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May 2006
Mission, makeup of 48th in transition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team returned home from Iraq this spring, it was just the beginning of major changes for the unit.
The brigade is transitioning from a mechanized to a light infantry unit, losing its tanks, self-propelled artillery and Bradley Fighting Vehicles that were integral to its efforts in Iraq. In addition, jobs are being cut or changed and some armories are expected to be moved to more populous parts of the state.
National Guard officials say these changes are part of the federal government’s greater reliance on citizen-soldiers to fulfill homeland security duties. Last week, President Bush announced a plan to use 6,000 Guard soldiers at a time to help police the border with Mexico, though it’s not clear whether the 48th will be tapped for that duty.
The 48th is ahead of a trend that is likely to catch up with most state Guard brigades, going to lighter, speedier vehicles with its mission geared more for urban warfare than traditional battlefield maneuvers.
“The bread and butter of the Army is going to be light,” said Maj. Gen. David Poythress, commander of the Georgia National Guard. “The 48th will essentially align itself to the mission we are already doing.”
Poythress said he does not envision “anyone will be forced out who doesn’t want out. But there will be people who will be changing jobs.”
The brigade eventually will have about 700 fewer soldiers, reducing the total strength from 4,129 to 3,429. Most battalions will lose positions except the 148th Support Battalion, which will grow by 159 soldiers.
Three entire units that returned from a yearlong deployment in Iraq will be deactivated by September 2007, according to the restructuring plan. They are Echo Troop of the 108th Cavalry Regiment, the 248th Military Intelligence Company and the 648th Engineer Battalion.
The brigade will add a new battalion that will combine engineering, intelligence and communications elements.
The two infantry battalions — the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 121st Infantry Regiment — will convert from heavy mechanized units to light infantry; the 118th Field Artillery Regiment will trade its self-propelled howitzers for smaller 105 mm towed howitzers; and the 108th Armor Regiment will convert from a tank unit to a reconnaissance and surveillance squadron.
Some 48th companies will be moved from their current armories to help boost recruitment efforts, said Maj. Gen. Terry Nesbitt, commanding general of the Georgia Army National Guard. Nesbitt said Guard units were positioned 50 years ago when the demographics of the state were vastly different. Some units from South Georgia may be moved to more heavily populated areas in the northern part of the state.
Units that have both male and female soldiers, for instance, would be moved from rural towns to urban centers to assist efforts to recruit women.
The transformation is part of the Army’s plan to adapt to a new era of combat. The Army’s structure has remained largely unchanged since World War II, but the nature of warfare has changed, say military analysts.
“Heavy brigades were designed to fight the Nazis,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the nonprofit Lexington Institute in Washington, D.C. “They simply aren’t the brigades with which you do counterinsurgency operations or peacekeeping. That’s doubly true of the Guard because they are supposed to be the backup for active-duty units.”
Thompson said that following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and Hurricane Katrina last year, “light forces seem a lot more viable than armored divisions.”
The Army is also building smaller, self-contained “units of action” and moving away from larger divisions, which can each have up to 20,000 soldiers.
The smaller units usually have about 3,500 soldiers and offer the Army a bigger pool of brigades for missions around the world. The 48th Brigade’s self-contained structure in Iraq is what most Army units will look like in the future.
“Think of Lego blocks,” Thompson said. “You can snap them together or snap them apart to fit your needs.”
Thompson said the Army is being ambitious in attempting its transformation while fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not all of the repercussions of the makeover are fully known yet, he added.
The 48th’s Bradley Fighting Vehicles are a prime example.
The soldiers credited their 14 Bradley armored vehicles for saving their lives on many occasions. And the 10th Mountain Division relied heavily on the Gainesville-based soldiers in their last few weeks in Iraq to provide security in western Baghdad neighborhoods where sectarian violence was a daily danger. Insurgents are often intimidated by the hulking Bradleys, which can withstand attacks that Humvees cannot.
Thompson said the Army may be underestimating the usefulness of heavy metal in the future.
“It sounds as though modularity is a good idea, but one for which all the battlefield implications are not fully fleshed out,” Thompson said. “That’s inevitable when you are doing something very different and doing it in the midst of a war. If we had come up with this plan in the last decade, we could have fleshed it out at the [Army’s] National Training Center at Fort Irwin. Instead, we are fleshing them out on the streets of Baghdad.”
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Remembering the 48th’s fallen
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For Memorial Day, we’re asking readers to share their tributes to the 26 men who died while serving with the 48th Brigade in its deployment to Iraq. You may remember them as a group or individually. Some responses may appear in the newspaper.
[Click here for special audio/visual presentation]
ANDERSON, SGT. 1ST CLASS VICTOR, 39, Ellaville, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
BRUNSON, SPC. JACQUES, 30, Americus; 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
DINGLER, SPC. JOSHUA, 19, Hiram,1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment.
DODSON, SGT. PHILIP JR., 42, Forsyth, 148th Support Battalion.
DRAUGHN, SGT. GEORGE R. JR., 29, Decatur, 108th Cavalry Regimen.
EDWARDS, SGT. 1ST CLASS AMOS C., Jr., 41, Savannah, 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment.
FULLER, STAFF SGT. CARL, 44, Covington; 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
FUTRELL, SPC. MARCUS, 20, Macon, 148th Support Battalion.
GANEY, SPC. JERRY L. JR., 29, Folkston, 648th Engineer Battalion.
GIBBS, SPC. MATHEW, 21, Ambrose, 648th Engineer Battalion.
GILLICAN, SGT. CHARLES C. III, 35, Brunswick, 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment.
GRIJALVA, SPC. JAMES T., 26, Burbank, Ill. He was part of the Illinois National Guard’s 2nd Battalion, 130th Infantry Regiment assigned to the 48th Brigade.
HAGGIN, SGT. JONATHON, 26, Kingsland, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
HOLLAR, STAFF SGT. ROBERT L. JR., 35, Griffin, 108th Cavalry Regiment.
JONES, STAFF SGT. DAVID, 45, Augusta, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
KINLOW, SGT. JAMES, 35, Thomson, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
MERCER, SGT. CHAD, 25, Waycross, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
MERCK, STAFF SGT. DENNIS, 38, Evans, 878th Engineer Battalion.
NEWMAN, SPC CARLTON, T., 21, Landover, Md.; He was part of the Maryland National Guard’s 115th Infantry Regiment assigned to the 48th Brigade.
SAYLOR, SGT. PAUL, 21, Norcross, 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment.
SHELLEY, SGT. RONNIE, 34, Valdosta, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
STOKELY, SPC. MICHAEL, 23, Sharpsburg, 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment.
STRICKLAND, SGT. THOMAS, 27, Douglasville, 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment
THOMAS, SGT. JOHN, 33, Valdosta, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment
TRAVIS, STAFF SGT. PHILIP, 41, Snellville, 148th Support Battalion
WARREN, SGT. 1st CLASS CHARLES, 36, Duluth, 648th Engineer Battalion
Home at last: Ricky Stanley looks forward to his firstborn son
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Ricky Stanley speaks to his unborn son just after coming home. Belinda Stanley became pregnant when Ricky was home on leave in November. The baby is due in July. • Photos
Fort Stewart — Belinda Stanley rubs her arms against the chill of a misty morning and pulls a green blanket up to her chin. She’s sitting in a grandstand with her daughters, the three of them looking like fans at a high school football game. But what they have to cheer is far more important.
A year of waiting and worrying is almost over. Belinda’s husband, Sgt. Ricky Stanley, is returning from Iraq with the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
Belinda was so eager for their reunion that she left their home near Dublin at 3 a.m. to drive the 130 miles to Fort Stewart, near Savannah. It was still dark when she took her place in the reviewing stands at the same parade ground where she saw Ricky off last May. As the sun rises, a crowd of 500 joins her to welcome units from Dublin, Statesboro and other towns.
Belinda looks exhausted. “I didn’t get two hours of sleep last night,” she says.
It has been a year of sleepless nights. Belinda feared that Ricky would return a changed man, traumatized by what he had seen or haunted by something he had been forced to do. She feared that he wouldn’t return at all; 26 members of the brigade didn’t.
Now, sitting in the stands, her mind is focused not on death, but on life. A new life in her family. When Ricky came home on leave last fall, Belinda became pregnant. Beneath that green blanket, she’s carrying their first son.
The soldiers’ planes have landed, but the homecoming ceremony is running late. At 10 a.m., the PA announcer finally exclaims, “Here they are!”
A convoy of buses appears, and the place erupts. Belinda and the girls spring to life, hollering and waving and unfurling two banners.
As the soldiers form into ranks across the parade ground, an Army band strikes up “Georgia on My Mind.” After the national anthem and a few words from a general, the crowd rushes the field and the formations dissolve into a chaos of hugs and tears.
Belinda climbs down the stands with some difficulty and marches onto the field looking for Ricky, her high-heeled sandals sinking into the squishy turf. They spot each other and merge into a kiss.
Then Ricky steps back to examine his wife’s altered shape. He hasn’t seen her like this in almost 14 years, not since Chazmine, their younger daughter, was born 20 months after their first child, Ra’Teema.
Ricky traces his fingers across his wife’s stomach and bends close to whisper. He wants to talk to his son.
Ricky’s company has been given two days off before its members have to report back to Fort Stewart to begin out-processing. He loads his gear into Belinda’s blue Impala and they set out for home.
Ricky sees how tired his wife is and offers to drive.
“No, I’m fine,” she replies in a groggy voice.
He looks at her midsection and chuckles. “You’ve got a little more pooch than I thought you’d have.”
“That’s because it’s a boy,” Belinda says. At 35, she figured her childbearing years were behind her. But she’s happy; her 36-year-old husband wanted a son so badly.
As the car passes a guard shack with a lonely figure inside, Ricky shakes his head ruefully and says, “That’s some boring duty.”
He should know. Ricky spent his first months in Iraq driving supply convoys around Baghdad, along routes where roadside bombs were killing GIs in clusters. His last months were a blessed bore by comparison. He was a gate guard at an isolated post in a part of the country with little insurgent activity. One of the biggest scares came the day hail started to fall and everyone thought it was incoming mortar fire.
Ricky checks his watch. He never reset it from Georgia time. But now that he’s in Georgia, he can’t help but think of Iraq.
“It’s 8:15 at night over there,” he says. “I’d be in the middle of my shift. I miss the guys already.”
It’s approaching lunchtime. Belinda exits I-16 at Metter and pulls up to a McDonald’s drive-through to get cheeseburgers for the girls, who have been napping in the back seat. Ricky spies a KFC next door.
“I believe I’m gonna walk over there get me some American fried chicken,” he says. “We had fried chicken at our camp, but they didn’t season it right. I’m tired of those Iraq birds and all those camelburgers.”
Belinda later joins him and orders a combo of chicken and potato wedges. Instead of eating in the restaurant, though, she returns to the car and balances her lunch on her lap as she hits the interstate at 70 mph.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” Ricky asks. “I’m not sure it’s safe for you to drive while you eat like that.”
“Ricky,” Belinda replies wearily, “what do you think I’ve been doing all the time you’ve been gone?”
Since Ricky was mobilized 18 months ago, Belinda has juggled the obligations of life like that fast-food lunch: her job, her children, her church, her volunteer activities — and now her pregnancy. She has managed the home front ably. Her biggest challenge has been managing her emotions. With a husband in a war zone and another child on the way, it hasn’t been easy. There were days, especially last summer, when she cried off and on for hours and couldn’t bring herself to leave the house.
Ricky talked to his wife several times a week while he was gone. He knows his deployment was hard on her, maybe harder than it was on him.
When he notices her drip ketchup onto the steering wheel, he reaches over without a word and wipes it away with a napkin.
The Stanleys live in the countryside 10 miles west of Dublin. As Belinda angles off the highway for the last leg of the trip, Ricky says he wants to stop by his father’s house, which is on the way.
Carnell Stanley is a 65-year-old farmer and masonry contractor. Ricky often helps him at construction sites when he gets off from his regular job as a shipping supervisor at the YKK aluminum plant in Dublin. Ricky knew his time in Iraq was drawing to a close when he started dreaming about laying bricks with his dad. His dad was having the same dreams.
Belinda stops in front of her father-in-law’s brick home. No one’s there. Ricky phones him, and soon a red pickup truck comes bounding up the dirt road in back of the house. A gray-headed man with a broad smile climbs out of the cab stiffly.
“You been playing in your pig pen?” Ricky asks his father.
They embrace and stand there laughing for a full minute. They resemble each other down to their uniforms. Ricky wears sand-colored combat boots and desert fatigues with “Stanley” stitched across the pocket. His father wears shoes tinged with red Georgia clay and a blue work shirt with “Carnell” stitched on the pocket.
They talk about the things country folk always talk about.
“What’s the weather been like over there?”
“Hot,” Ricky says. “It was over 100 toward the end. I had sweat jumping off me like parachutes.”
Ricky scans the fields and notices tender green shoots pushing through the soil.
“How your peanuts doing?”
“Good. Put ‘em in last week,” his dad replies. “And I got a pretty field of wheat over there.”
A school bus barges by and Ricky waves. He leans against the pickup and paws the dirt with a boot.
“You get any scuppernongs on that vine over there?”
“Been getting ‘em for three seasons now,” his father says.
They catch each other’s eye and start laughing again.
“You know, I couldn’t go to work today,” Carnell Stanley says. “I wanted to be here when you got back.”
He clasps his son’s hand. “I’ll let you go on home and catch a nap before I come around and aggravate you.”
Back in the car, Ricky touches Belinda’s stomach again and feels the baby kick. “That boy’s getting ready to come out and act the fool with his daddy,” he says. “Hold on, son. I’m right here.”
When they finally get home, Ricky can’t believe his eyes. His yard is as yellow as an Easter chick. Big yellow ribbons deck every tree, and yellow balloons float above the mailbox and front entry. The owner of a local day care center — someone Belinda didn’t even know — decorated the grounds.
Ricky walks in the door and notices that Belinda has replaced the off-white living room furniture with a burgundy set. He collapses into the new love seat.
“I was thinking you’d like that chair over there,” Belinda says, pointing to a chaise longue.
Ricky dutifully redeploys and invites his wife to sit next to him.
“Are you sure I can fit?” she says. “You said my stomach was big as a basketball.”
Ricky cackles. “Oh, come on. There’s room for the three of us.”
He calls to his daughters and asks them to pull off his boots the way they used to when he came home from work. Chaz and ‘Teema each grab a foot and yank and go sprawling across the floor when the boots finally give way.
“I think I’m going to catch some scores on ESPN,” Ricky announces.
The first image that comes up on the big-screen TV is a commercial for the Army Reserve. A son is breaking the news to his father that he has enlisted. The old man is dubious and wants to know whether his boy will get good training. Of course, the boy says. “It’s the Army.”
Belinda, who seems half-asleep, rouses herself to roll her eyes and mutter, “Yeah.”
Ricky gets up to fetch his backpack. He bought jewelry for everyone during his layover in Kuwait. One bracelet — a tiny one — bears the name of his son, who is due in July. Ricky is a deeply religious man who wants to become an ordained minister, so it figures that he chose a name out of the Bible. “Zion,” the bracelet says in English and Arabic.
After a while, Ricky slips on a pair of sandals and walks out into the yard to inspect his property. He says little as he wanders among the trees and yellow ribbons. Ambling over to the driveway, he lifts the hood of their Ford Explorer and looks down to see a dog approaching cautiously. It’s his dog, Blackie.
Last May, when Ricky was getting ready to leave for Iraq, he suffered nightmares about desperate hand-to-hand combat with the enemy. The dreams upset him so much that he would get out of bed, sit on his front steps and pray in the stillness of the Georgia night, Blackie at his side.
As it turned out, Iraq didn’t resemble the nightmares. He experienced none of the face-to-face fighting he imagined from watching war movies.
But the reality was just as frightening: lethal bombs hidden on roads by faceless strangers. Surrounded by death, only his faith and the thought of home pulled him through.
When Ricky left for Iraq, his dog left home, too. Blackie wandered away and took up with his master’s brother, who lives across the field.
On this fine afternoon almost exactly a year later, Blackie is home. Ricky lowers the hood of his Ford and holds out a hand. The dog sniffs it and his tail begins to wag.
Final 48th Brigade troops return from Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fort Stewart, Ga. — When they spotted their father amid the formation of uniformed troops standing at attention, Amanda and Lyndsay Fisher couldn’t wait — even for 10 minutes of pomp and ceremony.
Amanda, 16, and 10-year-old Lyndsay bolted from their seats before the Army brass band finished playing and wrapped themselves around Lt. Col. George Fisher, who held his daughters quietly until the music ended.
They weren’t the only ones excited. After a long and dangerous year in Iraq, the final 280 Georgia National Guardsmen of the 48th Infantry Brigade had come home.
“They saw me coming and they jumped the gun a little bit,” said Fisher, 43, of Macon as he fought back tears.
“I just couldn’t hold back anymore,” said Amanda, smiling through her braces. “He’s been gone a long time.”
The 48th Brigade sent 4,300 citizen-soldiers — police officers, teachers, truck drivers and college students in civilian life — to Iraq in May 2005. Theirs was the largest deployment of the Georgia National Guard since World War II.
Thursday marked the official end of the brigade’s overseas mission, three weeks after troops began returning by the hundreds to Fort Stewart. Anticipation was obvious among family members crowding the parade ground bleachers as their loved ones in uniform stood a few feet away.
“Keep it short!” someone shouted as Brig. Gen. Larry Ross of the Georgia Guard uttered the first words of his welcoming speech. The crowded grandstand exploded in applause. Ross smiled and honored the request.
“This is the day we’ve all been waiting for since the first plane lifted off, when we could have all our soldiers back on U.S. soil,” Ross said.
Ricky Bradford of Dacula served 19 years in the 48th Brigade. After he retired and became a high-school auto shop teacher, Bradford’s son, 23-year-old Spc. Jonathan Bradford, joined the brigade and went to war.
Ricky Bradford measured the time not only in days, but also in inches. He let his military crewcut grow out in salt-and-pepper locks over his ears and shoulders, promising not to get a haircut until his son returned.
On Thursday, after a year of avoiding the barber, he sported a 7-inch ponytail.
“I just told my son, well, I’ll be miserable with you,” the elder Bradford said. “It reminded me every day of him. I’ve been in a hurry for him to get back.”
Jonathan Bradford, his arm wrapped around his wife, Gennifer, marveled at his father’s unusual sacrifice.
“I’m just glad he’s wearing a hat,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing him get it cut. I can’t believe how long it is.”
48th’s deployment restores reputation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Second Lt. Denny Thibault of Cumming enjoys a tender reunion with his wife, Chalete, at Fort Stewart.
Fort Stewart — By this weekend, Iraq will become another page in the history of the 48th Infantry Brigade as a chartered jet carrying the last remaining soldiers lands on Georgia soil.
That the end was near was apparent at a ceremony that carried into the early hours of Monday morning — Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of the 48th, returned carrying the unit’s guidon, its attached combat streamers fluttering in the damp wind.
“It really feels great to be back,” Rodeheaver said. “When the last soldier gets home, that’s when I take a deep sigh.”
About 85 percent of the 4,400-strong brigade has returned from a yearlong deployment in Iraq. A few more flights are scheduled throughout the remainder of the week, the last on Saturday.
The Georgia Army National Guard soldiers will go back to civilian lives with images of a hard year in Iraq indelibly etched in their memories.
They came back with 26 fewer among their ranks, a fact especially apparent this week for Lt. Col. John King, commander of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, which lost six soldiers last summer in the area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death.
King returned with Rodeheaver, happy to be home and sadly reminded of the “boys he lost” as his soldiers marched past Warrior’s Walk, the line of trees at Fort Stewart that pay homage to fallen soldiers.
“It was our generation’s turn to do our duty. And we did our duty,” said King, the police chief of Doraville. “It hasn’t come cheap.”
Iraq will always invoke many memories for soldiers. And for brigade veterans such as King, Iraq will also stand for something else: vindication of sorts for a National Guard unit that suffered a tarnished reputation during the Persian Gulf War.
In 1991, the 48th was called to duty for the war but never made it past training at Fort Irwin, Calif. By the time the brigade was declared combat ready, the war was over.
Georgia’s citizen soldiers bore the brunt of ridicule by active duty Army units. Even in Iraq, 48th soldiers sometimes felt they were viewed as second class because they were National Guardsmen. One soldier told The Associated Press that the 48th was treated like the “redheaded stepchild.”
The mission in Iraq helped reverse stereotypes about the 48th, said Maj. Gen. William Webster, commander of the active duty 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart.
“We really felt they were part of the team over there,” Webster said referring to 48th soldiers whose Task Force Baghdad missions fell directly under 3rd ID. “They proved their worth and their sacrifice in the war was the same as any other soldier in the Army.”
Maj. Gen. David Poythress, commander of the Georgia National Guard, said the “bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths” about the combat readiness of the 48th was largely dispelled by a 2001 tour in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But the brigade’s role in Iraq, he said, left no doubt.
“All that’s gone,” Poythress said. “They did a magnificent job.”
Poythress and Webster were both on hand to welcome home Rodeheaver. Many of the brigade’s top officers were there as well.
Rodeheaver will spend several weeks at Fort Stewart overseeing the demobilization of brigade soldiers as well as the arrival of equipment from Kuwait. The property will then be shipped out to 52 armories across the state.
Rodeheaver said he would return the brigade’s flag to Gov. Sonny Perdue in a few weeks in an official ceremony that will mark the end to the tour in Iraq.
But on Monday, Rodeheaver, a manager of economic and community development for Georgia Power, only had one item on his agenda: “To sleep all day.”
Poythress commended Rodeheaver and the brigade for a “job well done.”
“A year ago, I stood here and told you that you were going to Iraq to make history,” Poythress told returning soldiers. “You did it.”
Share your stories of homecomings, adjustment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Members of the 48th BCT have been returning from Iraq the past couple weeks. What have the homecomings been like, or the last couple weeks? Any events or activities you are anticipating? What has been the biggest adjustment?
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