NEWSSeptember 10, 2015 A3www.FortHoodSentinel.com

SGT. THOMAS JAMES REYES1st Cavalry Division

Sgt. Thomas James Reyes, 28, died Sept. 7 from injuries sustained from a motorcycle accident in Killeen.

Reyes, whose home of record is Bronx, New York, entered active-duty military service in April 2007 as a combat engineer. He was assigned to 3rd Combat Engineer Company, Regimental Engineer Squadron, 3rd Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, since February.

Reyes deployed in support of Afghanistan operations from December 2008 to Decem-ber 2009, from March 2011 to March 2012 and from June 2014 to February 2015.

Reyes’s awards and decorations include the four Army Commendation Medals, Army Achievement Medal, two Army Good Con-duct Medals, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal with campaign star, Global War on Terrorism Expedition-ary Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Overseas Service Ribbon, Army Service Ribbon and the NATO Medal.

Circumstances surrounding the accident are under investigation.

BY SGT. ALON HUMPHREY1st Cav. Div. Sust. Bde.. Public Affairs

Soldiers from Detachment B, 15th Financial Manage-ment Support Unit, 1st Cavalry Division Sustainment Brigade, conducted a post-deployment travel voucher brief to approxi-mately 500 redeploying Sol-diers of the 4th Battalion, 5th Air Defense Artillery Regiment “Renegades.”

The brief was held at 4-5 ADA Regt. headquarters on Fort

Hood from Aug. 26-29. Capt. Gabriel Young, com-

mander of 15th FMSU, explained that the redeploying battalion is part of the 69th Air Defense Artillery Brigade – a unit outside of the 1st Cav. Div., but that the FMSU had been requested to assist with the briefing.

Despite being from a different unit, he said that he knew his Soldiers were more than capable of handling their financial needs.

“It’s exciting to be able to

support not just your unit but any unit on Fort Hood,” Young said. “And to be the subject matter experts makes you feel like you’re doing your part to help out the Fort Hood community.”

Capt. Matthew Kuwamoto, the assistant S-3 for 4-5 ADA Regt. explained that the unit was facing a time crunch and had concerns about being able to get all the redeploying Soldiers through the process in a timely manner.

“We were worried about get-ting back and Soldiers getting things done online and not hav-ing all the resources for about 500 Soldiers to get on a comput-er within our small reintegration window before going on block leave,” he said.

Fortunately, Young and the troopers from the 15th FMSU were able to assist the Renegades in their redeployment, ensuring that they were able to complete their vouchers and meet their timeline before block leave.

Cav finance troopers assist ADA with redeployment

Sgt. Robert Muniz, 15th FMSU, 1st Cav. Div. Sust. Bde., briefs redeploy-ing Soldiers from the 4-5 ADA Regt., 69th ADA Bde. step-by-step how to fill each line correctly on their travel vouchers to ensure the Soldiers get paid on time with little to no errors.

Spc. Oyewale Silas (left), 15th FMSU, 1st Cav. Div. Sust. Bde., helps a redeploying Soldier from the 4-5 ADA Bde. with the paperwork to com-plete his travel voucher Aug. 26. The FMSU was asked to assist the bat-talion with the financial portion of their redeployment.

Photos by Sgt. Adam Erlewein, 1st Cav. Div. Sust. Bde. Public Affairs

BY PATRICK BUFFETTUSAG Fort Lee

FORT LEE, Va. — Six Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams from across the Army will rally at Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, Sept. 14-18 for an Ordnance School-sponsored EOD Team of the Year competition. The championship event will test their technical and tacti-cal knowledge and abilities to perform important war-fighting munitions handling and disposal functions under challenging conditions, noted Capt. Robert Hruska, one of the organiz-ers and the TRADOC Capabilities Manager-EOD Concepts and Doctrine division chief.

“The event also brings recognition to the Army’s EOD community,” he added. “There is no doubt about the importance of their role in the ongo-ing fight against global terrorism. This competition is an opportunity to rec-ognize the professionals who often put themselves in harm’s way to protect others, and it clarifies a lot of Hol-lywood myths like those portrayed in movies.”

The field of competitors includes five active duty teams and one from the Army National Guard. Represented organizations include the 52nd Ord-nance Group, Fort Campbell, Ken-tucky; the 71st Ordnance Group, Fort Carson, Colorado; the 48th Chemical Brigade, Fort Hood; as well as U.S. Army Europe and U.S. Army Pacific. The ARNG team is from the 111th Ordnance Group, Opelika, Alabama.

Brigade and command qualifying events took place earlier this year to select the best candidates for the annual Army-level meet. There are more than 60 EOD units across the force, both active and National Guard.

According to Sgt. 1st Class James Van Elsacker, another event organizer and the TCM-EOD Concepts and Doctrine Division noncommissioned officer in charge, the team-of-year test-ing scenarios will measure the “whole individual Soldier,” as well as their

abilities to successfully perform as a team. In addition to tasks that chal-lenge their EOD skills – in one event last year they had to respond to an incident in which an artillery round was stuck in the barrel of an artillery piece – the competitors will complete an Army Physical Fitness Test and will encounter event scenarios that may require rendering medical assistance, reacting to enemy activity or perform-ing other combat-related functions.

“Teams won’t know the specific details of what we’re going to ask them to do until they walk up to the sta-tion to begin the task,” Van Elsacker explained. “That keeps the competition fair and allows us to assess their on-the-spot planning and leadership skills. In the EOD field, innovation comes into play a lot. There are no textbook solutions to some of the things these Soldiers encounter downrange.”

The element of surprise also makes the annual EOD event interesting to manage, both Van Elsacker and Hrus-ka agreed. Completing some of the tasks requires a combination of book smarts – the basics of what they were taught in the classroom – and a bit of “out-of-the-box” thinking if there is a “curveball” like an improvised explo-sive device.

“Sometimes, it’s a learning opportu-nity for us as well,” Hruska said. “They could certainly bring things to the competition we haven’t seen before, and we can take that back to our course developers for possible implementation into our training programs. That’s a win for Ordnance and EOD in gen-eral.”

The top-placing EOD teams will be announced on Sept. 18 during a closing ceremony also at A.P Hill. The winning team will receive a variety of prizes donated by nonprofits and vet-erans support organizations, as well as bragging rights until next year’s com-petition. A three-Soldier team from the 706th Ordnance Company, Scho-field Barracks, Hawaii, won last year’s competition.

Ordnance School event to test skills of top EOD teams

During the 2014 EOD Team of the Year competition at Fort A.P. Hill, Va., Soldiers from the 732nd EOD Co., 52nd Ord. Group, Fort Campbell, Ky., secure an inert bomb.

Courtesy photo

BY STAFF SGT. JOHN HEALY2nd BCT, 1st Cav. Div. Public Affairs

POCHEON, South Korea — The Soldiers of Battery B, 3rd Battal-ion, 16th Field Artillery Regiment “Rolling Thunder,” 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Divi-sion, have spent the past month parked on top of firing point 180, a small, fenced in patch of dirt located directly beside Pocheon, a rural town in South Korea.

Three M109A6 Paladins, a mas-sive self-propelled howitzer firing 155mm shells, sit on concrete pads stationed across the fire point. Their turrets point north toward Rodriguez Range, where the 1st Battalion, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd BCT, is completing their gun-nery cycle on the peninsula.

The cannon crews spend most of their time trying to stay out of the sun or picking at field rations.

Sgt. Bernard Poole, a cannon crew chief, half-listens to his Sol-diers making jokes while radio chatter fills in the background. All conversation stops when they hear one phrase come in on the wire.

Poole doesn’t have to speak; his Soldiers already know what to do. Each crew member has a specific task and purpose, their efforts syn-chronized to near perfection.

It’s the speed that makes artillery fire so deadly, Poole said. Within seconds, Poole and his team can annihilate a hillside from up to 15 miles away. It’s also one of their favorite things to brag about.

“When they send the mission down, fire when ready, it’s like a big competition for who can get the rounds out the fastest,” said Sgt. Bernard Pool with Btry. B, 3-16 FA.

“You can associate certain things that happen in the gun,” Poole

said. “Like if the number one man can’t get the primer out of the belt fast enough, that’s two seconds. The time it’s taking to read back data to the driver, that’s two sec-onds. Waiting on the tube to travel from load to high angle is two seconds.”

Poole’s reason for choosing field artillery was largely influenced by his time spent as a football coach before joining the Army.

“They told me it was a team sport, and I said, that’s the job for me,” Poole said. “It’s all fun com-petition. You push the rest of the crew to be better.”

Poole’s gunner is Spc. Leonard Garcia and the second most senior of the crew. His job is to verify tar-geting data and check the fuse on each round before it fires. Garcia also finds the most rewarding part of the job to be working with his fellow crewmembers.

“I’ve been shooting artillery my whole career,” Garcia said. “I love it; the camaraderie within the

section, and how close we get. We have such a close bond.”

The crew’s loader, Spc. Antoine Sheppard, is the youngest. His job is to prepare the shells to fire. Each round weighs more than 95 pounds and must be hand loaded into the breech of the weapon.

Sheppard also gets to pull the ripcord that fires the Paladin, an experience that Sheppard finds exhilarating.

“Once you actually get hands on rounds and you actually shoot, I don’t know, I get this chill going through my body,” Sheppard said. “My wife complains because it’s all I talk about now.”

Now that 1-9’s gunnery cycle has concluded, the Soldiers of Bravo Battery may return to their barracks on Camp Casey for a much-needed break, but not for long. Sgt. Poole is already planning their next training exercise.

After all, as Garcia said: “This is not garrison artillery, this is field artillery.”

Artillerymen put steel on target

Spc. Antoine Sheppard, currently serving with Btry. B, 3-16 FA Regt., 2nd BCT, 1st Cav. Div., pulls the ripcord inside his teams M109A6 Paladin self propelled howitzer, firing a 155mm explosive artillery shell at a high angle toward Rodriguez Range, South Korea, from a firing point three miles away, Aug. 14.

An M109A6 Paladin manned by the Soldiers of Btry. B, 3-16 FA Regt., 2nd BCT, 1st Cav. Div., fires an artillery shell at a high angle toward Rodriguez Range from a firing point three miles away in Pocheon, South Korea, Aug. 14.

Photos by Staff Sgt. John Healy, 2nd BCT, 1st Cav. Div. Public Affairs