Army Logistician, July-August, 2004 by Andrew W. Bowes, Kimberly J. Daub

Traditionally, the 87th Corps Support Battalion (CSB) is aligned under the 24th Corps Support Group (CSG) (Forward) in direct support of the 3d Infantry Division (Mechanized) at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Its mission is to provide backup support to the Division Support Command and direct support (DS) to nondivisional units assigned to Fort Stewart. The 87th CSB's peacetime configuration includes the Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment (HHD), 94th Maintenance Company (General Support [GS]), 632d Maintenance Company (DS), 226th Quartermaster Company (DS), 396th Transportation Company (Palletized Load System [PLS]), 233d Heavy Equipment Transporter Platoon, and 240th Forward Surgical Team.

When the 87th CSB was added to Force Package 1 to support the 3d Infantry Division in Operation Iraqi Freedom, we knew that the battalion's task organization would have to change. In fact, our battalion underwent five major changes during the first 3 weeks of combat. These changes reflected the 24th CSG's concept for supporting the battalion's rapid movement to Baghdad and ensuring continuous customer support. We experienced firsthand the command and control challenges of "plug and play" logistics.

This article chronicles the 87th CSB's deployment and presents lessons learned while providing support to the 3d Infantry Division.

Setting the Stage

Members of the 24th CSG headquarters and 13th CSB headquarters (from Fort Benning, Georgia, and assigned to the 24th CSG) went to Kuwait in January 2003 to begin planning and to set the conditions for the CSG's reception, staging, onward movement, and integration. Since the 87th CSB headquarters and the 226th Quartermaster Company had returned recently from a 6-month deployment to Djibouti, the battalion was separated from the 3d Infantry Division for deployment and was placed late in the Force Package 1 time-phased force deployment data. This caused some problems for the 87th CSB's deployment.

To meet operational timelines, the battalion began to fly "space available" to Kuwait. The first unit to leave was the 396th Transportation Company, which deployed on five different flights. All units, except the HHD, would draw prepositioned equipment in Kuwait, and the shortfalls and unit supplies would be sent by ship. However, it soon became apparent that the ships would not arrive in Charleston, South Carolina, to be loaded before the battalion's personnel departed for Kuwait. This meant that the HHD's equipment would get to Kuwait much later than its personnel did. To resolve this issue, the HHD sent a significant amount of its tactical operations center equipment in containers on space-available flights and then drew enough vehicles from prepositioned equipment to become mission capable.

The 396th Transportation Company, the HHD, the 632d Maintenance Company, and the 226th Quartermaster Company all arrived in Kuwait by 7 March. The ships carrying the unit's supplies did not leave Charleston until 10 March. Because of an approximate 3-week sailing time, units going into combat were still missing as much as 20 percent of their life support, supplies, and repair parts. In the meantime, the advance party hit the ground running, trying to catch up with the 24th CSG, which was already at Camp New York in Kuwait, and develop a battalion concept of support that would sustain the CSG's overall concept. The basic concept included establishing forward logistics nodes created by echeloning the CSBs. The forward CSB had critical bulk petroleum, oils, and lubricants (POL); certain types of ammunition; water; and rations. To help set up the nodes quickly, CSBs formed corps-level forward logistics elements (FLEs) and integrated them into the 3d Infantry Division 2d Brigade Combat Team's (BCT's) maneuver.

To set the stage for the move across the line of departure, the battalion was given a new task organization that detached the 396th Transportation Company and attached the 157th Quartermaster Company (Field Services) and the 59th Quartermaster Company (POL) (GS). At the same time, the battalion assembled its FLE package that would go with the 2d BCT to facilitate the rapid buildup of Forward Logistics Base (FLB) Bushmaster.

Fuel Support

The center of gravity for the entire support mission during the attack on Iraq was fuel support. To support the mission, the battalion was tasked to develop a 1.2-million-gallon fuel bag farm at Objective Rams (which later would become FLB Bushmaster), near An Najaf, just south of the Karbala Gap. To do this, the battalion developed a FLE that was embedded with the 2d BCT. The FLE consisted of 27 vehicles and 54 people and had ten 5,000-gallon fuel tankers; a 10,000-pound forklift; a D7 bulldozer; four stake-and-platform trailers; a semitrailer-mounted fabric tank; a gun truck; a small extension node (SEN) team; a heavy, expanded mobility tactical truck wrecker; a contact truck; and three command and control vehicles.

The FLE moved out of Camp New York on 12 March to collocate with the 26th Forward Support Battalion (FSB). On 19 March, it moved with the 2d BCT to Attack Position Appling in preparation for crossing into Iraq on 21 March. The FLE would supply the corps tactical command post, corps signal unit, and division main command post with critical fuel along the route and establish a 400,000-gallon fuel system supply point (FSSP) within 12 hours of reaching Objective Rams.