ZUTENDAAL, Belgium — When the maintenance Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division began rolling into the Zutendaal Army Prepositioned Stocks-2 worksite in early March, how much support they would actually bring to the 405th Army Field Support Brigade’s APS-2 readiness mission wasn’t altogether and completely clear.
But within a few short weeks following their deployment to Belgium from their home duty station of Fort Stewart, Georgia, it was apparent to the 405th AFSB that they were bringing a lot.
Now, nearly eight months later, Bravo Company, 87th Division Sustainment Support Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division Sustainment Brigade redeploying back to Fort Stewart and leaving the APS-2 worksite and multiple other high-profile 405th AFSB missions across Europe a little better than they were before they arrived.
One thing their deployment did was show the host nation employees at the Zutendaal APS-2 worksite “the other side of the coin,” said Tiffany Mikus, the APS-2 worksite director. “They saw how a military maintenance activity functions in an essentially remote location because they didn’t have a full-blown maintenance warehouse here.”
Instead, the maintenance Soldiers from Bravo Company operated within more of an expeditionary setup with mobile lifts inside a storage warehouse and lived in a giant fest tent.
But that didn’t stop Bravo Company from getting after their work and making a difference.
“If you followed our brigade monthly scorecard, before Bravo Company got here we were on an upward trend of accumulating backlog. And right at the time they got on the ground and got set up and we started transferring work orders, that trend reversed,” said Bill Bravo, the Zutendaal APS-2 worksite maintenance chief. “And ever since, we’ve been on a downward trend, reducing every month the amount of backlog work orders that we’ve been managing.”
“Bravo Company enabled us to manage multiple operations simultaneously with ‘Assure and Deter’ and the Presidential Drawdown Authority missions and still maintain a downward trend in service backlog, which we would not have been able to do had they not been here,” said Bravo.
It’s estimated that Bravo Company’s assistance to Team Zutendaal helped reduce the site’s service backlog by a total of about 34 percent. This included over 1,630 work orders and 27,000 man hours of work.
But that isn’t all they did.
About 130 Soldiers from Bravo Company, 87th DSSB deployed to Zutendaal from Fort Stewart, initially. From there, some Soldiers were sent to Eygelshoven, Netherlands, and some to Livorno, Italy, to support the APS-2 missions at those locations. In addition, almost three dozen Bravo Company Soldiers deployed from Zutendaal to Poland to support the Presidential Drawdown Authority mission there and the Tele-maintenance and Distribution Cell-Ukraine.
“Honestly, I couldn’t be more proud of them, said Bravo Company Commander Capt. Sarah Seekins. “They have kept their spirits and morale high. They came out here, and they got to work.”
“They didn’t get into any trouble or anything like that.” said Seekins, adding that she administered zero Uniform Code of Military Justice actions during the 8-month deployment.
“It’s a great company, and I’m honored to be their company commander,” Seekins said.
Bravo Company, 87th DSSB is comprised of an automotive shop, ground support equipment shop, service and recovery shop, armament shop, communications and electronics shop, parts and supply, and a calibration team.
The Zutendaal APS-2 worksite includes 28 warehouses with about 990,000 square feet of space, plus an additional 77,000 square yards of outdoor staging, 27 maintenance bays, 12,000 square feet of hazardous material storage, and more.
The 405th AFSB is assigned to U.S. Army Sustainment Command and under the operational control of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, U.S. Army Europe and Africa. The brigade is headquartered in Kaiserslautern, Germany, and provides materiel enterprise support to U.S. Forces throughout Europe and Africa – providing theater sustainment logistics; synchronizing acquisition, logistics and technology; and leveraging U.S. Army Materiel Command’s materiel enterprise to support joint forces. For more information on the 405th AFSB, visit the official website and the official Facebook site.
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