Post from Afghanistan

Expeditionary Workforce

 

                                                                                                      August 6, 2008

 

I had joined the Corps only a few months before I deployed. I had wanted to work for the Corps for a long time and finally got the chance when I was selected for the position at the Fort Sill Resident Office in January of this year.

 

My interest in deploying started with an email from Col. Kurka (the Afghanistan Engineer District commander at the time) that was forwarded to me by someone that had just returned from an assignment with AED. That email listed several positions of critical need for AED, and one of them was for an electrical engineer. It closed with a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt that I hadn't heard before, and it really struck a cord with me.

 

"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing" - Theodore Roosevelt

 

After replying to the email and expressing interest in deploying, I received a phone call from Mark Hoague, the chief of engineering for AED at the time. He explained the engineering group at AED HQ in Kabul was without an EE, and they were falling behind on their design reviews as a result.

 

After talking it over with my wife, I decided to volunteer for a six-month assignment. It was a tough decision (I'm not a particularly brave person), and Fort Sill's resident engineer, Rick West, didn't want me to leave as they had a full plate themselves and my 6-month deployment wasn't going to be over until after the end of FY08's year-end crunch. Despite his office's own need, Rick agreed to let me deploy when I explained what I'd learned about the situation in AED.

 

By the time I arrived at AED on May third, Mark Hoague had already redeployed so I never got to meet him, but the situation I found was as he had described. The engineering group had been without an EE for a couple of months, and there were over 40 design submittals for major projects (most in the $10M to $70M range) waiting for an electrical review. Several were over five weeks beyond their suspense date. So I dug in and got to work.

 

With working 12-hour days, 7 days a week, I managed to clear the backlog by the middle of June. Shortly after that, another EE arrived from the Far East District and working together, we've been able to meet all our suspense dates since then.

 

The work here is extremely fast paced and challenging, but also very rewarding. As someone who had never been out of our country before (except for a short work assignment across the border in Toronto, Canada), it has been a life altering experience — one that I would definitely recommend.

 

                                Victor Sears

 

COL Kurka pins the Civilian Combat Service Pin on Victor Sears, Fort Sill Resident Office electrical engineer deployed to Afghanistan.

Qalaa House.