Deployed isle brigade
will train abroad
The big question now is where the Hawaii Army National Guard's 3,100-member 29th Infantry Brigade (Separate) will spend the three or four months of training before a year-long deployment to Iraq begins in February.
Isle guard gets called to Iraq
Who: Hawaii Army National Guard's 29th Infantry Brigade (Separate) has 3,100 members, more than 2,000 of whom are from the islands.
What: Brigade members were alerted last week that they will be called to duty.
Where: They are expected to be deployed to Balad, north of Baghdad, Iraq.
When: The deployment would begin in February, preceded by three or four months of training on the mainland.
Maj. Chuck Anthony, Hawaii National Guard spokesman, said his headquarters has not received official word where the training will take place. But his boss, Maj. Gen. Bob Lee, head of the 6,000-member Hawaii Army and Air National Guard, said last week that the training will not be in Hawaii.
This is because there are not enough soldiers here to help the National Guardsmen with training. Nearly 10,000 soldiers from the 25th Division are now in Iraq or Afghanistan.
When the 625 soldiers from the Pacific Army Reserve's 411th Combat Engineer Battalion was mobilized in December, they were able to perform four months of pre-deployment training at Schofield Barracks since no one from the 25th Division had yet been sent overseas.
The Pentagon said yesterday that Reserve units will be given a long lead time to better prepare them, their families and their employers for their absences.
The Army National Guard and the Army Reserve are expected to constitute 40 percent of the 138,000 soldiers being sent to Iraq next year.
Reserve units heading for Iraq are now preparing for combat duty at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Fort Bliss is the Army's largest training site, with 1.1 million acres stretching across the far western tip of Texas north into New Mexico.
Currently training at Fort Bliss are 2,000 soldiers from the Idaho Army Guard's 116th Cavalry Brigade, which will go to Iraq this fall.
Fort Bliss also hosts the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery Center -- the Army's center for the education and training of air defense artillery soldiers and units -- and the Army's Sergeants Major Academy.
Another unresolved question is when the 3,100 29th Brigade soldiers, of which 2,000 are from the islands, will be mobilized. Lee has indicated that the mobilization order could come as early as September.
The 411th was alerted for combat duty in Iraq just before Thanksgiving and received its mobilization orders to report to Schofield on Jan. 7. The unit left Hawaii in early April and is now at Camp Victory North, a few miles east of Baghdad International Airport.
The Pentagon said yesterday that the 29th Brigade and the Texas Army National Guard's 56th Infantry Brigade would be replacing Washington Army National Guard's 81st Brigade in Balad, north of Baghdad.
Sgt. 1st Class Vladimir Hidiovo-Alban, a member of the 29th Brigade's 487th Field Artillery, was not aware of the Iraqi assignment late yesterday afternoon.
However, Hidiovo-Alban, who earned a combat ribbon serving with 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, helping to secure Kuwait's airport during the 1991 Gulf War, said if he has to go to war, "that's fine. That is why I joined the military."
But a year-long Iraqi deployment will complicate his family life since his wife, Janice, is a petty officer with a Kaneohe P-3 Orion squadron and will leave on a scheduled six-month deployment in December. "If I have to go, my sister will move here from Massachusetts to take care of our two children," Hidiovo-Alban said.
Yesterday's Pentagon announcement said in Afghanistan the Southern European Task Force based in Vicenza, Italy, will take command from the 25th Infantry Division in March. Members of the division's 3rd Brigade as well as the Tropic Lightning's headquarters element, headed by Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, have been in Kandahar since March.
The New York Army National Guard 42nd Infantry Division will begin moving into Iraq in December to replace the 1st Infantry Division, whose units include the 2nd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division.
The last time the 29th Brigade was activated was in May 1968 during the Vietnam War. At that time 40 percent, or 1,500 members, actually served in Vietnam.
Along with the 2,000 soldiers from the 29th Brigade, an additional 120 -- personnel specialist, journalists and engineers -- have been altered for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. The latest alert is the largest in the history of the Hawaii Army National Guard.
Because of the Iraqi mission, the 29th Brigade has altered its July 17-30 summer training, where all of its units were supposed to train together at the Big Island's Pohakuloa Training Area.
Only the 500 soldiers of the brigade's 2nd Battalion, 299th Infantry, which is normally stationed in Hilo, will train at Pohakuloa and Kilauea Military Reservation in Hilo. Additional brigade units totaling 1,150 soldiers who are part of the 29th from California, Oregon, American Samoa, Saipan and Guam will train at their home stations.
Hawaii National Guard
www.dod.state.hi.us/hiarng
