West Virginia Company Lightens Load for Aviation Unit

[unhappycamper]

West Virginia Company Lightens Load for Aviation Unit
By Fred W. Baker III
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12, 2007 – The contributions of a West Virginia excavating company helped lighten the load -- literally -- for a deploying Army National Guard aviation unit.

When Army National Guardsman Chief Warrant Officer 3 Timothy Smith found out he was deploying, he was concerned about the distance from the command post to the flight line at Forward Operating Base Speicher, Iraq. It was nearly a mile, and with each of the four-person crew carrying 150 pounds in gear, plus weapons and ammunition, all in 135-degree-plus heat, Smith saw a problem.

“We’d be worn out before we ever left on a mission, just getting our gear out there,” said the UH-60 Black Hawk pilot with Company C, 150th Aviation, Air Assault, in Wheeling, W.Va.

After Smith talked with his wife about the problem, she went to her father, Frederick Gantt, a local businessman and former member of the West Virginia Air National Guard.

As it happens, her father is also Smith’s boss, and owner of Gantt’s Excavating and Contracting in Martinsburg, W.Va.

Gantt put heads together with a couple of fellow businessmen, and they raised more than $20,000 to purchase four Polaris Rangers, or small all-terrain vehicle-style trucks, to move equipment to and from the flight line.


Rest of article at: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=47423


uhc comment: If I understand this correctly, civilians purchased trucks for the military? :wtf: