82nd Airborne unhappy with Iraq, Afghanistan troop withdrawals. Fighters fear end of war.

Verne Strickland Blogmaster    July 11, 2011


TRAINED TO FIGHT AND KILL, OUR PROFESSIONAL FIGHTERS WANT TO DO NO LESS THAN THIS. CAN WE BLAME THEM?

David Wood woodwriter@hotmail.com Become a fan of this reporter

First Posted: 7/11/11 12:46 PM ET Updated: 7/11/11 03:39 PM ET

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- Among the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne's 1st Brigade Combat Team, there's a sinking feeling the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will fade away. Instead of an exciting and challenging combat tour, they'll be relegated to the dread "garrison life" here at Fort Bragg.

For those who enlisted after 9/11, combat deployments have been an expected part of the deal. The constant cycle of deployments of the past decade has no doubt been tough on families, and the strain is exacting a cost on the physical and mental fitness of those in uniform; certainly there are some who are sick of it.

But others are eager to get in at least one last deployment before the fighting ends, dreading a life confined their home base, with its 9-to-5 routine and endless training for a war that never comes. They signed up to go to war. They are good at it, especially the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan which demands courage, physical stamina, ingenuity and individual initiative.

"I'm afraid I'm not going to get the chance to go again," said Spec. Brenton Parish, a 21-year-old paratrooper from Fond du Lac, Wis. "I like doing my job, and I can only do that when I'm deployed," he told The Huffington Post.

In few other endeavors is a 21-year-old given responsibility for the lives of a dozen of his or her colleagues, or charged with negotiating a peace deal with village elders and tribesmen.

Increasingly over the past decade, Americans in uniform have come to think of themselves as professionals, and war is their profession.

"We're itching to go back -- our boys are out there," said Sgt. Brandon Mendes, 27, from St. Louis, a communications specialist. "As the most free nation in the world, there's a responsibility that goes with that. Everybody sees a purpose to it; we're out there doing something."

For these soldiers, life at war is simpler, more exciting and more fulfilling than life at home at Fort Bragg or Camp Lejeune. Out there, "down-range" in the military vernacular, young sergeants and lieutenants hold power. Often they are leading their men on dangerous missions that carry important strategic weight: convincing village elders to side with the Afghan government and not with the Taliban.

It is meaningful work laced with adrenalin -- and no worries about car payments or babysitters.Not to be overlooked: pay is tax-free in a war zone, and there's an extra $550 a month paid for hazardous duty.

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In contrast, life at home -- in garrision -- is routine, and there's enough brass around that more strict attention is paid to carefully mowed lawns, spotless uniforms, shined shoes and meticulous barbering.

"I want to get in at least one more deployment, to Afghanistan," said Capt. Tom Cieslak, a staff officer with the 1st Brigade. "If we're going back to garrison life, to pressed and starched uniforms and all that? After my seven years of war, I don't think I could do that."

Deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are slowing dramatically. Of the 46,000 troops left in Iraq, many units already shipping home and not being replaced. Two battalions are coming back from Afghanistan this summer, followed by a third battalion this fall. They will not be replaced.

"Yeah, it seems to be toning down," Spec. Nicholas Weeks, a 21-year-old paratrooper from Payette, Idaho, said recently. "I definitely want to go again. That's why I joined. I like deployments a lot more than being in garrison; on deployment we're actually doing our job."

Until recently, the deployment cycle was rigid and predictable: as one brigade was preparing to leave the war zone, another was arriving to take its place with a third training to go. Deployments were planned years in advance; after arriving home, commanders had barely a year to receive and train new soldiers and Marines, restock equipment and retrain before they were off on another deployment.

But that momentum has been broken. There are some brigades that aren't even on the future deployment schedule.

Not only is the deployment cycle slowing down, but both the Army and Marine Corps are due to shed the extra manpower they were allotted at the height of the fighting in Iraq -- about 22,000 troops -- with potential future cuts reaching as much as 40,000 personnel.

When announcing the phased withdrawal of 33,000 troops from Afghanistan last month, President Obama declared: "The tide of war is receding."

"Guys are starting to smell it," said Army Col. Mark Stock, who commands the 1st Brigade Combat Team. He said soldiers are already frantically conniving and trading to get into a brigade that's scheduled to deploy.
There are some who are so accustomed to life in combat that they simply are uncomfortable back home, even living on a military base. It's not unknown for combat veterans to volunteer for back-to-back deployments.

"I feel safer over there than here," said a sergeant who has deployed numerous times in Iraq and Afghanistan and is no longer on active duty. "I know what the situation is, I trust the guys over there. I don't trust hardly anybody here."

Garrison life can be more dangerous than living in Afghanistan. In a major study released last year, the Army reported that a small but growing number of soldiers who perform credibly in combat turn to high-risk behavior at home, including drug abuse, drunk driving, motorcycle street-racing, petty crime and domestic violence.

The study, commissioned by Gen. Peter Chiarelli, assistant chief of staff, estimated that 40,000 soldiers are using drugs illicitly, and misdemeanor offenses are rising by 5,000 cases a year. Among the growing number of Army suicides -- which soared past the civilian rate and reached a record 300 cases last year -- almost half had never deployed from garrison.

In addition to the suicides, the Army study noted there were 107 fatal accidents among its active-duty soldiers and 50 murders in 2009, part of an ugly toll of 345 active-duty, non-combat deaths -- about 100 more than were killed in combat that year.

According to the report's authors, platoon sergeants and company commanders who gave their soldiers a great deal of freedom to maneuver in Afghanistan were failing to provide close supervision once their soldiers returned to the temptations of garrison life.

"Simply stated, we are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy," the study concluded.

Still, not all soldiers are unhappy to see the wars winding down.

Capt. Bryan Morgan, 30, an airborne company commander from Indianola, Wash., fought a hard tour in Ramadi, in western Iraq, in 2004, and recently went back for a second year as an adviser to the Iraqi security forces.

"I'm glad to see the end of it," he said recently. "I'm glad that we accomplished something. I lost some friends over there, and Iraq has improved, the standard of living is better, and the police I worked with are more honest. That's the end state everybody's worked for."

Fort Bragg is birthplace of storied 82nd Airborne Division, which led 1944 Allied air assault at Normandy.

Verne Strickland Blogmaster:  June 6, 2011


I was seven years of age in 1944 when the Miracle of D-Day unfolded. I didn't understand then what was happening, but I knew it was something big. Our little community of Battleboro was affected like every other village, city and rural crossroads by the war. But when the Germans surrendered, I found my Mother crying tears of relief and prayerful gratitude in our living room. I will never forget that. So it gives me chills each time the D-Day Observance comes. Ike was the Commander, but the Lord was the Master, and without His sustaining grace and guidance, we might be speaking German today. We are so blessed. I have several of Ernie Pyle's books. This dispatch from his wartime correspondence is especially appropriate today.

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North Carolina's Training Camps

John S. Duvall 
http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/workshops/wwii/Session2.htm

I want to tell you what the opening of the second front entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you.
 

–From war correspondent Ernie Pyle’s lead news story on the Normandy Invasion, June 12, 1944

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, the Allies launched a vast invasion force against the Normandy coast of France. The long-awaited “second front” was opened against German forces in the west. A month earlier Governor J. Melville Broughton issued a call to the people of North Carolina to be ready to observe, with prayer and public tribute, the impending attack against the Nazis in Europe.

According to all indications, we are approaching one of the most momentous events in all history. Invasion Day, or D-Day, as it is referred to, will be more than a dramatic incident; it will be the all-out effort of the armed forces representing the cause of democracy, decency, freedom, and righteousness in the world. Furthermore, in this effort will be involved the lives of thousands of young men from our own state who are a part of the great armed force now poised for action . . . Nearly 300,000 of our North Carolina sons are in the armed services, a large part of whom are in combat areas. In this approaching hour of grave danger, they should be sustained by the earnest prayers of all our people.

Sergeant Elmo Jones of North Carolina was one of the very first Allied soldiers to land on French soil on D-Day. Jones, a member of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment [PIR], 82D Airborne Division, was assigned to lead a Pathfinder team into Normandy in preparation for a massive air assault by more than 20,000 paratroopers who would land before dawn on D-Day. Heavily laden with equipment, Sergeant Jones jumped from his C-47 aircraft at an altitude of 300 feet, his parachute blossomed over his head in the night sky and, almost at once, he was on the ground in enemy territory. . . . Sergeant Jones’ seven-man team waited for the main body of the 505th PIR to arrive overhead. Their team was one of the few in the correct location.

By daylight on D-Day, some 13,400 U.S. paratroopers of the 82D and 101st Airborne Divisions, both trained at Fort Bragg, were fighting German troops over a wide area of Normandy’s Cotentin Peninsula.
For the Americans, the airborne drops had been anything but a success. Heavy German antiaircraft fire and clouds disoriented the aircraft crews; paratroopers were scattered everywhere, often far from their objectives. Only a few units, like the 505th PIR, got down on the correct drop zone in fair order. Providentially, the 505th PIR captured its key objective, Ste. Mere Eglise, the first French town to be liberated from the Germans, by dawn. .
. .
Although the airborne assault was not a “textbook” drop, the troopers of the 82D and 101st still accomplished their mission of disrupting and confusing the Germans, preventing counterattacks against “Utah Beach” where the American 4th Division began landing at first light. Reinforced by glider-borne infantry and artillery, the two divisions fought in Normandy for over a month, sustaining a casualty rate of nearly fifty
percent.

At first surrounded by German infantry, tanks, and artillery, the Airborne units, joined by seaborne forces, pushed the enemy back, seizing bridges, crossroads, and other key objectives as they helped enlarge the allied lodgement in Europe. In Normandy, the 82D and 101st proved the worth of parachute and glider forces beyond all doubt. Moreover, these North Carolina trained troopers had led the strategic assault which would end the Nazi occupation of Europe.

William C. Lee

In November 1942, Governor Broughton noted that the man most responsible for the development of airborne forces in the United States Army was Major General William C. Lee of Harnett County.

Born and raised in Dunn, Bill Lee graduated from North Carolina State College and saw service with the 81st Division in World War I. After the war, Lee decided to make the army a career. He served in the Tank Corps and worked with French and British tank units during 1933–35. It was while he was in Europe in the mid-1930s that he became aware that the Germans were training parachute and glider units.

The idea of airborne [troops] became a passion for Lee.
It was none other than President Roosevelt who stirred up interest in the airborne in 1940. Alarmed by newsreels showing the German airborne units in action in Europe, FDR asked the Army to study the idea which led to Major Bill Lee’s assignment to the project on June 25, 1940.

Through his efforts the Army staged successful experiments with a parachute test platoon at Fort Benning in the summer of 1940, set up the first tactical parachute battalion, the 501st, and activated, early in 1941, the Provisional Parachute Group—with Lieutenant Colonel Bill Lee at its head.

In March 1942, the Army created Airborne Command at Fort Bragg with Lee as commanding general. Based on his recommendations, the army decided to create Airborne divisions, units of over 10,000 soldiers, complete with artillery, engineers, and support elements. Fort Bragg would be the training center. . . . Lee was promoted to Major General in August 1942 and given command of the 101st Airborne Division. The 82D and the 101st Airborne Divisions moved to Fort Bragg in the fall of 1942 to begin training for overseas deployment.

Airborne Command transformed the skies over Fort Bragg and the North Carolina Sandhills region in the period 1942–45, with parachutes, troop transports, and gliders a common sight. To augment Fort Bragg, the Army developed Camp Mackall at Hoffman, North Carolina, to be a key airborne training center. Construction began in the spring of 1942 and by early 1943 an airfield was complete, along with 1,750 buildings. . . .

Jack H. Highsmith of Wilmington wore this army air corps patch on his uniform while serving overseas. The Airborne Troop Command consisted of aircrews that delivered paratroopers and gliders to prearranged landing zones. Highsmith participated in several combat operations in the European theater.

Named for the first U.S. paratrooper to die in combat, . . . Camp Mackall was soon joined by another key airborne establishment, Laurinburg-Maxton Army Air Base. Home of the First Troop Carrier Command, Laurinburg-Maxton was activated August 28, 1942.

The new base, another extraordinary construction effort, was assigned the mission of providing intensive training for troop carrier and glider groups and for coordinating the training with “airborne units of infantry, artillery, paratroopers, engineers, and medical components of the Army.” Thus the vision of General Bill Lee had created a vast training establishment for the Army’s new Airborne arm, complete with large airfields at Pope, Mackall, and Laurinburg-Maxton. . . .


Before the war’s end, Airborne Command would train five airborne divisions and a host of independent units, including the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the army’s first black parachute unit.

Airborne training was only one aspect of the sprawling Fort Bragg complex, whose population exceeded one hundred thousand personnel by mid-1943. New inductees were received by the thousands throughout the war years and tens of thousands of artillerymen were trained on the post’s extensive ranges. In addition to the five airborne divisions, the 9th and 100th Infantry Divisions trained at Fort Bragg, as did the famous 2nd Armor Division.

VS:  God bless America!

82nd Airborne paratrooper will help head observance of D-Day in France.

Verne Strickland Blogmaster

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Staff photo by Marcus Castro

Staff Sgt. Jonathan Hercik will be with a select group of 82nd Airborne Division soldiers who will take part in a jump as part of observances of the 67th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. Hercik is the division's Jumpmaster of the Year.

AP file photo

U.S. troops come ashore at Omaha Beach during the June 6, 1944, invasion of the Normandy coast.

Sometime today, Staff Sgt. Jonathan Hercik will be flying over northern France in the belly of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules loaded with a group of paratroopers representing Fort Bragg's 82nd Airborne Division.

Their mission: parachute over La Fiere Drop Zone in commemoration of Operation Neptune, the initial airborne assault phase of the storied Normandy landings of World War II.

Monday marks the 67th anniversary of D-Day, which ranks among World War II's defining moments. A weeklong crusade of remembrance, complete with a return to the beaches and battlefields of Normandy, is planned through Tuesday.

As primary jumpmaster on the 82nd Airborne drop, Hercik will be in charge of the 20 to 30 troopers in the aircraft. A lanky 27-year-old infantryman from Wadsworth, Ohio, Hercik is assigned to Fort Bragg's Company B, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment.

He called this, his 48th jump, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

"I'm really excited about the airborne operation portion of it," Hercik said. "It bears a lot of responsibility. It's an honor to be the primary jumpmaster on this."

In 1944, Operation Neptune took place on the night of June 5 and the following morning of June 6. The air assault, a mass operation of troops from the 82nd, Fort Campbell's 101st Airborne Division and Great Britain's forces, allowed the Allies to place soldiers on the ground behind enemy lines.

"They opened up a lot of bridges that would be needed for armor. ... They assaulted several German strongholds, such as St. Mere Eglise, which is close to where we will be jumping. They pretty much prepared the way for the mainland assault," said Hercik.

Jimmie Hallis, the curator for the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum on Fort Bragg, said the airborne phase of the Allies' Normandy invasion was designed to bring mass destruction and confusion to the German army.

"The Germans were already suspect of where the invasion was coming," Hallis said. "Deception on the Allies' part caused them to stumble and stall. When the paratroopers hit the ground, it caused the Germans a lot of problems, and then the seaborne invasion pretty much sealed the fate for the Germans in Europe and, especially, in France."

Nearly seven decades later, D-Day - the Allies' amphibious invasion of northern France on June 6, 1944 - remains the largest seaborne invasion in recorded history. Troops from the United States, Britain, Canada and France stormed ashore over a 60-mile front.

"It was the main foothold on the continent for the Allies. It's the foothold in the European theater and the beginning of the end for the Germans," Hallis said.

Allied forces charged the shores of five beaches on France's northern coast, facing heavy artillery, machine guns and German land mines. The cost was high: About 215,000 Allied soldiers and about as many Germans were killed or wounded during D-Day and the ensuing three months before the Allies captured Normandy.
That stronghold opened a path toward Paris, eventually leading them to Germany and victory over Hitler's Nazi regime.

When Hercik was told he had been selected to represent the 82nd during the 67th anniversary ceremonies, he went back and reviewed the importance of the D-Day invasion. "Just the scope of this airborne operation and the mainland assault to Normandy, France, was huge," he said.

Hercik didn't just receive this honor: He earned it. Hercik won the 2011 Division Jumpmaster of the Year competition in April, bettering 2,300 jumpmasters on Fort Bragg along the way.

Some of the other troopers selected for the D-Day jump team also won competitions. Sgt. Maximo Miranda, who is with Hercik's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, was chosen after taking first place in the Brigade Noncommissioned Officer of the Year competition.

A couple of paratroopers will represent each brigade combat team on post. Some of the support units also are sending paratroopers to the international observance.

Maj. Gen. Jim Huggins, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, and Command Sgt. Maj. Bryant Lambert will head the command team.

Along with today's scheduled jump, Hercik expects to be involved in an itinerary of ceremonies and dinners that the French locals are hosting. While there, he hopes to visit war museums around Normandy, such as those at St. Mere Eglise, Carentan and Cherbourg.

"I'll be able to see the drop zones they dropped on and get a feeling for that history," he said. "Even more so than I can sitting here at Fort Bragg. And to meet the French people - the locals there - it's all special."

Staff writer Michael Futch can be reached at futchm@fayobserver.com or 486-3529.