Petty Officer Crabb Works To Teach National Army
Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan
There is a lot of different things that the Coalition and United States Armed Forces are involved in inside Afghanistan. One of the most welcome efforts is assisting with meal facilities and meal preparation.
There is a new Afghan National Army facility for dining that opened recently. Advisors from the United States are helping to train and assist new soldiers in the Afghan Army learn the basics about feeding large numbers of Afghan Army personnel.
Navy Petty Officer David Crabb is part of the Embedded Team from the Navy that is assisting in meal preparation training. He is part of a team that is instructing Afghanistan Soldiers on everything from hygiene to food preparation, and sanitation and food storage. There is a total of fourteen members on the Food Advisor team, and they have been involved in both the construction of the new Afghan dining facility, but also training the soldiers on how to use it most effectively in preparing and serving meals for their Afghanistan Troops.
The new facility serves members of the Helmand Province 205th Corps of the Afghanistan National Army. The facility uses a basic Navy supply publication as a ready reference, and is trying to adopt supply and preparation procedures that are effective, but that also realize the limitations of the Afghanistan system.
One of the most basic but important issues is Sanitation. Most of the preparation before this facility has used very primitive means, such as cooks chopping up meat on the bare ground with an Ax. This type of practice has changed, but training cooks that have done things for years a certain way in the Afghanistan Army takes patience, good humor, and a lot of effort.