First Mission for the 166th Engineer Company

SPC Bailey Bullock
166th Engineer Company
2nd Platoon







The members of the 166th EN CO have now been in country for about one month. After settling in at our home station of Sharana our company was given its first mission, which involved the building of critical guard towers for another expanding FOB. This mission was tasked out to the members of 2nd Platoon, headed by 1LT Matthew Penn and SFC Gary Williams.

We, 2nd Platoon, have now been on this mission for two weeks and we are proceeding with great efficiency and speed. The building of the towers, which was planned to take about a week per tower, is being done in two days, and the mission itself is more than 50% complete. If the current trend continues, we will complete the work more than a week ahead of the deadline.

Our success to date lies solely in our platoon's ability to work together. We started this mission with only a set of plans and a Basic Order of Materials (BOM) list. Beyond that, we had to learn and adapt to the situation we found upon arriving at this Forward Operating Base (FOB). We did this very well. On the second day after arrival, we began pre-fabrication of the materials and structural elements for these towers. By the end of that day we had constructed the materials necessary to build four towers, and we were off and running. A few days later, we began construction of our first tower. Although we had to get a feel for the job and find our groove, we did and managed to finish that first tower in two and a half days. We have been flying since.

A key to our success has been the distribution of manpower. Each day we have three key teams: one team works the BOM yard constructing the necessary elements for the towers and staging those elements for loading and delivery to the jobsites; a second team goes out to the expansion site and drills and sets the posts for the towers; the third team goes to the previously set posts sites and constructs the towers themselves. And even within these three groups our soldiers have divided up the duties, having small groups work on different aspects of the construction, speeding up the process. For example, on the construction crew there are usually three soldiers that build the stairs, another five to six that work on the floor and the walls and another three to four that do all of the roofing. At different points in the construction people fluctuate and help where help is needed, but each person has a specific task as well. In addition to the construction of new towers, our platoon was tasked with completing the six towers previously started by the outgoing unit. Most were within the margin of 75%-80% completion when we arrived, but none were completed. We have managed to finish the work on all of these towers within this first two weeks as well.

The work has been hard and the days have been long, but this platoon has managed to end each day in good spirits. I can't say that there hasn't been our fair share of complaining and discouragement at times, but you know how the old saying goes, “When a soldier is complaining you know everything is fine. It's when he doesn't that something is wrong.” That is to say that all is normal and good in our platoon. We work well together and we manage to have a good time with each other while we do it. It is safe to say that this first mission for 2nd Platoon of the 166th Engineer Company has been and will be a success.