Expeditionary Workforce

 

                                                                                                                       Feb. 1, 2008

 

I began my deployment with the Afghanistan Engineer District the first week of November 2006 and am scheduled to redeploy back to Tulsa District Sept. 30, 2008.  As I’m sure most people feel when deploying to the war zone, I was somewhat hesitant and apprehensive in the beginning; however, now that I’m here in Kabul and have become part of the AED team, I can’t imagine working any place else.  We are a strong, close-knit team here at AED, and each and every one of us plays an important part in our district being so successful at accomplishing our mission … to create a better, safer Afghanistan.

 

 

 

 

AED sponsored training for a handful of Afghan Army engineering cadets.  This photo was taken at our opportunity to meet and greet them.

The USO sponsored a group of comedians to entertain one evening here at the Qalaa Compound during the winter of 2007.  Considering only a handful of us were left at the compound, with the remainder of the employees being back in the States with their families on R&R, we will be forever grateful they came and performed their show for us. It really lifted the spirits of the civilians and soldiers who remained in Afghanistan during the Christmas holiday.

I am a cartographer and serve as the team leader in the GIS Program within the Engineering Branch of Engineering and Construction Division.  My job is to support the Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police, Real Estate/CREST, De-Mining, Counter Narcotics, Military Construction, and Border Management programs with their geospatial and mapping requirements.  In addition to my regular program duties, I also have the privilege of supporting my commander with his mapping needs for his presentations and briefings.  He just so happens to be my old home district commander, Colonel Miroslav Kurka.

 

The GIS products that I am predominately responsible for developing are area maps for the soldiers and team members when going out to the field (aka, route maps), project location maps for the project managers, road maps for PRT team members when they need to travel from one Afghan settlement to another, and maps for the real estate program for use in working with local landowners and the Ministry of Defense to be able to procure land rights to build Fire Bases, Forward Operating Bases, and other military installations in addition to the construction we are placing for the country of Afghanistan.  However, I feel the most important part of my job would be working with the De-Mining Officer to overlay de-mining data on potential project sites to see what areas need to be cleared of land mines and other miscellaneous unexploded ordnance – that’s the part that can save or cost lives.

 

 

I have enjoyed the past 15 months of my tour that I’ve been in Afghanistan and look forward to completing the remainder of my deployment.  I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the Corps of Engineers’ best and brightest employees and have made many friends while deployed at AED.  We have a lot of brave soldiers and civilians that go out onto the streets of Afghanistan every day to make sure their projects are getting completed safely and to Corps standards despite the dangers of the war going on around us.  And I especially want to thank our PSD soldiers for making sure that we make it to and from Qalaa Compound safely every day.  They cannot be thanked nor appreciated enough!

 

                                                                              Vicky L. Wilkinson, cartographer

COL Bulen presented me with my Combat Service Pin ("combat style" with the pin pushed into my skin - OUCH!, but I chose the method) after serving 30 consecutive days in a war zone.

USO Photo