In the early 1990s, I was the labor and employee relations officer at the Marine Corps Logistics Base (MCLB) in Albany, Georgia. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, MCLB and its 3,000 civilian employees went into accelerated operations to procure, repair and move to the Middle East all the equipment needed by the the Marines for the ground assault of Desert Storm.

Christmas vacations were cancelled, while employees worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. All employees were focused on the mission, while the local union president worked closely with me to accommodate this sudden change in workload. The pre-positioned ships of our Blount Island Command in Jacksonville demonstrated the effectiveness of having supply ships with a battalion's worth of equipment in the Middle East, ready to be offloaded and matched up with Marines arriving by air.

The ground assault required armored earth movers to lead the assault through the desert dunes. A team of MCLB civilians and Marines designed and built armored protective plates for Caterpillar earth movers in the Middle East. They deployed and installed the armor on-site. On February 23, 1991, while they were flying home, the ground campaign began with the armored Caterpillars in the lead. MCLB-Albany, both civilians and military, received the Meritorious Unit Citation for these efforts.

On May 30, 1986, a bus filled with senior citizens crashed into a raging Walker River in California. The first person on the scene was a GS-4 employee of the Humboldt-Bridgeport district of the Toiyabe National Forest. After radioing the district for help, she entered the flood-swollen river, forced the bus door open, calmed the passengers, and led them to the riverbank. By that time, most of the district's employees with its helicopters, trucks and first aid equipment had arrived to administer first aid to the survivors and arrange their transport to medical facilities. Twenty-one people were killed in this accident, but thanks to the efforts of Forest Service employees, 20 survived this horrific crash.

Many federal civil service employees have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country. Recently, Jaime Zapata, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Mexico, and Derick Hottinpiller, a deputy U.S. marshal in West Virginia, were killed in the war against drugs, while three of their co-workers were injured. Ninety-nine federal employees in 10 different agencies died in the line of duty in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Forty-seven federal employees working alongside their military counterparts were killed in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

As a federal personnel specialist, I personally knew of USDA grain graders killed in exploding grain elevators; Forest Service employees who were killed fighting fires and in airplane crashes; Marine Corps civilians who died on ships deployed halfway around the world and Border Patrol agents ruthlessly murdered by smugglers and drug dealers.

During Public Service Recognition Week, please recognize the dedication, accomplishment, heroism and sacrifice of public servants at all levels of government. They are not faceless bureaucrats but the people who make the United States run. Without them, continuity in government would be impossible in a democracy which regularly changes its elected leaders. Please thank these dedicated civil servants for their service, with the same enthusiasm you use when thanking our military and veterans for their service.

Comella is a retired human resources manager for the federal government. She served over 30 years in eight different federal agencies. She is currently the president of the DeLand Chapter 817 of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE).