.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

When I can't not write...

The place I keep friends and family updated on our life in the US Army. My part in that I affectionately refer to as being part of the 82nd Chairborne Division!

Friday, January 05, 2007

In the news

Military.com has the story about 2nd Brigade getting called up, and provides a little more information about the kind of things the Brigade may be doing.

You can also read it in the Paraglide Online here. It's the top story on the 01/04/07 paper.

About 3,500 members of the "Falcon Brigade" headquarters will replace the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit as CENTCOM's forward-deployed on-call force, ready to respond quickly to a full range of contingencies, he said.

***

The Falcon Brigade is slated to leave Fort Bragg early in the new year for a deployment expected to last up to 240 days, through September, Whitman said. Once in Kuwait, they will be prepared to respond to contingencies, not just in Iraq, but throughout the CENTCOM area of responsibility.


A couple of comments on these two paragraphs.

I'm always amused when they talk about the "Falcon Brigade", because the 407th BSB is the only battalion in the brigade that is NOT a Falcon. All of the other units are Red Falcons, White Falcons, etc, but the 407th are the Golden Griffins. They keep trying to change them to Gold Falcons, but they have so much history as the Griffins that they are...resistant to such a change. Here's a page that tells about their history. It needs some updating, since in the last year some of the little things have changed (BSB, not FSB, 2nd Bridage Combat Team, not Task Force).

On a more serious note, it seems that what 2nd Brigade will be doing is much the same as they did here at home. They are the contingency force. At home they were the DRB, or Division Readiness Brigade. Basically it means that they are always ready to deploy on a moment's notice. They will stay in that state of readiness in Kuwait. Yes, it is likely that they will get called into Iraq. Aaryk has drilled that into me, so I won't be too worried when it happens.

The other thing that got drilled home was that we needed to prepare for them to be gone for a year, not the 8 months the article says. IF they come home early, that's super, but not to count on it. A standard deployment is 12 months and that's what we are to plan on.

As always, I will keep you posted when I hear anything!

Labels:

1 Comments:

Blogger Alicia said...

Thanks for the update! I heard on the radio about our President ordering extra troops to Kuwait (the 82nd was mentioned)--so this is what it means, that they will be (are) stationed in readiness there, until called where needed?

7:59 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home