Commander's Update - from May 9, 2009

A few updates from Afghanistan:

We have gained a new platoon of soldiers, 28 of them to be exact. They are from the Indiana National Guard's 1613th Engineer Company and are skilled in earth-moving operations rather than our general vertical construction focus in the 166th Engineer Company. We are also expecting 43 soldiers to be added from the Individual Ready Reserve.

A soldier's contract may commit them to actively serving a certain number of years but every contract requires a total of 8 years of service. If 3 years equals the active commitment, the soldier's name is placed on a list in the IRR for the remaining 5 during which time the military may call them to service when additional forces are needed.

If we do receive these new soldiers, the 166th will have more than 220 soldiers serving in Afghanistan. Within the next couple of weeks, we will begin pushing out to almost 40 different locations to support construction missions ranging from building new housing for soldiers to
preparing current facilities for the harsh Afghanistan winter.

All of the soldiers continue to amaze me in their knowledge, abilities, and resilience. We're now into our 6th week in country and are managing to get into a groove with daily operations. Learning the intricacies of how things are done (how to get from place to place, who to talk to for receipt of supplies, how to order lumber and needed equipment, etc.) has been one of the larger learning curves for us - the soldiers know how to build, they just need the tools and supplies to do it. We're well on our way though.