3,000 guardsmen prepare to go to war

S.C.-based unit could be called up next year

By CHUCK CRUMBO

ccrumbo@thestate.com

FORT STEWART, Ga. — The conversation comes in short, excited bursts as a convoy of four Humvees rolls down a street.

“RPG tank. Nine o’clock.”

“Where’s he at? Show me where he’s at.”

“Nine o’clock. Nine o’clock.”

There’s a burst of gunfire, and then blood splatters on the Humvee’s windshield.

“I’m dead.”

The simulated attack happened one recent afternoon inside an air-conditioned tractor-trailer truck packed with computers, monitors and projection screens. It was just a sliver of two weeks of summer training for the S.C. National Guard’s 218th Infantry Brigade.

The training takes place annually. But soldiers say there is an added sense of urgency to this year’s exercises. That’s because the 218th could be called up and deployed in mid-2007, according to an Army schedule.

Their likely destination — Afghanistan.

The South Carolina brigade’s commanders already have briefed U.S. Forces Command at Fort McPherson, Ga., about the 3,000-soldier unit’s readiness and capabilities.

But a call-up and deployment to Afghanistan is not a certainty, Guard leaders say.

“The unit is not currently on any type of alert message or alert orders,” says Col. Pete Brooks, S.C. National Guard spokesman. “There are just tons of rumors out there. No one is saying, ‘You are going.’ There’s none of that.”

Orders usually are issued about 90 days in advance, Brooks says. “Everyone agrees that the brigade might get a future mission at some time. But the type of mission and when, who knows?”

The possible mission, code-named Task Force Phoenix, would include training and advising the Afghanistan National Army, commanders say. They note the mission has been carried out by other Guard brigades from Florida, Indiana, Oklahoma — and now Oregon.

The speculation is fueled, in part, by the fact the 218th, based in Newberry, is the only one of the National Guard’s 16 enhanced brigades that has not been deployed as a whole unit since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on Washington and New York.

The brigade, though, has not stayed home. Since 9/11, about two-thirds of the brigade’s 3,000 troops have been mobilized and deployed.

While Afghanistan might be on soldiers’ minds, Sgt. 1st Class Walter Fuller, the motor pool sergeant, advises troops not to think too far ahead. He served in Desert Storm with the 24th Infantry Division and has been in Bosnia and Kosovo on deployments.

“I tell them I don’t believe in any rumors until I’m sitting on a plane and going someplace else,” Fuller says.

‘TRAIN TO FIGHT’

Whether the brigade is going or staying, Lt. Col. Blake Storey, commander of the Rock Hill-based 178th Engineer Battalion, says troops approached this year’s annual training no differently.

“We train to fight,” Storey says. “Deployment is always part of our mind-set.”

That’s why troops used the simulator — known as the Virtual Convoy Operations Trainer or VCOT.

Inside the trailer, four teams of three soldiers each hook up to a computer that simulates a convoy mission through a city in the Middle East.

One soldier takes the “wheel” of the simulated Humvee, another serves as commander and a third mans the machine gun.

The driver and commander of one of the teams sit at a table with computer monitors that serve as “windshields.” Their gunner stands inside a turret and wears a headset that has images projected onto a pair of goggles.

Members of the other teams also wear headsets, sitting side by side at a table.

The troops have to be on the lookout for insurgents packing machine guns and grenade launchers under their clothing, suicide bombers driving cars alongside the Humvees, and snipers on rooftops.

The simulation mixes in “friendly” vehicles manned by other U.S. troops, school buses, and civilian “noncombatants” driving cars or walking across the street.

“The VCOT training was in preparation for future missions just like all of our training,” says Brig. Gen. Bob Livingston, the 218th’s commander. “It does fit a possible mission in Iraq or Afghanistan but so does all of our other training.”

The brigade is so large that no Army post had enough room for all of its units to train together this year. So the brigade dispatched units to Fort Stewart, located outside of Savannah; Fort Knox, Ky.; Fort Sill, Okla.; and Fort Lewis, Wash.

Knowing that, if deployed, units would be spread out, brigade commanders set up daily conference calls to swap information. Livingston, of Columbia, hop-scotched from one post to another keeping tabs on the troops.

A deployment isn’t much different from annual training, Storey says. Family emergencies still crop up, requiring soldiers to head home, and there are occasional injuries. For the troops, the facilities at Fort Stewart are Spartan at best. They spend two weeks living in one-story, concrete block barracks when not in the field.

Brigade commanders took advantage of having units at different posts, Livingston says. Each post’s firing ranges fit the training needs of specific units.

For example, the brigade’s tanks trained at Fort Knox, the Army’s primary armored training center. At Fort Stewart, crews of the M2A2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles sharpened their skills on the gunnery range.

“As a result, we have the highest qualification scores for our tanks and Bradley weapon systems,” Livingston says. “Our basic skills are finely honed.”

Livingston hopes to get in one more two-week session next year — before a possible call-up — at a common post where all units can train together.

‘PERISHABLE SKILLS’

Every minute and every task performed during annual training needs to count, soldiers say.

Just hours shy of packing up and returning to their home armory, members of the motor pool company are replacing a TOW missile launcher on a Bradley.

“This is something we’d have to do in the field,” says Fuller, a member of Company C, 1st Battalion, 118th Infantry. “It’s good training.”

Annual training also is valuable for molding crews and units, commanders say.

Out on Fort Stewart’s Red Cloud gunnery range, members of the brigade’s Bradley battalion are pressing to wrap up gunnery practice.

It’s about 4 p.m., and the 118th Infantry’s commander, Lt. Col. Robert Braddock of Goose Creek, figures his troops would be on the range for another 10 to 12 hours. Then, they’ll start preparing for the return home.

“The taxpayers are going to get their bang for the buck,” says Braddock, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran.

The extensive training is necessary because “this is a real perishable skill,” Braddock says.

For the Bradley crew led by Staff Sgt. Steve Legette — a veteran Bradley commander who teaches and coaches at Wando High School in Mount Pleasant — the two-week training affords members a chance to work together.

Sgt. Kendrick Swinton of St. Stephens learns his new job as the Bradley’s gunner.

“It’s a big difference,” says Swinton, a former Bradley driver.

Space is so cramped in the Bradley crew compartment, the 6-foot-4 Swinton has to place his left leg between the feeding mechanisms for the vehicle’s machine gun and 25 mm chain gun.

Replacing Swinton as the driver is Spc. Sean Dempsey, an Iraq veteran who was a foot soldier in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.

“This is my first time training with a Bradley,” says Dempsey of Conway. “It’s all new to me. I knew what I was doing over there” with the 82nd.

‘I’LL MISS MY FAMILY’

The talk among the three soldiers turns to the possible mission to Afghanistan and what it would mean to them and their families. All are married; two are parents.

The possibility of being sent to Afghanistan is something they accept.

“If I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go,” says Swinton, a heavy equipment operator and father of an 8-year-old and 2-year-old.

Dempsey, who also has a 2-year-old, returned from a one-year deployment in February 2004. “I know I’ll miss my family,” he said.

Legette, a 12-year veteran of the Guard, spent a year on active duty in 2003 providing security at Fort Jackson.

While he wasn’t out of the country, the mobilization meant he took a year off from teaching and coaching.

Another deployment probably means Legette would have to put aside plans to become a school principal and interrupt work on his doctorate.

First Sgt. Robert Joyner, a 30-year member of the Guard who deployed with the 218th during Desert Storm, says soldiers have to keep focused on their training.

“If you do get deployed, you hope everything you do will be second nature,” says Joyner, a North Charleston police detective and member of the 118th Infantry.

“If we do go over there, we want to do a good job and bring everybody home.”

Reach Crumbo at (803) 771-8503.