FT. BUCHANAN, Puerto Rico — The 192nd Field Feeding Detachment, Puerto Rico Army National Guard, was federalized on October 26, 2023, from scratch. Their purpose is to carry out the mission of feeding National Guardsmen across the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and completed their first mission today, Nov. 4 here.

“This is the first time since we were federalized that we are cooking here officially. Prior to that, we were organizing the unit in preparation for being established,” said Sgt. First Class Laura Del Rio, non-commissioned officer in charge of the mission today, “Behind the scenes, four service members came the day before to clean and organize in preparation for today. Today we have around 10 service members working on the mission. We are like a big family, everyone chips in to help out.”

A Field Feeding Detachment is directly responsible for executing tactical field feeding operations and is ready to operate in an austere environment with a high level of autonomy. They are directly responsible for providing field feeding to supported units.

“This is the first time that this unit has come together to complete the mission of feeding the Puerto Rico National Guard,” said Del Rio.

The organizational mission of the unit is to provide field feeding to operational forces on deployment, during field training, and in a garrison environment.

“The unit was created from scratch, for this specific purpose. Cooks from other units were consolidated from across the Puerto Rico National Guard to create the 2 platoons of the 192nd FFD, one in Ft. Buchanan and one in Juana Diaz. Together, we are the only cooks operating in Puerto Rico to support the whole National Guard. ” said Staff Sgt. Javier Garcia, Readiness non-commissioned officer of the 192nd FFD. “We have been authorized 61 Soldiers, and right now we have 47 Soldiers assigned, so there are some vacancies to fill if anyone wants to become a cook.”

The field feeding unit will provide area support for up to 700 Soldiers with each team. It consolidates most culinary specialists and field feeding equipment into companies, platoons or teams and provides support to units in field or forward deploying environments as well as garrison dining facilities.

“It’s going great, most of our cooks are experienced they have been doing this for years,” said Garcia.

The National Guard remains an integral part of U.S. military might, and it’s changing to remain effective for the future which can be seen by the creation of this new detachment.

“I feel very proud of my Soldiers even though they had been working at other units, now it is when we are all together as a unit, they have done an excellent job,” 2nd Lt. Hector Colon, Officer in charge assigned to the 192nd FFD. “We have stood out in our job and distinguished ourselves. We are completing the mission we have been called for, which is serving the National Guard, and we will continue to do so.