America's North Shore Journal

Pfc. Shaquille Fields with Com­pany A, 307^th Brigade Sup­port Bat­tal­ion, 1^st Brigade, 82^nd Air­borne Divi­sion (Advise and Assist Brigade), fills a water tower con­structed by Sgt. 1^st Class Mark Ander­son, non-commissioned offi­cer in charge of sup­ply for Com­pany D, 1^st Bat­tal­ion, 504^th Para­chute Infantry Reg­i­ment, and his sol­diers at Con­tin­gency Oper­at­ing Site Ubaydi, Iraq, Dec. 11, 2009. Unlike many larger posts in Iraq, Ubaydi's sus­tain­ment activ­i­ties are all per­formed by sol­diers. Photo by Spc. Mike MacLeod

You can tell by his hands the sergeant is not a gym rat. His hands are work­ing­man hands, not com­pact, mus­cu­lar bar­bell clamps, but rather, hands that strip, ply and twist; hands that smooth, hands that hammer.

Sgt. 1^st Class Mark Ander­son, non-commissioned offi­cer in charge of sup­ply for Com­pany D, 1^st Bat­tal­ion, 504^th Para­chute Infantry Reg­i­ment, 1^st Brigade, 82^nd Air­borne Divi­sion (Advise and Assist Brigade), uses his car­pen­ter skills to enhance the liv­ing con­di­tions at Con­tin­gency Oper­at­ing Site Ubaydi, Iraq, Dec. 5, 2009. Orig­i­nally from south­ern Louisiana, Ander­son grew up on a farm and worked con­struc­tion for many years before join­ing the Army. Photo by Spc. Mike MacLeod

Infor­mally known by a few as "Uncle Andy," Sgt. 1^st Class Mark Ander­son is the non-commissioned officer-in-charge of sup­ply for Com­pany D, 1^st Bat­tal­ion, 504^th Para­chute Infantry Reg­i­ment, 1^st Brigade, 82^nd Air­borne Divi­sion (Advise and Assist Brigade), sta­tioned at Con­tin­gency Oper­at­ing Site Ubaydi, Iraq. The com­pany of para­troop­ers sup­ports a host of Iraqi secu­rity force "enablers" that include mil­i­tary tran­si­tion teams, police pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion teams, provin­cial recon­struc­tion teams, bor­der tran­si­tion teams, port of entry teams and others.

Six pla­toons (the company's four infantry pla­toons plus ele­ments of Head­quar­ters and Head­quar­ters Com­pany and a mor­tar pla­toon) rotate in roles of camp secu­rity, quick reac­tion force, secu­rity details for travel off the post, and part­nered oper­a­tions with the Iraqi depart­ment of bor­der enforce­ment. Approx­i­mately 100 para­troop­ers pro­vide all the sus­tain­ment func­tions for the other 400 enablers that live there.

Ander­son belongs to that breed of Amer­i­can farm boys that can do any­thing with almost noth­ing, and whose influ­ence makes oth­ers want to grab shovel and ham­mer and pitch in to get done what needs doing. Time now, Amer­i­can forces in Iraq almost exclu­sively live on large bases where Ugan­dans pro­vide secu­rity, laun­dry and food ser­vice is pro­vided by con­trac­tors, and any nail need dri­ving gets work-ordered out like Chi­nese food. Not at COS Ubaydi. Here, Army cooks still cook, sus­tain­ment troops pro­vide water, fuel and clean laun­dry, and sol­diers man the machine guns that guard the perime­ter. What­ever needs build­ing gets a visit from Uncle Andy and his crew of nail-bending carpenters.

"We built a new san­i­ta­tion cen­ter to fix a prob­lem where water was flow­ing into the tent where they washed dishes," said Ander­son. "We also built a water tower, installed doors, made walls and com­pleted numer­ous small repair projects."

Ander­son, who turned 50 in early Decem­ber 2009, most often works with Sgt. Tan­ner Packer of Flamingo Heights, Calif., and Spc. Jason Jef­fers of Tal­lapoosa, Ga. Ander­son is from Natchi­toches, La. Together, they have reshaped a base that had gone unim­proved for years by pre­vi­ous units.

"We all sweat together. We all 'suck' together. Every­where I've deployed with this bat­tal­ion, we have improved it," said Staff Sgt. Aaron Dyer, who works in the company's oper­a­tions cen­ter. "It's a fam­ily. I haven't seen any bat­tal­ion like it."

Ander­son and com­pany pro­vided walls for enlisted bar­racks that were pre­vi­ously just earth-filled Hesco bar­ri­ers hold­ing up roofs, and now, every­one on the post has their own liv­ing space.

Accord­ing to the COS assis­tant "mayor," Sgt. Matthew Colello, sol­diers col­lect their own garbage, dis­trib­ute water and main­tain their show­ers just as they did in the early days of Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom, and just as they are likely to do when they are deployed to Afghanistan in the future.

Addi­tion­ally, more than 8,000 tons of gravel were hauled in and spread by local con­trac­tors, sta­bi­liz­ing the loose, dusty soil and pre­vent­ing it from turn­ing into con­strict­ing mud when it rains. Finally, the heli­copter land­ing zone was treated with a lac­quer to fur­ther reduce the amount of air­borne particulates.

All of these improve­ments were made in just a mat­ter of weeks, said Colello.

Ander­son just fin­ished build­ing 30 tar­get stands for the 28^th Brigade, 7^th Iraqi Army Divi­sion, based in Hamsa. Next, he and his crew will con­struct a new laun­dry facil­ity so that the laun­dry crew doesn't have to work in the open dur­ing inclement weather.

The old salts in the com­pany remem­ber the early days in Iraq when they lived out of tents or in the dirt under the stars. Para­troop­ers are tough, but not stu­pid. For Anderson's birth­day, they didn't give him a gold watch. They gave him a tool belt.

DVIDS
Story by Spc. Mike MacLeod