Portland Air national Guard Base -- During the early morning August sun, a combined effort from the guardsmen of the 142nd Force Support Squadron during their four day August drill at the Portland Air National Guard Base, was to perform a number of field training taskings, including the building of a mobile food service field tent for operational use.
142nd Sustainment Services Flight commander, Major Kelly Barton shared, “this weekend our focus is mission readiness. We’re working on our food service mission today where we put up a field tent and inside that tent we put our deployable kitchen which can go anywhere in the world with our services Airmen.”
Enhancing mission readiness is one of the top priorities of the Wing commander so each unit and section is ready to support any state and federal missions when they arise. Situations like Hurricane Katrina and overseas missions like in Afghanistan keep our members focused on what their training will possibly require them to do in the real-world scenarios.
“These are essential skills they are going to need when they deploy with the reserve and our active-duty counterparts, and I am fully confident that our Airmen are ready now to go and serve anywhere in the world” said Barton. “Our service is unique in that we put so much priority in taking care of our Airmen, and that’s our sole mission.”
The Sustainment Services Flight worked together and accomplished their training to set up three tents total, one for food service while the other two would be for over-night lodging for the Airmen who would be staying the night that evening, all before the day’s temperature became too uncomfortable.
Senior Airman Jacob Currie, who supervised the mobile tent training, mentioned “I’ve assisted with this type of training before, but since our original trainer is no longer with our unit, we’re just trying to do as good a job as he did when conducting this particular tasking.”
“Overall, I am really enjoying it.” Said Currie.