|
Blackanthem Military News
|
Last Updated:
Feb 9, 2012 - 5:06:14 PM |
|
|
WWII dancehall goes from big band to broadband to prepare units for Iraq missions
By Sgt. 1st Class Gail Braymen, Division West Public Affairs
May 12, 2010 - 9:48:17 AM
|
Email this article
Printer friendly page
|
Blackanthem Military News
 |
| Soldiers run culminating training event operations in a World War II-era dancehall that First Army Division West converted into a battle simulation center at North Fort Hood, Texas. Repurposing the old building saves Army National Guard and Reserve units undergoing post-mobilization training thousands of hours of being bused to and from the main post area over the course of a typical two-week exercise. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Gail Braymen, Division West Public Affairs |
FORT HOOD, Texas - In the 1940s, when Fort Hood was still just a camp and gas for your Studebaker cost less than a quarter a gallon, the square-sided, high-raftered building beside Texas State Highway 36 likely hosted thousands of spit-shined GIs and patriotic young Texas belles swinging to big band tunes on the polished wood dance floor.
A few years later (it is rumored), "The King" himself performed on the building's modest stage. Surely even the twin wood staircases leading to the second-level promenade were packed with delirious, bobby-socked Elvis fans that night.
Several decades later, though, Camp Hood is a great big, grown-up fort, gas for your compact hybrid costs almost three dollars a gallon, and GIs have practical, un-shiny footwear (what would Elvis sing now - "Don't Step On My Tan Suede Boots"?). In the old dancehall, the steps of the twin staircases are worn and creaky. The dance floor is scuffed and dusty. But from the high rafters hangs an ingeniously engineered cable sling supporting three multimedia projectors. On the dance floor, neat lines of tables hold scores of sleek laptops. Behind the corner bar, where light once glinted from rows of bottles, rows of tiny green lights blink busily from droning stacks of computer servers.
It's broadband, not big band, that rocks the dancehall now. The "Boondocks" building, as it's called now, has been reborn as a 21st century, state-of-the-art virtual exercise simulation center, and its dance card is full helping train Army National Guard and Reserve units for deployments.
Units coming through Fort Hood for post-mobilization training conducted by First Army Division West eat, sleep and train for several weeks exclusively at North Fort Hood. But when it came time for their culminating training event, they had to be transported to a battle simulation center in the main post area.
Converting the Boondocks into a battle simulation center at North Fort Hood saves Soldiers a 90-minute bus ride every day, said Lt. Col. John Pugliese, Division West's information office chief. Over the course of a 14-day exercise with nearly 550 people, "they save roughly 11,400 man-hours," he said.
Two units currently training for missions in Iraq contributed to the Boondocks makeover: the 103rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, an Army Reserve unit from Des Moines, Iowa, and the 224th Sustainment Brigade, a California Army National Guard unit headquarted in Long Beach, Calif. Computer experts from both units, along with staff from Division West headquarters and the division's 120th Infantry Brigade, spent about two weeks setting up and testing a couple hundred computers and servers, Pugliese said. Generators had to be brought in to meet the power requirements, but future plans call for upgrading the building's power supply.
"When you're working with mobilizing units, they're on a very strict timeline," Pugliese said. "Unlike an active-duty unit that's doing an exercise, these guys also have to worry about their (Soldier Readiness Processing) and the other tasks required for deployment. So they have a very big balancing act."
Before the CTE could begin earlier this month, technicians validated enough bandwidth was running from South Fort Hood to North Fort Hood to meet training requirements.
"The challenge was to provide all the services the staff is normally used to getting - their e-mail, their "real" secret Internet, plus the exercise network," said Maj. Peter Schmidt, information office deputy chief for the 103rd. "It wasn't just an exercise that had to succeed, it was the real-time collaboration we're doing with (the unit already in) theater, so when we replace them in the future, we're ready to go."
Soldiers used nearly a mile and a half of cable to connect all the computer equipment throughout the building, Schmidt said.
"We placed it as safely as we can so people aren't tripping on it," he said, adding that Soldiers are running CTE operations 24 hours a day and "everything is a high-traffic area here."
Just getting ready for the CTE to start was the culminating event for the information office staff, Schmidt said. While his Soldiers are extremely skilled, he said, they had never before done anything of this scale, plus they were setting up new gear just fielded to the unit last year. "If we could pull this off, this could prove that we could truly be expeditionary with our communications."
They pulled it off. During the exercise, scheduled to wrap up this week, Soldiers in the 103rd and 224th in the Boondocks at North Fort Hood are communicating with their counterparts in the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, N.C., and the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo., and with battle command training program managers at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
"We feel like we passed the test to prove we can be expeditionary and go overseas anywhere and do our mission," Schmidt said.
The old dancehall, once a hub for lighthearted entertainment for Soldiers before they deployed to war, now plays a critical role in actually training Soldiers for deployments.
"It's kind of a visual representation of the transformation that the Army's going through," said 224th commander, Col. Lisa Costanza, of the dancehall's new capabilities. "The reality is, it's an old building that has been asked to do a lot. We've adapted, we've overcome, and … Soldiers are getting great, first-rate, state-of-the-art training here at this facility."
ADDITIONAL PHOTOS:
 |
| First Army Division West converted this World War II-era dancehall - where Elvis is rumored to have once performed - into a battle simulation center at North Fort Hood, Texas. Soldiers used nearly a mile and a half of cable to network about two hundred computers and servers throughout the building. The old bar, shown at the right of the original wood dance floor, now houses computer servers that give units Internet access and the ability to communicate with exercise partners in North Carolina, Colorado and Kansas. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Gail Braymen, Division West Public Affairs |
|
 |
| Soldiers run culminating training event operations in a World War II-era dancehall that First Army Division West converted into a battle simulation center at North Fort Hood, Texas. Repurposing the old building saves Army National Guard and Reserve units undergoing post-mobilization training thousands of hours of being bused to and from the main post area over the course of a typical two-week exercise. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Gail Braymen, Division West Public Affairs |
|
Comments
NO Soliciting.
Comments with links to websites or soliciting services will be removed.
Please read our Terms of use for more information.
|
Top of Page
|
|
|
|
