Desert Rat Testament U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground

Host Mark Schauer talks with Minerva Peters, whose Department of the Army career began in 1985. After 15 years working as an operations research analyst with the Army’s Operational Test and Evaluation Command, she began working at Yuma Proving Ground in 2000. Attracting attention for her work on test programs for the Crusader self-propelled howitzer and Stryker combat vehicle, in 2006 she was made head of a newly established process improvement office. She became YPG’s Chief of Staff in 2015, the position she retired from in March 2024.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Mike Kingston, who served as a test photographer at U.S. Army Cold Regions Test Center as a soldier during the Vietnam era and as a civilian from 1989 to 2014. A former wildland firefighter well known as a volunteer firefighter in Delta Junction, Alaska, in his retirement Kingston was recently recognized as the community's volunteer of the year for his work on behalf of the local Meals on Wheels program.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Jonna Pittman, who retired as U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground's Logistics Manager in 2024. Prior to starting her civilian career here in 2007, she served in the Army from 1977 to 2007, retiring as a Sergeant Major.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Command Sgt. Maj. (ret.) Forbes Daniels. Born in Guyana, he immigrated to the United States as a teenager and enlisted in the Army in 1981. His tenure as Yuma Proving Ground’s Command Sergeant Major from 2008 to 2012 was bookended by multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He retired from active duty in 2017 and today works in a civilian capacity at the Army’s Fort Eisenhower.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Alan Tinseth, a nuclear engineer who worked at Yuma Proving Ground as a test officer and in the Technology and Investments Directorate from 1984 until his retirement in 2022. The son of a wounded veteran of the Korean War's Battle of Chosin Reservoir, in 1989 he was a test officer on a self-propelled howitzer evaluation for a foreign customer that saw a fatal accident.

Host Ana Henderson talks with John Curry, an Arkansas native who worked at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground as a software developer and operations research and systems analyst from 1991 until his retirement in 2022. He supported testing for the Warfighter from the Gulf War through the Global War on Terror.