LIVORNO, Italy – They say everything is bigger in Texas. When Federica Auteri visited Texas to see her father’s family, she was astounded by how big everything was. That was also true for the other places she visited while in the U.S. like Hollywood, Vegas and especially the Grand Canyon.
“Everything was so big, and oh my God the Grand Canyon was so beautiful. But still, I prefer to live in Italy because it’s easier here. Here, everything is small and simple. There, everything is so big and complicated,” said the U.S. Army Italian host nation employee with Army Field Support Battalion-Africa in Livorno.
Auteri has been working and supporting Army Soldiers and Families in the Livorno area for 25 years. She started out at the Burger Bar on Camp Darby. She also worked parttime at Burger King and parttime at the Livorno Elementary Middle School lunchroom. And for almost 20 years she worked for the Exchange, first at the shoppette for a couple of years and then at the main store for more than 17 years.
But for the last four years, the supply clerk at AFSBn-Africa has been working at the Army Prepositioned Stocks-2 worksite at Leghorn Army Depot. There she said she works in the directorate of supply maintaining the DOS hand receipt, which is over 20 pages and includes thousands of line items.
She also is the key control custodian for all the DOS warehouses, and she handles the turn-in of lifecycle replacement items like automation equipment and computer systems. Auteri ensures all the DOS employees are sub-hand receipted all the items in their possession, and she assists everyone and anyone at the site, she said, however she can.
“For example, late yesterday afternoon a trunk carrying two vehicles arrived at about 5:30 p.m. Most everyone had already gone home, but the movement team and I met up with the delivery truck and driver and got it unloaded. I think I was the only one from DOS who was part of that late-afternoon mission,” said Auteri.
“I didn’t mind staying late, though. I don’t care about how many hours I need to work. Everything I’m asked to do I try my best to do it all the time. I love my job. I love everything about it, and I think I have the best bosses ever,” she said.
Auteri was born in Mantova, Italy, and raised in Pisa, just a 30-minute drive from Leghorn Army Depot. The 48-year-old mother of two adult sons and a 20-year-old daughter said she has always enjoyed working on the U.S. Army installations in Livorno and doing her part supporting Soldiers and their Families.
Whether that’s at the Burger Bar, Burger King, school or the Post Exchange where she worked a total of about 22 years, or now at AFSBn-Africa supporting the APS-2 mission, Auteri said she likes being a part of the greater community and the mission.
Her daughter is now part of the mission and the community, too, Auteri said. About three months ago her daughter, Golisano Maddalena, started working at AFSBn-Africa. Maddalena is also a supply clerk, like her mom, and she works at the battalion headquarters.
AFSBn-Africa is one of four battalions under the command and control of the 405th Army Field Support Brigade. AFSBn-Africa is charged with receiving, maintaining, and storing Army Prepositioned Stocks-2 at Leghorn Army Depot, which includes 16 warehouses with 749,000 square feet of humidity-controlled storage space plus four maintenance facilities as well as 1.5 million square feet of outside storage.
The 405th AFSB is assigned to U.S. Army Sustainment Command and headquartered in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The brigade provides materiel enterprise support to U.S. forces throughout Europe and Africa – providing theater sustainment logistics; synchronizing acquisition, logistics and technology; and leveraging the U.S. Army Materiel Command 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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