Second is the assistant, who does the little things like checking people's equipment and making sure the trucks are in the right order. If something goes wrong along the way, he'll be the one to jump our and coordinate on-ground stuff.
Next is the host nation truck master. When we get to our destination, he's in charge of making sure the HNTs get to the right place, drop their cargo, and don't get "lost" within the base.
Finally, there's the mission commander. This guy's in charge of the "green" trucks -- the Army ones. When we get in the gate, the MC's job is to set things up for drop off and pick up. That was my job for this mission.
For the frontload, we took a container of mail and some breakbulk.
Along the way, we saw the fruit blossoms in bloom and what I think is the gravesite of a Korean killed in 2007.
They moved the transient sleeping quarters to a different place than before. There's more privacy, but it's a further walk to the DFAC. Oh well. Breakfast was great -- can you believe they had jalapeno poppers? That's way better than hash browns.
One of the things we picked up for backhaul was a Forward Repair System (FRS, pronounced "fresh"). This is a neat thing -- a maintenance bay packed into the size of a 20-foot container, with its own crane and flatbed built into it. Our PLS trucks don't need any special equipment to pick it up, either -- they just reach back with the hook and lift it onto the back of the truck.
Everything worked well, apart from some spur-of-the-moment pick ups the evening before we left. We're supposed to have a "Transport Movement Request" before we move anything, but when it comes to backhaul our battalion is a bit more flexible. Unfortunately, we had the space for it, so I couldn't really say no.
Picking up that extra stuff didn't really take long, but it's the stress of figuring things out all of a sudden. I'm just glad we got it done before nightfall.
All in all, a good experience. I can mark my first stint as a mission commander as a success.
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