Command Sergeant Major Kristal Florquist
GUESTS
We only had one guest last week and that was Tammy Applegate, a guest of Susan Gust.
PROGRAM
Our speaker last week was Command Sergeant Major Kristal Florquist, US Army. Kristal was deployed to the middle east for a year, and returned in August.
On January 1, 2005 she was promoted to Sergeant Major and assigned to a reserve unit in Phoenix. In February, she was notified that she was being activated to be part of the 377 Theatre Support Group, headquartered at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. This unit is a what is known as an enduring unit as people are rotated in and out from various units as needed. She was sent first to Ft. Polk, LA in June for training along with 80 other soldiers pulled from various units.
After eight weeks in Ft. Polk in the summer, she thought she was ready for Kuwait. When her group deplaned in Kuwait City in late July 2005, it was 138 degrees F. Camp Arifjan is near the gulf coast, and she and others spent two weeks in tents waiting for the people they were replacing to leave. She was originally assigned to be the Logistics Sergeant Major. As there was already a highly qualified SM there, she was reassigned to Special Operations, Theatre Support Command which meant she was working with Army Special forces as well as special operations groups from the other services and coalit ion forces. While in the theatre of operations she worked in Kuwait, Qatar, Djibouti (Africa) with occasional forays into both Iraq and Afghanistan for humanitarian operations.
One of the ironies is that there are only 800,000 true Kuwaitis in Kuwait out of two million people. The true Kuwaitis mostly do not work as they live off their oil royalties, but hire people from other countries to do the work. (Sound familiar?). She said of all the places she visited or worked, she liked Qatar best as it is growing into a major world commercial center, and is quite clean and beautiful. It has the better tolerance for westerners of any of the places she visited. She was recently promoted to Command Sergeant Major, a 20-year goal of her military carrier.
QUIZ ANSWER
In early England, there were two Celtic tribes, the "North Folk and the South Folk". Hence the names Norfolk and Suffolk. Jody gets credit for an answer I didn't expect...sheep.
NEXT QUESTION
According to Forbes Magazine, what major world capitol city is home to the most billionaires?
"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws." -Abraham Lincoln
You know how to exercise your body and your mind. Now, exercise your right November 7...and VOTE!
We only had one guest last week and that was Tammy Applegate, a guest of Susan Gust.
PROGRAM
Our speaker last week was Command Sergeant Major Kristal Florquist, US Army. Kristal was deployed to the middle east for a year, and returned in August.
On January 1, 2005 she was promoted to Sergeant Major and assigned to a reserve unit in Phoenix. In February, she was notified that she was being activated to be part of the 377 Theatre Support Group, headquartered at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. This unit is a what is known as an enduring unit as people are rotated in and out from various units as needed. She was sent first to Ft. Polk, LA in June for training along with 80 other soldiers pulled from various units.
After eight weeks in Ft. Polk in the summer, she thought she was ready for Kuwait. When her group deplaned in Kuwait City in late July 2005, it was 138 degrees F. Camp Arifjan is near the gulf coast, and she and others spent two weeks in tents waiting for the people they were replacing to leave. She was originally assigned to be the Logistics Sergeant Major. As there was already a highly qualified SM there, she was reassigned to Special Operations, Theatre Support Command which meant she was working with Army Special forces as well as special operations groups from the other services and coalit ion forces. While in the theatre of operations she worked in Kuwait, Qatar, Djibouti (Africa) with occasional forays into both Iraq and Afghanistan for humanitarian operations.
One of the ironies is that there are only 800,000 true Kuwaitis in Kuwait out of two million people. The true Kuwaitis mostly do not work as they live off their oil royalties, but hire people from other countries to do the work. (Sound familiar?). She said of all the places she visited or worked, she liked Qatar best as it is growing into a major world commercial center, and is quite clean and beautiful. It has the better tolerance for westerners of any of the places she visited. She was recently promoted to Command Sergeant Major, a 20-year goal of her military carrier.
QUIZ ANSWER
In early England, there were two Celtic tribes, the "North Folk and the South Folk". Hence the names Norfolk and Suffolk. Jody gets credit for an answer I didn't expect...sheep.
NEXT QUESTION
According to Forbes Magazine, what major world capitol city is home to the most billionaires?
"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who molds opinion is greater than he who enacts laws." -Abraham Lincoln
You know how to exercise your body and your mind. Now, exercise your right November 7...and VOTE!
posted by Windsor Rotary Club (link to this post)
