ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
The Department of Defense alerted Arkansas’ largest National Guard unit over the weekend to prepare to be sent to Iraq early next year.
If the entire 39 th Infantry Brigade is mobilized, the deployment will be the largest in the state’s history, said Maj. Gen. Don C. Morrow, Arkansas’ adjutant general. About 1,200 Arkansas National Guardsmen from several different units already are on active duty, and many are in Iraq.
The brigade’s 3,400 soldiers make up 50 percent of the Army National Guardsmen in the state. The brigade, headquartered at Ricks Armory in Little Rock, includes units in 45 towns across the state.
"It certainly is significant for Arkansas," Morrow said.
The Department of Defense issued the alert over the weekend, but soldiers had expected it for weeks. Sgt. Kenneth Barner of Fordyce, a cook with the 39 th, learned of the possibility a week ago when he called home to Fordyce to talk to his wife.
"My sergeant had told her I was going on alert," Barner said in an interview last week in Alaska, where he is on a training mission. "I ain’t surprised."
The alert came one day after Gen. John Keane, acting Army chief of staff, announced a plan to rotate forces in and out of Iraq to relieve the active Army units that have been fighting there the longest.
In a press briefing, Keane explained that the rotation schedule is needed to reinforce the troops in the region. The number of soldiers in Iraq and surrounding countries is not expected to change in the next year, remaining at about 167,000.
The use of National Guard and Reserve forces is essential, Keane said, to bolster the ranks of the thinly stretched Army and to reduce the stress on the deployed active units.
The increased demand on U.S. forces around the world has caused shortages in infantry, military police and civil affairs.
Of the nation’s 33 active-duty Army infantry brigades, 24 — 73 percent of the force — were deployed overseas this year, according to the Department of Defense.
Additionally, about half of the Army’s total force is deployed overseas. Only about 30 percent of the Army Reserve and 20 percent of the nation’s National Guard soldiers are deployed.
With the rotation schedule, however, that is all about to change.
On Saturday, the Defense Department named the 39 th of Arkansas and the 30 th Infantry Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard as replacements for the 4 th Infantry Division in northern Iraq and the 1 st Armored Division in Baghdad.
The 39 th is expected to mobilize sometime between February and April for a six-month deployment. The 30 th is expected to mobilize shortly thereafter.
"We can certainly assume what they’re going to do," Morrow said, "but until we’re told when and where they will be mobilized, there is not a lot we can say."
The mobilization of such a large unit will be an enormous task, he said. "But we can handle it. We will handle it."
The alert order is the first step in the mobilization process. Some units placed on alert never actually mobilize, but that is unlikely for the 39 th, because the order is part of a large rotation planned by Army leadership.
The 39 th is one of only 15 brigades in the nation that are part of an "integrated division" made up of both active Army and National Guard soldiers. The 39 th is attached to the 7 th Infantry Division out of Fort Carson, Colo.
"Enhanced" brigades like the 39 th have more soldiers, more training and more equipment than some others, making them the most combat-ready forces in the National Guard.
In the past five years, the unit has provided Patriot missile defense in Kuwait, supported the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and served with a task force on the Sinai peninsula.
"Our brigade has been called on a number of times," said Brig. Gen. Ronald S. Chastain, 39 th commander. "But this is the first time we’ve had an alert of this caliber."