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BRIEF STOPOVER IN KITZINGEN HELPS CORPS UNITS GUARANTEE VEHICLES DEPLOY WITHOUT WORRY

V Corps Release

Release Date: 1/28/2004

By Larry Reilly 417th Base Support Battalion Public Affairs Office

KITZINGEN, Germany -- Over the past two weeks, hundreds of tactical vehicles belonging to units in V Corps' 1st Infantry Division were driven on then off Harvey Barracks here every day. But it was the vehicles' brief stop in Kitzingen that provided the checks and balances needed to ensure the vehicles would make it to their final destination: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"More than 2,600 vehicles were processed through the Installation Staging Area, or ISA, on Harvey Barracks, and each one of the vehicles went through an elaborate inspection process to ensure it was ready to be deployed to Iraq," said Capt. Darrell Otto of the 417th Base Support Battalion, officer in charge of the ISA operations.

The process to send a vehicle to Iraq is similar to the one Soldiers go through to ship their privately owned vehicles to Germany, just a little more elaborate.

"When it comes to the shipping of tactical vehicles it can literally come down to pounds and inches," Otto said.

The vehicles leaving Kitzingen were either loaded on train cars at the Harvey Barracks railhead or taken to a barge. Either way, the exact weight and measurements of each vehicle was important.

But size and weight weren't the only things checked before a vehicle was cleared through the ISA. Things such as the vehicle's safety and environmental "readiness" were also checked.

"At our station, we checked the vehicles from top to bottom to ensure the vehicles were clean, didn't have any ... leaks or any other major discrepancies," said Sgt. Nobel King of V Corps' Company C, 6th Battalion, 52nd Air Defense Artillery from Ansbach, Germany. King was one of many Soldiers from other corps units tasked to augment Otto's team of 417th Base Support Battalion Soldiers.

"Each vehicle was put through an five-station process and at each station the vehicle had to go through a laundry list of items that had to be checked and receive a go before the vehicle would be able to move on to the next station," Otto said.