WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Jan. 20, 2015) -- For the last 31 years, Shirley Bryant-Harper has been working in the Pentagon's office of the G-4 (Logistics), in the division which has the biggest impact on a Soldier's clothing and equipment.
Bryant-Harper actually began serving as an Army civilian in 1973, as an intern at Red River Army Depot in Texas, beginning her career soon after finishing her bachelor's degree in just three years at Prairie View A&M University.
After Red River Depot, she moved up to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where she became an Army Materiel Command intern, learning how to track and field electronic communications items. There she spent the next 10 years moving up from a GS-5 to a GS-12.
In her last year at Fort Monmouth, her supervisor asked her to apply for admission to the 19-week logistics executive development course at Fort Lee, Virginia… "I didn't want to apply for it, but my general actually directed that I apply," she recalled.
When she finished the course, she was offered higher-grade positions at both AMC and the Army G-4. She chose the latter and continued to move up in responsibilities, while also becoming the institutional memory of most everything officer and enlisted Soldiers have worn since 1984.
"I chose to come here because the job dealt directly with Soldiers, and I just felt that would be something I would always enjoy," she said, noting that after three years of dealing with the budget mostly, she found herself promoted again and supervising the entire group of people working the clothing bag items area.
One of the biggest changes and most memorable experiences happened around 1984 when the Army was changing the entire look of Soldiers in battle rattle and it started with the helmet.
"One of the items we had to work with was the M1 steel pot, the old World War II through Vietnam helmet which Soldiers could boil water and wash up in," she said. Weighing in at three pounds, the M1 was heavy and hot. Aside from serving as a noggin protector, wash basin and impromptu entrenching tool, it could even serve as a hammer to pound tent stakes into tough ground.
The new helmet Bryant-Harper was working was actually a two-piece system known as the Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops or PASGT. PASGT not only refers to the Kevlar helmet, which resembled that worn by the German Army during both World Wars, it also included the Kevlar rest.
She remembered one Soldier who would write her every month without fail asking her to not introduce the PASGT… "He just didn't feel comfortable with it… 'why can't you guys do something else,'" he asked. "He actually came to the Pentagon to meet me and have lunch and told me he didn't want to change anything… that old steel pot worked for him and had all the years he'd been in the Army.
"During our conversation, I mentioned to him that these changes were all about progress… we wanted to introduce items and modernize the Army based on technology that would protect our Soldiers, which he did understand," she said. "He sent me one more letter to tell me he had seen Soldiers at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and had a change of heart… saying the helmet wasn't as bad as he thought… and in fact, he liked it… never heard from him again."
The Army has since moved from the PASGT to the Advanced Combat Helmet and in the fall of 2013 began introducing the lightweight polyethylene Enhanced Combat Helmet, which provides a higher degree of protection than Kevlar and Twaron.
One uniform item she worked for more than a few years was the introduction of the black beret for wear by most Soldiers. Normally anything that goes into clothing items entails coordinating with Training and Doctrine Command, Program Executive Office Soldier and the Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Massachusetts, to conduct queries and surveys to see what's required and what Soldiers actually want to change.
While the black beret went through Special Operations Forces for comment and test, it didn't go beyond for more testing and coordination.
"Instead, we were instructed by senior leadership to just introduce it and make it part of the OCIE, issue two to every Soldier as an organizational item, until we brought it in later to the clothing bag," Bryant-Harper recalled. "Someone said they wanted the beret and to have it done by the Army birthday. Today, Soldiers are issued only one beret."
For the last several years Bryant-Harper has managed a budget totaling about $380 million per year, to take care of 1.2 million Soldiers across the active force, the Army Reserve and National Guard.
When asked what has driven her for the last 31 years, she paused and said… "The Soldier… taking care of what equipment they need to do their jobs.
"Over the years I've seen tremendous input from senior leadership and Soldiers at every level and in every aspect," she continued. "We get comments from Soldiers in the field, here in the Pentagon -- everybody has an opinion on clothing and once they give us theirs, we have to sort out what is best.
"They will write in what they want; they will call; they will send in emails with recommendations, and it's all up to us in G-4 and PEO Soldier to work out the dynamics and determine what is best for the Soldier," she said.
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