Maj. Gen. McQuistion passes command of 21st TSC to Brig. Gen. Piggee
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Sgt. 1st Class Taisha Lowery sings the national anthem at the 21st Theater Sustainment Command's change of command ceremony.
The USAREUR Band plays the 21st TSC March at the change of command ceremony in Kaiserslautern, Germany.
KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany – While leading one of the Army’s largest logistics commands, Maj. Gen. Patricia McQuistion found time to make a mark on the Kaiserslautern community.
“It’s like walking around with a rock star,” said U.S. Army Europe’s commander, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, referring to all the people who knew her when he recently accompanied McQuistion around Kaiserslautern.
Hertling presided Thursday over the 21st Theater Sustainment Command’s change-of-command ceremony, where McQuistion bid farewell to some 12,000 soldiers and civilians spread across the unit’s footprint in Europe, and welcomed Brig. Gen Aundre Piggee, the new commander, who comes from a logistics staff job at U.S. Forces Korea.
Under skies that threatened rain on Daenner Kaserne’s parade grounds, McQuistion said her two years leading the command, which serves as USAREUR’s logistics arm, was the most “tremendous experience” of her career, and that she and her husband, retired Army Col. Leif Johnson, “leave part of our hearts here.”
McQuistion is moving on to an even bigger assignment, taking charge of the U.S. Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, Ill., a unit that’s tasked, among other responsibilities, with improving logistics support to troops on the battlefield.
Hertling said that Piggee takes the reins of the 21st TSC at a time when the command’s mission is growing.
“The ongoing Iraq drawdown requires increasing support from your organization,” Hertling said, and the command will need to continue to support operations in Africa and Kosovo.
Piggee, a biology major at the University of Arkansas who was commissioned in 1981, vowed to rise to the challenge.
“You will continue to be well-trained and well-equipped,” he told his new soldiers. “This force will be ready to fight and win, anywhere and anytime.”
