Personal Narrative: The Fourth Infantry Division

"Hurry up! We gotta go. We are to bypass 3rd ID in Baghdad and take the northern part of Iraq."
We did this...from the south. Sustainment nightmare. Let's back up two months....
The 4th Infantry Division was given orders to pack up and prepare to deploy to the Middle East where it was believed we were going back into Iraq for the second time. This time we were stopping until we took down Saddam. The 3rd Infantry Division was already in Kuwait and would strike from the south. The 4th would come down from the north using Turkey as a staging ground. In January 2003, the Ivy Division set a record for how quickly we loaded our vehicles and containers on trains and sent our equipment to port. The Army's digital test division was eager
Rock of the Marne had been fighting for the past three weeks and had reached its limit of advance. It was now our time to shine. As a fire team leader, I was assigned to provide security for an M1070 Heavy Equipment Transport (HET) transporting 3rd Brigade Bradley Fighting Vehicles and Abrams Main Battle Tanks to the front lines. It took two days to get from Kuwait to Baghdad and another two days to get back so the HETs could pick up my brigade's equipment. After eight hours of rest, I was reunited with my platoon and we loaded our Bradleys on the trailers and I headed north again. Two days in the back of the Bradley, on the back of a HET, with nine smelly brothers. Good times. Upon arrival around Baghdad, we were told to head north to Tikrit, Saddam's home town, as fast as possible. My company eventually moved even farther north to the town of Baiji. In less than a week, a heavy armor division was scattered from Kuwait to Baiji, Iraq. We were ordered to move so far and so fast that little to no thought was given to Sustainment. We were low on fuel, ammo, food, and water. I remember my company First Sergeant calling the Platoon Sergeants for a meeting. They immediately returned to get count of MREs and water bottles. After some number crunching, we were rationed to two MREs and one bottle of water a day. One bottle of water per soldier per day in
How do we emphasize the importance of the role that each sustainment soldier plays? How many times have you gone through an MKT line and food has run out? I bet the cooks ate, though. I could call out a number of roles that sustainment plays but then I would just be bitching. When sustainment starts to lack, due to any number of reasons, it is not the sustainment soldiers that suffer. It is those soldiers on the front lines, if there is such a thing anymore, that suffer most. Let the infantry unit who is taking the fight to the enemy run out of ammo, fuel, water, or food. I never want to see that happen but it seems that we only learn through our failures. We, as American Soldiers/Airmen/Sailors/Marines, are also our biggest problem. We are almost too good for our own good. We still complete the mission despite all that we lack at the time. I hope that is not taken for granted but this attitude of "do more with less" is starting to take its toll. We are running ourselves into the ground and if it goes on for much longer there will not be anyone who will want to put the uniform once the rest of us decide to take it