Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 19, 1993 TAG: 9311190067
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: FORT BRAGG, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
In a field in the northwest corner of Fort Bragg, hundreds of Army grunts were living in an experimental pack-it-up-and-take-it-with-you tent city.
Because of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 - when Army grunts lived in tents designed in the 1950s or in Arabian cloth tents that leaked - Army leaders decided that they didn't like the old digs and ordered a comfortable environment for their soldiers.
That's what they got.
These soldiers were living in tents with heating and air-conditioning. There were enough tents to house and feed 550 of them, just miles from the make-believe battlefront.
There was a hospital. Latrines had toilets that flushed, stainless-steel urinals and sinks. They washed clothes in washers and dryers and took showers, hot showers. They played basketball on a portable court and goal.
And they ate in a mess hall a meal of glazed ham, cooked carrots and macaroni and cheese prepared in gas ovens.
The tent city even had its own sewage system. And a barber shop for those smart Army hairdos. And financial advisers and an automated teller machine for smart banking.
What would Patton - Old Blood and Guts himself - think?
Or John Wayne?
Or even Mike McCoy, a former Marine from Charlotte?
"They're going soft, bad soft, just like stateside," said McCoy, a member of VFW Post 6724 who was wounded after 6 1/2 months in Vietnamese jungles with daytime temperatures of up to 130 degrees. "We didn't have no air conditioning, and all we had were honeydew pots. We did our thing in these pots, and then took it out in the woods and burned it.
"Just another sign the military is going soft."
The Army doesn't think so.
"What you have here is anything a soldier could find at a garrison environment like Fort Bragg," said Maj. Jim Hinnant, spokesman for the 18th Airborne Corps, which is testing the tent-city concept. "When you put a soldier through what we ask them to do, we owe this to them.
"There's never been anything like this in the Army before."
Obviously, conditions on the line won't be as posh.
After Desert Storm in 1991, Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan ordered a consortium of Army experts, researchers and health experts to develop a system to improve living conditions for combat soldiers.
After two years, they came up with "Force Provider," an amenities-rich version of the base camps used in Vietnam. They aren't meant to be right up on the front line but are used for relaxing by soldiers coming from battle.
The only one produced is being tested this month by the 18th Airborne, with the corps' battalions rotating in and out of the tent city. The Army unveiled the city last week.
The city is built of polyester tents 32 feet long and 20.6 feet wide. Each tent can be connected with another to enlarge for different functions, such as a two-tent mess hall, or, in the New Army, the "dining facilities."
Each 65-tent module accommodates 550 soldiers. The Army is planning six brigade-size tent cities to hold as many as 3,300.
The people who came up with Force Provider weren't just thinking about soldiers and wars.
The city could provide instant emergency housing during such disasters as the Midwest floods, Hurricane Andrew in South Florida or the famine in Somalia.
"But the primary function is for soldiers," Hinnant said.
They like it.
Spcs. Matthew Mifflin, 22, and Daniel Noriega, 22, fought in Desert Storm. They slept in cloth tents and took frigid showers.
"We sure could have used this in Saudi," said Noriega, who was in Saudi Arabia five months before he was wounded. "This is great. Tents that don't leak, hot food and no more freezing showers."
Noriega doesn't know what Patton would think about this new concept, about this New Army. Patton reputedly slapped two soldiers suffering from battle neurosis because he thought they were faking.
Hinnant does know.
"He was like any other leader. He wanted to take care of his soldiers. I'm sure, in that light, Patton would be pleasantly surprised and pleased about this. All leaders want to take care of their troops.
"Now they'll be able to bring them from intense combat to an environment like this."
by CNB