MAJ Carla Thomas has been on three deployments in support of Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). In this March 2013 interview, MAJ Thomas, US Army, Public Affairs, discusses her second deployment to Afghanistan as base operations commander for 101st Sustainment Brigade in 2007 through 2009 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). MAJ Thomas talks about her many missions supporting all of the different entities and operations on her forward operating base. She describes how she ended up as the mayor and talks about some discipline issues she dealt with. She discusses some challenges she faced and shares how she was able to boost morale for her Soldiers. MAJ Thomas closes her interview by stating, "Unfortunately, I think the cause of it was the brigade did not do a good job choosing who they sent. They had NCOs that should not be put in a leadership position without supervision beyond me. I mean, I should not have had to do that. They needed to send out NCOs that would be capable of working independently and make good choices without being supervised. I didn't know what I was doing, nobody knew what we were doing. They did not do a good job of pooling us prior to the deployment to set us up for success and explain the mission and be sure we had the right tools and mixture of the right training."

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