Nine months ago, the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team (3ABCT), or Greywolf, from Fort Hood deployed to Kuwait.
Now, they’re nearing redeployment meaning they’ll head home soon, but there’s a lot of work to be done first.
KXXV's Brooke Bednarz has embedded with those soldiers in Kuwait.
Tuesday morning, Bednarz visited the Kuwait Naval Base, where Greywolf is continuing to clean and wash the approximately 2,000 vehicles they deployed with in preparation to come home.
“One of the gateways to get home is we gotta make sure we take all of our equipment home and we’re like a node or a gateway to actually get that done,” Maj. William Lyckman of the 3ABCT said.
With the use of both military and Kuwaiti civilian assets, all of the Greywolf vehicles were moved from Camp Buehring to the theater wash rack at the Kuwait Naval Base.
“Behind me, you can see a few vehicles. There’s the 88 and Abrams, and what they’re doing right now, is they’re actually cleaning all the dirt off, all the debris that they’ve been collecting throughout the deployment here,” Sgt. Garrett Brooks of the 3ABCT said.
In order to pass customs inspection, Greywolf soldiers have to clean every nook and cranny from the inside, out.
“We take a lot of pride in what we do here at the wash rack, and we just want to make sure that there’s no foreign objects or debris or bugs or plants or dirt that come over to our states to make sure that our ecosystem isn’t harmed,” Sgt. Brooks added.
At least two soldiers per vehicle will use power washers and rags to clean the vehicles.
“Sometimes a Humvee will take no more than four hours, then you’ve got the Abrams’ here and the 88s here that take actually a couple of days because they’re such a large piece of equipment,” Sgt. Brooks said.
Greywolf started the wash rack process in preparation to redeploy home three months ago, and now they're down to the last few vehicles that still need to be washed.
Once the vehicles are cleaned and pass inspection, they are loaded into trucks and taken down to the port in the Persian Gulf where they will be shipped back to the U.S. on vessels.
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