Dedication, hard work assure Bright Star success.

In the shadow of the War on Terrorism, the Military Traffic Management Command conducted the massive Bright Star exercise in Dukhaya, Egypt, as scheduled.

That fact alone gave everyone on our deployment support team a feeling of pride and determination.

We also took pride in the 5,000-plus pieces of cargo we discharged--and later loaded--from September to November. The cargo ranged from M1 tanks and helicopters to tactical kitchen facilities, to build a city in a Sahara Desert exercise area.

I am very proud of the MTMC team. The 840th Transportation Battalion, Izmir, Turkey, led the team, which included 10 American and five Turkish host nation employees. Several of our team members came from the 598th Transportation Group, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and the 839th Transportation Battalion, Livorno, Italy.

This year's exercise was the largest ever conducted, and consisted of 70,000 troops from the United States, Egypt and 10 coalition countries.

Our mission: to work as the single port manager. We worked in partnership with soldiers from the 11th Transportation Battalion, 7th Transportation Group, Fort Eustis, Va., who worked together as the port operator.

After months of planning and training, our involvement in Bright Star began in August--in the United States. Sgt. 1st Class Anita Rice, our Operations Non-Commissioned Officer, traveled to Beaumont, Texas. She worked with the 842nd Transportation Battalion in the documentation, staging, pre-stow planning, and upload of two Large, Medium-Speed, Roll-On/Roll-Off vessels. The knowledge she gained in Texas was invaluable to us for the pending discharge.

Rice met us at Dukhaya, where our team had just arrived to manage two million square feet of dock and staging space.

This was our life for the next 90 days. We worked around the clock with two shifts. Sometimes we worked under Force Protection Condition Delta; most of the time, we were at Condition Charlie.

"We handled seven coalition vessels within five days," said Maj. Darren Compton, the unit's Executive Officer.

In all, we discharged and later reloaded cargo from 29 different United States and coalition strategic sealift vessels--including five Large, Medium-Speed, Roll-on/Roll-Off vessels.

The 840th did not rest--our planned break was dramatically interrupted by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

For us, it meant being locked in a hotel for three days, living under Condition Delta.

When we returned to the port, we were required to wear bulletproof vests and carry our M-40 gas masks.

We charged on!

I have many favorite memories of the exercise. Perhaps the one I remember most poignantly is the Nov. 16 promotion of Capt. John Myhre, 840th port operations officer, aboard the USNS Fisher. Col. John Brown, Commander, 598th Transportation Group, pinned the captain's rank on his soft cap, and Sgt. 1st Class Sidney Storr and Rice presented him a hard hat with the same rank.

At the conclusion of the deployment phase, I returned to Izmir and entrusted the entire redeployment phase to Compton. Our team completed its mission Nov. 24.

We had an unexpected postscript to our mission. The unit received a plaque from the Egyptian Ministry of Defense that required President Hosni Mubarak's approval--one of only three received by American forces.

This is the first time MTMC has received this honor. We will display it proudly at our headquarters in memory of the partnerships and friendships the exercise forged.

The entire 840th team deserves credit. As a result of other missions, there were times when we had only three individuals in Izmir, led by Master Sgt. Patricia Green, to continue the mission of supporting our customers in Turkey.

There is another mission: while we were in Egypt, terminal manager Alp Ertugrul led the first-ever deployment of a team composed only of Turkish nationals.

Ertugrul led our team in exercise Early Victor in Jordan, in both the September and November deployments. The cargo was 311 pieces of 5th Special Forces Group vehicles and equipment.

Others on the team included Asli Dogu, Tarkan Koncuk and Huseyin Tartar.

How well did they do?

In the loading phase of the operation, they finished two days ahead of schedule, and without any damage to equipment or injury to personnel.