StarBulletin.com

Champoux will lead Army's 25th Infantry


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POSTED: Thursday, December 10, 2009

Maj. Gen. Bernard Champoux, who served as a deputy commander of the 25th Infantry Division in 2003 and accompanied one of its units to Afghanistan, will return to Schofield Barracks to be its next leader.

Champoux has been chief of the Army's congressional liaison office at the Pentagon since July 2008.

In 1996-98, Champoux commanded the division's 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry, and a year later led the 10th Mountain Division's 2nd Brigade at Fort Drum in New York when it deployed to Bosnia as a member of Task Force Eagle.

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From April 2007 to July 2008 he was deputy commander and deputy chief of staff for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

He graduated from Saint Anslem College in New Hampshire and received an Army ROTC commission in 1977.

He will replace Maj. Gen. Robert Caslen, division commander since May 2008, who has been promoted to lieutenant general and will be the next commanding general of the Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

The Army also announced that Col. Jeffery L. Underhill, who assumed command of the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command at Fort Shafter on June 5, will be promoted to brigadier general. The 94th is the organization responsible for all missile defense operations throughout the Pacific. Underhill entered the Army in the Air Defense Artillery Corps after graduating from Morehead State University in Kentucky in 1984.

He has commanded the 3rd Battalion (Airborne), 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, and has he served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. After attending the U.S. Army War College, he was assigned as commander of the 108th Air Defense Artillery Brigade (Airborne) at both Fort Bliss and subsequently Fort Bragg.