Our Awards
The Dallas Composite Squadron, in it's short existence, has received:
Following is the official transcript from the Civil Air Patrol National Headquarters Unit Citation:
The Dallas Composite
Squadron, Group 4, Texas Wing, Civil Air Patrol, performed in a manner far
above the highest standards to host and bring the 1997 Texas Wing SAR-EVAL
to a professional and unprecedented success. The Squadron united it's members
over eight month prior to the EVAL to develop from the regulations new procedures,
forms, equipment, teamwork within the Texas Wing and training in which to
perform Search and Rescue Operations in the most proficient manner possible.
They succeeded far above expectations due to the volunteer spirit, horrendous
man hours and exceptional professional attitudes of the Dallas Team. The
overall final grade presented by the United States Air Force for the Texas
Wing 1997 SAR-EVAL was "Excellent," with two of the Dallas Squadron
members receiving the only two "Outstanding" ratings given. The
United States Air Force evaluators stated the overall evaluation would have
been an "Outstanding" under the grading of last year and would
have been lower without the efforts of the Dallas Composite Squadron.
On February 8, 1996, the Dallas Composite Squadron was
chartered in Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and immediately became active in the
CAP community. The squadron's first commander was it's founder and Vietname
Veteran Cpt. Roland Jarvis. With a cooperative spirit to the other squadron's
in the area and sharing in CAP assets, the Dallas Squadron as a whole began
to vision changes in the SAR training exercises they attended and began
to plan and execute their own SAREX. With evaluation support from Group
4 and Texas Wing the squadron plunged into extensive man hours to improve
on the operation and within one month execute another full fledged SAREX
with their changes. The improvement was dramatic.
Seeing the effort, professionalism, cooperation within
the Texas Wing and dedication to the success of developing a professional
SAR procedure for everyone, the Texas Wing asked the Dallas Composite Squadron
to host and basically "run" the November SAREX in Waco Texas.
This was a risk for the Texas Wing due to the next SAR being the EVAL in
just a few month.
With Wing support the Dallas Composite Squadron (DCS) reached
out to other units within the Texas Wing to pull in the talent they needed
support, in areas of Ground Teams, Flight Line, Safety, Communications and
other areas team work between would produce even better results. The Dallas
Squadron Commander remained the host project officer to organize supporting
personnel, Maj. Bernie Mayoux, DCS, was the official Mission Coordinator,
1LT Greg Malone, DCS, was admin and mission flow, Maj. Jerry Sharp, DCS,
was Flight Operations, Lt. Ed Stevens, DCS, was flight briefing, and the
Dallas Composite Squadron Senior Staff and 30 cadets put on one great SAREX
with positive feedback from those in attendance.
The United States Air Force found the exercise worthy of
evaluation even as a standard SAREX and was supportive of the operational
ideas designed implemented by the members of the Dallas Squadron.
Then when Region requested the Texas Wing host the Counter
Drug exercise for the entire Region, the answer for flight and admin operations
was obvious, the Dallas Composite Squadron. The pay off was as expected,
compliments and congratulations from Region to the Texas Wing for an operation
very well done. Something we've become to expect from the Dallas Squadron.
Many of the other Wing Commanders and representatives asked for and received
the many forms, orders and written procedures developed by the Dallas Composite
Squadron used in this operation.
It became apparent to ask the Dallas Composite Squadron
to go forward and host the official Air Force evaluation of the Texas Wing
in March. We were excited and anxious on how the Air Force evaluators would
react to our changes. We had little to be worried about, it was in good
hands.
With the Air Force critique in hand, the entire membership
of the Dallas Composite Squadron again burned the midnight oil to produce
the best SAR operation possible. They coordinated not only with the many
persons in their squadron who would be in key positions, but placed their
ego and awards aside to be available for the needs of the personnel who
where helping support from all over the Texas Wing area. The spirit of cooperation
the Dallas Composite Squadron produced pulled together not only their own
members but the other important components of the SAR-EVAL to produce the
outstanding results.
The operations order, flow charts, briefing sheets, key
racks, work sheets, security and flow badges, and many, many new procedures
developed by the Dallas Composite Squadron set the standard for this SAR-EVAL
and all those to come. If the Dallas Composite were not to have put the
massive effort into developing their SAREX procedures and have not hosted
the SAR-EVAL, the results would have been very different and we would have
lost an opportunity to obtain new ideas, even if developed from proven past
procedures.
The Dallas Composite Squadron has grown from the new unit in February 1996 to a professional, innovative and vibrant entity in the Civil Air Patrol today. I can't recommend strongly enough the immediate award of the Civil Air Patrol Unit Citation for the Dallas Composite Squadron, Group 4, Texas Wing, Civil Air Patrol.