The placement of a Mississippi Army National Guard brigade on alert for deployment to Iraq won’t immediately affect local soldiers, a top official said Tuesday.
The designation will provide more federal funding for training and keeping full-time staff in anticipation of a possible deployment in summer of 2009.
But scheduled drills will continue as planned, and soldiers will not be forced to leave their jobs and families, said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Van, who commands the 1st Battalion, 155th infantry, headquartered in McComb.
“We are business as usual,” Van said, reiterating the one-weekend-a-month schedule many guardsmen are on. “We as infantrymen train as hard as what our time and money allows. … We have to plan for the worst and hope for the best.”
Maj. Gen. Harold A. Cross, Mississippi’s adjutant general, said Monday that the Department of Defense had issued the alert, which is not an imminent mobilization order.
The 155th Brigade Combat Team includes nearly 3,500 soldiers across the state, with the 1-155th including armories from Natchez to Columbia and the Coast. The 155th was previously deployed to Iraq for much of 2005, an experience Van said could help returning soldiers if the brigade is called to action.
“The attitude which I’ve heard so far is much more reassuring and confident,” Van said. “There were a lot of unknowns when we deployed the last time. Now everybody knows what to do. I think the soldiers are more prepared because they’ve already been through it once.”
Van said preparation for a possible second deployment would be more intensive for families than the soldiers themselves.
“That’s the biggest prep,” Van said of telling loved ones in advance. “They can’t hope that we don’t go back to Iraq and at the last minute we do.
“There’s secondary and tertiary effects for every command the Guard puts out there. We’re mobilizing but nobody thinks about how many kids there are at the house and who’s gonna take them to football practice.”
However, the length of time in theatre for any potential deployment would also likely be shorter than the brigade’s earlier stint in Iraq, Van said.
