Local citizen-soldiers set to report June 28
Sunday, March 4, 2007 12:08 AM PST
Pat Caldwell Argus Observer
ONTARIO
Eastern Oregon Army National Guardsmen will undergo an intensive, “round-robin” training cycle at Fort Bliss Texas in July as they prepare for a deployment to Iraq later this year.
More than 350 citizen-soldiers from seven towns in central and Eastern Oregon will report June 28 to their armories to take part in the biggest federal mobilization of local Guardsmen since World War II. Guardsmen from Redmond and Woodburn will also join the 3rd Battalion mobilization.
“This is truly an historic event in terms of the number of people and resources leaving Eastern Oregon,” Lt. Col. Dan McCabe, commander of Eastern Oregon’s 3rd Battalion said.
The 3rd Battalion Guardsmen are just the latest group of Oregon citizen-soldiers to prepare for deployment overseas.
Already the state has a fairly large number of Guardsmen on active duty serving in Iraq.
“We are just one of a number of Guard units from this state that are supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. We’ve been preparing for this for a while now and I’m confident our citizen-soldiers will perform very well,” McCabe said.
In peacetime, the 3rd Battalion is one of three major elements of Idaho’s 116th Cavalry Brigade. The 116th Brigade usually consists of Eastern Oregon’s 3rd Battalion, a battalion from Montana and a battalion from Idaho.
Now, though, the 116th Brigade has ballooned to a larger configuration — dubbed a “Brigade Combat Team” — with the addition of major Guard units from Pennsylvania, North Dakota and New Jersey.
“We will be bigger than what one would expect during an ordinary training period. But we will also be far more effective and we will be joined by a group of highly professional and dedicated Guardsmen from other states. We’re drawing people from a broad cross section of this nation, from Pennsylvania to Montana to Utah to Ontario. I think that is fairly significant,” McCabe said.
The 3rd Battalion, along with the rest of the 116th Brigade received notice in March it was on alert for a possible deployment. Memorial Day weekend the 116th Brigade, and with it Eastern Oregon’s 3rd Battalion, received word it would be mobilized at the end of June for duty in Iraq.
Intensive training
Down at the Ontario armory, the mobilization was greeted with little fanfare. For the half dozen or so local fulltime citizen-soldiers of the 3rd Battalion’s Alpha Company working at the Ontario armory it has been business as usual since the mobilization order was issued. Both 1st Lt. Eric Vandewalle and Spc. 4 Chad Getman, said the mobilization order simply clarified what most Guardsmen in Alpha Company already knew was coming.
“Nothing changed. We’ve been preparing for the same stuff,” Getman said.
Vandewalle said he too was not surprised by the mobilization notification.
“I’ve had a feeling for quite a while we were going on active duty,” he said.
Until March, Vandewalle was a resident of Aberdeen, Wash., and a corrections officer.
Vandewalle said the real changes for Alpha Company will begin at Fort Bliss when the 3rd Battalion starts to arrive over the Fourth of July weekend.
“Instead of our unit being in charge of training it will be run by the 5th Army. It will be a lot of areas of training we’ve never got before,” Vandewalle said.
The 3rd Battalion’s training cycle will be framed inside a dynamic and vigorous schedule. Eastern Oregon Guardsmen will spend about two weeks on Fort Bliss proper, then travel out into a vast training area and move into areas called Forward Operating Bases, or FOBs. The battalion will go through a total of five FOBs, each one focused on a particular area such as convoy duty or urban warfare. The battalion will conduct continuous, day and night blocks of training for 10 days at each FOB. After completing the 10-day cycle, the battalion will depart, stand down for several days then go back out to another FOB for another sequence of training. Once the training at Fort Bliss is complete, the 3rd Battalion will move on to Fort Polk, Louisiana for more training before shipping out to Iraq. While the training blueprint seems pretty firm, McCabe pointed out plans, especially in the Army, can be altered.
“We’re fairly certain about how we want things to go and we plan to conduct very, very focused training. But plans can change quickly. In some ways the training will be very much like what we do every summer at Gowen Field. In other ways it will be a whole new experience for all of us, including myself,” McCabe said.
Signs of War
Indications a deployment is just around the corner are everywhere for the 3rd Battalion. During the weekend, Guardsmen converged for the second time in four months to the Pendleton armory to check individual records. During the weekend drill many Guardsmen also received their Interceptor flak vests. News that three Oregon Guardsmen were killed in action Friday also sent a strong message service in Iraq is not without risk. Vandewalle said the news made an impact with Alpha Company and emphasized how important training will be for the unit at Fort Bliss.
“It was disturbing and made training that much more of a priority. It meant our training must be at its highest level because we will most likely be in the same position as those soldiers someday,” Vandewalle said.
Alpha Company’s Sgt. 1st Class Wayne Chastain read a dispatch regarding the slain Oregon Guardsmen to the whole company over the weekend.
Chastain said while it was an unpleasant task, reading the dispatch to the company was important. The fun and games, Chastain said, are over.
“They need to be made aware this is not a joyride. I could see the instant realization when I read it in formation,” he said.
Getman said for many the news regarding the fallen Guardsmen was sobering.
“No one really talked about it. It’s just tough. But you got to drive on,” he said. Sgt. 1st Class Terry Lewis said the deaths made many reflect on the future.
“It put things very close to home,” he said.
Still the loss of three citizen-soldiers did not dampen Vandewalle’s eagerness to get on with the deployment.
“The unknown is always scary and until I step over there I will not know what it (combat) is like. I do think about it a lot. But I’ve been training for 10 plus years for this,” he said.
Chastain was more reflective, and in the long run, possibly more realistic about the future, the possibility of combat and how the company and the battalion will function in combat.
“I do not think it will hit home, really hit home, until we get shot at over there,” he said. “Then we’ll know.”
