by Spc. Michael Vanpool101st Sustainment Brigade

The way the 129th Combat Sustainment Support Battal-ion, 101st Sustainment Bri-gade was a year ago would be unrecognizable today. The battalion staff was at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan, while their companies were spread throughout Afghani-stan, Iraq and Fort Campbell.

Today, most “Drive the Wedge” units are back together here and are looking up to new leadership.

Lieutenant Col. Thomas Gaston Jr. recently took com-mand of the 129th CSSB and is looking forward to bringing the “Drive the Wedge” bat-talion together here at Fort Campbell.

“The CSSBs never deploy as a whole, the units deploy as bits and pieces,” Gaston said. “They’ve all been out, so we’re going to get everyone on the same sheet of music, and how to do that is just start with the basic issues.”

Several of the eight com-panies of the 129th returned from deployments this past fall, which is also when the Sustainment Brigade’s 106th Transportation Battalion deactivated. The units of the transportation battalion now fall under the 129th.

“It’s kind of a great time for me to bring change and all the units are coming back from Afghanistan,” Gaston said. “They’re all coming back from rotations, and they’re all being transferred from the 106th to here, so it’s a fresh start for everyone.”

As the battalion waits for two more units to return to Fort Campbell from Opera-tion Enduring Freedom, Gaston wants to see his Sol-diers get back to the basics.

“We go out, redeploy, reset, then we’re out the door again,” he said, “and we kind of lose touch with what we should be focusing

on in garrison.”“Good order and disci-

pline and focus on the garri-son side,” Gaston said, “that includes everything to get you to go to war.”

The garrison Soldier life has become a stranger to most young offi cers and enlisted, many of whom are in a revolving door of deploy-ments. The new 129th com-mander is pushing his team towards getting back on track professionally and with their Family lives.

“Our Soldiers when it comes to schools and staying within the time frames they should be in,” he said. “The continued deployments have seen us get away from that.”

Before the current con-tingency operations started more than 10 years ago, Gaston was the commander of a maintenance company. He recalled the basics he instilled in his Soldiers to pre-pare them for any confl ict.

“Our whole focus to go to war was all the way down to the individual Soldier,” he said. “It came to training cal-endars and accountability of personnel and equipment. You could always identify a person with a piece of equip-ment.

“Whereas right now, you could ask any Soldier, ‘Where’s your truck at?’ and he probably doesn’t even have one assigned to him.”

He worked to prepare his company for any confl ict that could rise up overnight, the same direction he’s taking the 129th now.

The companies of the 129th have to be prepared for anything; the transporta-tion, maintenance and quar-termaster units are in high demand to resupply and repair.

“I think that instilling all those standards and getting those building blocks from the bottom up we’ll be a little better off.”

NEWS

‘Drive the Wedge’ takes new direction

PHOTO BY SPC. MICHAEL VANPOOL | 101ST SUST. BDE

New website helps Army civilians trainby Julia BobickArmy G-3/5/7 Civilian Training and Leader Development Division

To improve access to information and increase participation in Army civil-ian training and leader development opportunities, the Army G-3/5/7 Training Directorate’s Civilian Train-ing and Leader Development Division launched a one-stop website consolidating infor-mation about career program occupational and functional training, competitive pro-fessional development and leader development oppor-tunities..

The site, www.civilian-training.army.mil, serves as an integrated resource for civilian employees, supervi-sors and Army leaders inter-ested in learning more about the training and opportuni-ties available to the Army Civilian Corps. Army civilians and supervisors have in the past had to visit several dif-ferent sites to fi nd out about mandatory training and professional development opportunities.

“We wanted to provide civilians and supervisors a comprehensive site to help them more easily navigate the myriad opportunities in Army Civilian training and leader development,”

said Vicki Brown, Chief of the Civilian Training and Leader Development Divi-sion. “It’s our goal to ensure all civilians know about the available training – often at little or no cost to their units – and take advantage of the training that fi ts into their individual career goals and supports their organization outcomes.”

The new website includes course descriptions, prereq-uisites and registration links for Army Civilian Education System courses, Supervi-sor Development Course requirements, Competitive Professional Development and Academic Degree Train-ing, advanced opportunities like Senior Service College, Army Congressional Fel-lowship Program and the Defense Senior Leadership Development Program, as well as career manage-ment tools like Army Career Tracker.

The Civilian Training and Leader Development Cata-log (when fully deployed on the site) will be the offi cial resource for information on centrally managed Civilian Training, Professional and Leader Development training opportunities, replacing the information currently found in the Army Civilian Training, Education and Development System (ACTEDS) catalog.

PHO PHOTO BTO BY SPY SPC MC. MICHAICHAEL VEL VANPOANPOOOL |OL |O 101 101ST SST SSUSTUST.S BDE BDELieutenant Colonel Thomas Gaston Jr. introduces himself to the Soldiers of the 129th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 101st Sustainment Brigade, during a battalion-wide safety brief, Jan. 19. Gaston recently took command of the 129th “Drive the Wedge.”

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