1st Cavalry Readies to Redeploy Home

In our everyday lives when we have to move we know how complicated it can be. We have to find boxes and tape, we have to carefully pack, and we have to round up friends to help us move our belongings into a truck, or, if we are not so lucky, we have to pay someone to do that. Imagine, then, having to move an entire military unit from one country to the next, not just the people, but their possessions and their equipment.

That is the task faced at Camp Liberty, Iraq, by the 1^st Cavalry Division. Members of the Special Troops Battalion are packing and preparing for the big move, for redeployment back home to the United States. This will occur two months from now. They will move back to Fort Hood, Texas.

The first step was to determine what equipment the units did not really need. That material was packed up first and some of it is already at home. Next, more essential equipment is carefully inventoried and labeled, and then put into the shipping containers. Each container will be examined by customs officers. Then the boxes are sealed. They are then moved to Kuwait, where other soldiers load them onto transport ships waiting to start the journey across the world, through the Gulf of Mexico, to Texas.

Also, the Special Troops help soldiers to find their planes for the ride home, and make sure that their equipment goes with them.

Some of the heavy vehicles will be the last things to go. They often have to stay in Iraq for a time to help the new unit that will be arriving to operate, until their own equipment follows them into the area.

Without special logistics troops none of this would be possible. They create the plans, from which routes to take, to how big the convoys will be and how they will be protected, to how much fuel is going to be consumed, to how big the trucks will need to be to carry the heavy items, to how much food and how many people hours need to be budgeted for the move, to which port facilities are best suited to the units that need to move. Other details that need to be coordinated are finding the aircraft to fly soldiers home and ships to move the really heavy items like tanks and trucks.

In fact, such items are often left in Iraq permanently, to be used by successive units. This can deplete National Guard units at home, which leave the US with all of their equipment, but return minus key items. The Pentagon has not yet budgeted to replace this equipment, which naturally takes a lot of wear and tear while in theater.

1st Cav. Moves, US Army