JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. – Bruce Bowlan, warehouse supervisor at Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s Western Region Training Support Center, has been on and off the base since 1999, serving first as a Soldier and then, post-retirement, as a Department of the Army civilian.
“I’ve been in all the Stryker brigades here,” he said. “I just kept coming back. I loved it here.”
Bowlan’s hard work at JBLM has paid off. It led to his recent selection as the U.S. Army’s Installation Management Command’s Department of Readiness Employee of the Quarter for the second quarter of fiscal 2025. Previously, he earned JBLM’s Supervisor of the Year award for 2024. And it all came down to his work helping fellow Stryker teammates.
Stryker combat vehicles first arrived on JBLM on June 6, 2002. Bowlan retired from the Army in 2015 as a first sergeant from JBLM’s 2nd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division and started working as a JBLM civilian in 2017 as a material handler, working and testing gear. In 2019, he was selected for his current supervisory role at the WRTSC, which supports service members in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.
“I'm here to support the service members, ensure that they can get the best training aids and MILES (Multi-Integrated Laser Engagement System) gear that they can possibly get to be able to train in the field to replicate the sounds and feel (of) the battlefield, and we go out there with them and we'll help,” Bowlan said.
Bowlan ensured that 8,470 Soldiers, and 614 combat vehicles were prepared for battle during two field training exercise events – one at JBLM’s Yakima Training Center in January 2024, and the other at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., in April 2024.
JBLM Stryker brigades use their own equipment at NTC. In 2024, new Stryker vehicles taken along didn’t include MILES gear, meaning they didn’t include anything to use to “fight the war at NTC,” said Terry Ingle, Bowlan’s supervisor and WRTSC chief.
“So, what Bruce did is he got together with his guys and came up with a workaround,” Ingle said. “What we used was Tank (Abrams) and Bradley (Vehicle) MILES gear to outfit the Strykers, and it was successful. But not only that; this is the first time that has ever been done at the National Training Center using these two variants of vehicles.”
It didn’t all go smoothly at first.
“There were some hiccups,” Ingle said. “The crews didn’t know how to do it, but with Bruce being there and his guys fumbling with it for four or five months (at JBLM), they were able to have a great, successful NTC rotation.”
To troubleshoot the systems at NTC, Bowlan and his team would drive more than 18 miles one-way in the desert heat, and they stayed an additional 3 ½ days to continue the process at leadership’s request, Ingle said.
Ingle told Bowlan he couldn’t make anyone stay, but “there was never a question about it,” Ingle said, thanks to Bowlan’s dedication to duty and “the ethos that he lives.”
“I’m a blessed man to have him on my team as a leader,” Ingle said.
To Bowlan, his IMCOM award “validates the hard work that myself and the staff do here on a daily basis, because to me, I'm not just representing myself, I'm representing the entire training support center and our training support centers within our region and, in turn, supporting our Soldiers to the best of the ability that I can. So, to me, it's not just winning it for me, it's winning it for all the employees here.”
Next, Bowlan will compete for an Army Materiel Command’s Employee of the Quarter award, Ingle said.
“I am so confident he’s gonna win,” Ingle said. “I’m already counting my eggs.”
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