thedrifter
03-14-08, 06:01 AM
Drop zone
4th Brigade will have shorter turnaround before Afghanistan
By RICHARD MAUER
rmauer@adn.com
(03/14/08 00:18:44)
When Maj. Shanon Mosakowski left Korea and joined the airborne brigade at Fort Richardson last August, it was a near-empty house. Most of the 3,500 soldiers were in a battle zone south of Baghdad.
Mosakowski, 38, an artilleryman with a master's degree in management, had a new job that required him to think ahead -- way ahead.
Even as most of the troops had their minds on the daily dangers and chores of combat, patrols, and close interactions with friendlies and hostiles, Mosakowski was planning not only their redeployment back to Anchorage, but their next deployment to war.
That script is now playing out on the north side of Anchorage as the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) of the 25th Infantry Division begins another cycle of tooling up for combat, only with a new wrinkle: It's the first unit in a Pentagon-ordered pilot project to cut the time spent in reset operations from about two years to one, increasing the number of soldiers available for combat.
Mosakowski says the brigade will be ready in December, though it's not expected to ship out for its next 12-month assignment, currently Afghanistan, until February.
As "reset officer," there was no talk about an accelerated program. Mosakowski made an early morning phone call once a week to Maj. Rick Meredith, the brigade planner at a base south of Baghdad, where it would be evening. For Meredith, 43, the weekly teleconferences could be a little disconcerting.
"You're looking at conducting operations in theatre, planning the redeployment, planning the reset, then the retraining, then the deployment. From a military perspective, they're just operations. Mentally, you kind of shake your head sometime, because you're worried about the soldiers that are in the fight right now," Meredith said.
The whole timeline was plotted on a 14-foot dry-erase board in Meredith's office in Iraq.
"You drew what you're doing now, what you're planning on doing, and it was really weird to look at the very end of it -- a deployment already planned. The next deployment," said Meredith, now executive officer of the 425th Brigade Special Troops Battalion.
NEW EFFICIENCIES
The first six-month phase of the reset began when the brigade was still in Iraq.
By the start of the second phase, Dec. 12, the pilot program was under way. Soldiers had full 30-day leaves to reconnect with their families and unwind. Then they unpacked and inventoried their equipment.
"The chief of staff wants to do this faster," Mosakowski said. "He also, simultaneously, wants there to be a period of time where soldiers can take a knee -- where they can take a break and concentrate on being with their families."
The "old Army" Mosakowski joined nearly 15 years ago would've provided a two-week leave, then a full training schedule with late nights and weekend duty. No longer. When possible, soldiers work normal shifts, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, he said.
To make up for that lost time, the Army is trying other efficiencies. Last month, said Maj. Tim Davis, the brigade's operations officer, it brought a small-arms specialty team to Fort Richardson to inspect every rifle and machine gun. They brought tools and parts, fixing what they could and junking the rest.
"So now instead of a unit having to schedule all this, hey, it's done," Davis said..
The next part of Phase 2 is individual training -- on the range and in the classroom. The brigade is one of only two airborne brigades in the Army, Davis said, but because there was no jumping for the 14 months they were in Iraq, every soldier will have to be recertified as a paratrooper.
By June, the brigade is supposed to be at 80 percent strength as it begins training as teams. In the fall, they'll go for a month to a combat training facility in California or Louisiana.
RECORD RETENTION
Nearly 55 percent of the soldiers in the brigade asked to stay for the next deployment, an Army record. But even with so many staying, nearly half the positions must be filled by incoming soldiers. And most of the leadership, starting with Col. Michael Garrett, the brigade commander, will leave. The incoming commander, Col. Michael Howard, is expected to assume the post in June. He is currently a student at the National War College, Washington D.C., and earlier served in Afghanistan as a cavalry squadron commander with the 10th Mountain Division.
Spc. David Juarez, 23, from El Paso, Texas, and Sgt. Richard Johnson, 22, from Houston, both asked to stay on. They had served as the personal security detail to Garrett and Brigade Sgt. Maj. David Turnbull, "Spartan 6" and "Spartan 7" on the radio. Both soldiers were wounded, Juarez from rocket shrapnel while he was on foot, Johnson from a roadside bomb while in a vehicle. Their unit lost two men during attacks while protecting the commanders, who frequently left their desks to circulate around their battle areas.
"We saved and protected Spartan 6 and Spartan 7 throughout the entire deployment. We did our job. That's what matters," said Johnson.
Both said they are looking forward to their next deployment.
"It's a great unit, and I love it up here, so when we are in garrison, it's nice to be in Alaska," said Johnson, a snowboarder.
But about 300 soldiers were not given a choice, Mosakowski said. Through circumstances surrounding the time they arrived in Alaska, or related to their time remaining in the Army, they'll have to stay for the next deployment, like it or not.
One of those is Sgt. Matthew Geldermann, of Walnut Creek, Calif. His wife, Darcey, is expecting a child in August, and they planned on a life outside the Army when his 5-year contract was up in October.
Darcey Geldermann said in an interview last week that her husband, now attending a training school, was told that he would fall under the Army's "Stop-Loss" program, meaning he couldn't leave until after the next deployment.
He was based in Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, in the last deployment, she said.
Her husband joined the Army after college out of sense of patriotism and idealism after the 9/11 attacks, but now he's ready to raise a family, she said. He's signed up for the Anchorage police academy. Now he's worried about a new deployment.
"The whole time he was over there, he was on the countdown of when he gets out of the military. He just set that mind-set to get through it, not to come home and find out two months later it's endless."
Her husband understands he can be retained in times of war, but didn't President Bush declare an end to major hostilities in 2003? she asked.
She's hopeful about a recent rumor making the rounds on bases: that the brigade deployment will be postponed till summer, and that it will go to Mosul in Iraq, not Afghanistan. That additional time before deployment would mean that even under stop-loss, her husband would probably be discharged.
Brigade spokesman Maj. David Butler said he's heard those rumors about Mosul, but knows of no change in the February deployment to Afghanistan.
Find Richard Mauer online at adn.com/contact/rmauer or call 257-4345.
Ellie
4th Brigade will have shorter turnaround before Afghanistan
By RICHARD MAUER
rmauer@adn.com
(03/14/08 00:18:44)
When Maj. Shanon Mosakowski left Korea and joined the airborne brigade at Fort Richardson last August, it was a near-empty house. Most of the 3,500 soldiers were in a battle zone south of Baghdad.
Mosakowski, 38, an artilleryman with a master's degree in management, had a new job that required him to think ahead -- way ahead.
Even as most of the troops had their minds on the daily dangers and chores of combat, patrols, and close interactions with friendlies and hostiles, Mosakowski was planning not only their redeployment back to Anchorage, but their next deployment to war.
That script is now playing out on the north side of Anchorage as the 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) of the 25th Infantry Division begins another cycle of tooling up for combat, only with a new wrinkle: It's the first unit in a Pentagon-ordered pilot project to cut the time spent in reset operations from about two years to one, increasing the number of soldiers available for combat.
Mosakowski says the brigade will be ready in December, though it's not expected to ship out for its next 12-month assignment, currently Afghanistan, until February.
As "reset officer," there was no talk about an accelerated program. Mosakowski made an early morning phone call once a week to Maj. Rick Meredith, the brigade planner at a base south of Baghdad, where it would be evening. For Meredith, 43, the weekly teleconferences could be a little disconcerting.
"You're looking at conducting operations in theatre, planning the redeployment, planning the reset, then the retraining, then the deployment. From a military perspective, they're just operations. Mentally, you kind of shake your head sometime, because you're worried about the soldiers that are in the fight right now," Meredith said.
The whole timeline was plotted on a 14-foot dry-erase board in Meredith's office in Iraq.
"You drew what you're doing now, what you're planning on doing, and it was really weird to look at the very end of it -- a deployment already planned. The next deployment," said Meredith, now executive officer of the 425th Brigade Special Troops Battalion.
NEW EFFICIENCIES
The first six-month phase of the reset began when the brigade was still in Iraq.
By the start of the second phase, Dec. 12, the pilot program was under way. Soldiers had full 30-day leaves to reconnect with their families and unwind. Then they unpacked and inventoried their equipment.
"The chief of staff wants to do this faster," Mosakowski said. "He also, simultaneously, wants there to be a period of time where soldiers can take a knee -- where they can take a break and concentrate on being with their families."
The "old Army" Mosakowski joined nearly 15 years ago would've provided a two-week leave, then a full training schedule with late nights and weekend duty. No longer. When possible, soldiers work normal shifts, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, he said.
To make up for that lost time, the Army is trying other efficiencies. Last month, said Maj. Tim Davis, the brigade's operations officer, it brought a small-arms specialty team to Fort Richardson to inspect every rifle and machine gun. They brought tools and parts, fixing what they could and junking the rest.
"So now instead of a unit having to schedule all this, hey, it's done," Davis said..
The next part of Phase 2 is individual training -- on the range and in the classroom. The brigade is one of only two airborne brigades in the Army, Davis said, but because there was no jumping for the 14 months they were in Iraq, every soldier will have to be recertified as a paratrooper.
By June, the brigade is supposed to be at 80 percent strength as it begins training as teams. In the fall, they'll go for a month to a combat training facility in California or Louisiana.
RECORD RETENTION
Nearly 55 percent of the soldiers in the brigade asked to stay for the next deployment, an Army record. But even with so many staying, nearly half the positions must be filled by incoming soldiers. And most of the leadership, starting with Col. Michael Garrett, the brigade commander, will leave. The incoming commander, Col. Michael Howard, is expected to assume the post in June. He is currently a student at the National War College, Washington D.C., and earlier served in Afghanistan as a cavalry squadron commander with the 10th Mountain Division.
Spc. David Juarez, 23, from El Paso, Texas, and Sgt. Richard Johnson, 22, from Houston, both asked to stay on. They had served as the personal security detail to Garrett and Brigade Sgt. Maj. David Turnbull, "Spartan 6" and "Spartan 7" on the radio. Both soldiers were wounded, Juarez from rocket shrapnel while he was on foot, Johnson from a roadside bomb while in a vehicle. Their unit lost two men during attacks while protecting the commanders, who frequently left their desks to circulate around their battle areas.
"We saved and protected Spartan 6 and Spartan 7 throughout the entire deployment. We did our job. That's what matters," said Johnson.
Both said they are looking forward to their next deployment.
"It's a great unit, and I love it up here, so when we are in garrison, it's nice to be in Alaska," said Johnson, a snowboarder.
But about 300 soldiers were not given a choice, Mosakowski said. Through circumstances surrounding the time they arrived in Alaska, or related to their time remaining in the Army, they'll have to stay for the next deployment, like it or not.
One of those is Sgt. Matthew Geldermann, of Walnut Creek, Calif. His wife, Darcey, is expecting a child in August, and they planned on a life outside the Army when his 5-year contract was up in October.
Darcey Geldermann said in an interview last week that her husband, now attending a training school, was told that he would fall under the Army's "Stop-Loss" program, meaning he couldn't leave until after the next deployment.
He was based in Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, in the last deployment, she said.
Her husband joined the Army after college out of sense of patriotism and idealism after the 9/11 attacks, but now he's ready to raise a family, she said. He's signed up for the Anchorage police academy. Now he's worried about a new deployment.
"The whole time he was over there, he was on the countdown of when he gets out of the military. He just set that mind-set to get through it, not to come home and find out two months later it's endless."
Her husband understands he can be retained in times of war, but didn't President Bush declare an end to major hostilities in 2003? she asked.
She's hopeful about a recent rumor making the rounds on bases: that the brigade deployment will be postponed till summer, and that it will go to Mosul in Iraq, not Afghanistan. That additional time before deployment would mean that even under stop-loss, her husband would probably be discharged.
Brigade spokesman Maj. David Butler said he's heard those rumors about Mosul, but knows of no change in the February deployment to Afghanistan.
Find Richard Mauer online at adn.com/contact/rmauer or call 257-4345.
Ellie