Description:
Timeless insights into military logistics sprang out of the hardships and sacrifices of Canadians who fought in Afghanistan.
Good battlefield logistics have always been more about people than things. Yet military logisticians in the Canadian Armed Forces have suffered in the cellar -- the underappreciated bottom of the institution -- for decades. These soldiers were called upon mightily in the summer of 2006 to sustain an infantry battlegroup in one of the world's harshest theatres. Afghanistan burned as a pyre of quiet desperation for the soldiers of the Canadian logistics battalion -- the National Support Element -- sustaining Task Force Orion in combat through endless days and overextended lines of communication. This crucible yielded lessons of war that have never been shared before now.
In Our Dry Cellar, John Conrad makes a case for strengthening the logistics underpinnings of the Canadian Armed Forces while unlocking sustainment secrets of the small but gritty Canadian Army and giving human faces to the service and sacrifice of the revered art of battlefield logistics.
Brief description:
Peter MacKay is a Canadian lawyer and politician, who served as the Minister of National Defence from 2007-2013.
Review Quotes: Logistics matter. Col (Ret'd) John Conrad led the National Support Element during the heaviest fighting in Kandahar in 2006. His well-written analysis of his experiences from the Afghan War argues that the Army must pay much more attention to logistics in both the Regular and Reserve forces. Most important, he demonstrates why logisticians must be fighters first, technicians second, as his troops became. Only then will they be able to operate effectively on future battlefields. A genuinely important book for our planners to study.-- "J.L. Granatstein, author of Canada's Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace, 3rd ed."