Before the day's medical training begins and long before the first patient is treated, another mission is already underway. Inside the dining facility at Gulfport Combat Readiness Training Center, Mississippi, the sounds of ovens, serving pans and hurried footsteps fill the kitchen as airmen work against the clock, preparing hundreds of meals that sustain one of the Air Force Reserve's premier medical readiness exercises.
Exercise Patriot Medic 2026, which took place May 25-June 22 at various sites throughout lower Mississippi brought together Air Force Reserve and Army medical personnel to strengthen deployment readiness through realistic field training focused on trauma care, patient evacuation and expeditionary medicine.
While medical professionals sharpen lifesaving skills in austere environments, Reserve airmen assigned to the 94th Force Support Squadron out of Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia, ensure those training on the front lines remain fueled and ready to perform.
"It's really tiring and it's very hectic here," said Air Force Airman 1st Class Angela Romero, 94th Force Support Squadron food services technician. "It's always chaotic. You're always running around, but at the end of the day, I feel like it's been a great learning experience. We are with a large variety of people; there are technical sergeants, staff sergeants, senior airmen and all the above, but everybody really comes together to help one another out. We've been working day in and day out, and I feel like we've been feeding 600 people very, very smoothly."
Throughout the exercise, force support airmen assigned to the 94th Airlift Wing served hundreds of meals daily to airmen and soldiers participating in Exercise Patriot Medic. The Air Force team also backfilled the dining facility mission during the opening days of the exercise until Army personnel arrived, requiring early morning and late evening hours to keep meals moving without interruption.
"It's a little crazy because it's such a larger number than what we're used to," said Air Force Airman Gustavo Barroso, 94th Force Support Squadron food services technician. "In the kitchen, you're running back and forth, and the atmosphere is really like, 'OK, we really need to get these meals out.' There's a lot of urgency in here to get everything out because we have a lot of mouths to feed and a lot of people to serve."
For many 94th Force Support Squadron airmen, large-scale food service operations are not part of their routine duties. Supporting Exercise Patriot Medic required them to quickly adapt, practice unfamiliar tasks and rely on one another to accomplish the mission while maintaining the pace needed to support hundreds of personnel.
"To freshen up, I would ask questions on my downtime," Barroso said. "I would try to do some research on certain things that would help me in the kitchen. I would just ask questions and try to get as much information as possible to complete the mission."
While their work often takes place behind the scenes, every meal directly contributes to the readiness of those participating in the exercise. Proper nutrition enables medics, support personnel and joint partners to continue training in demanding environments, with the goal of preparing for future deployments.
"Serving makes me feel good about myself," Romero said. "Realistically, everyone would be eating [Meals, Ready-to-Eat] day in and day out if we weren't back here from 3 a.m. until 10 p.m. making all these meals for everyone. It makes me really feel good about myself. I'm proud of the people in the back because we are all tired and exhausted, but every shift we get it done and we feel good about it."
That commitment extended beyond simply preparing food. Long hours, unfamiliar responsibilities and the physical demands of working in a busy kitchen became another opportunity to strengthen resilience.
"What I've learned while I've been out here is to push through adversity and have real resilience," Barroso said. "It gets tough and you get tired, but in the same way our soldiers, our personnel and our airmen are out there fighting and can't falter, we in the kitchen can't falter because we contribute a lot to the mission. If we don't feed our service members and give them the proper nutrition, they won't be able to complete the mission. Our mission is to help them complete the mission."
The exercise also reinforced lessons airmen plan to bring back to Dobbins Air Reserve Base from improving communication and teamwork to learning new skills outside their comfort zones. More importantly, it highlighted the shared responsibility every airman has in ensuring mission success, regardless of career field.
"I want to bring back resilience," Romero said. "I'm so tired, but we still wake up and we still come to work. They put me in baking here and I'd never baked a day in my life, and I feel like that's something I'll take back. I'll also take back new communication skills because we obviously have to talk, meet new people and get [accustomed] to certain things."
Despite the demanding schedule, both airmen said the experience strengthened the bonds within the team, where everyone stepped in to help one another and no one was left to carry the workload alone.
"I wish they knew how hard we worked," said Barroso, who noted that many diners don't realize the struggle behind the scenes. "It's hot, super hot, and you're getting cuts and burns here and there, you know, and the people walking in, they just see the food. They don't realize how much effort was put into that food to then be served. I wish they knew how much effort we put into the food that they see and eat."
While Exercise Patriot Medic 2026 prepares Reserve medical professionals to deliver lifesaving care in deployed environments, it also demonstrates that readiness depends on far more than the personnel providing treatment. From before sunrise until late into the night, 94th Force Support Squadron airmen sustained the exercise one meal at a time, proving that deployment readiness is built not only through training, but through the airmen whose work behind the scenes makes that training possible.