On a Wednesday night, about a hundred military spouses fill the hall at the Club Stewart meeting facility waiting anxiously for the town hall to start. Their husbands and wives, soldiers of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team of Fort Stewart, recently deployed to Germany to reinforce NATO allies amid Russian attacks on Ukraine.
For the crowd, made up mostly of women and their young children, the deployment is the closest to possible combat their partners have been, and they’re looking for answers and reassurance amidst an unfamiliar situation.
"It's completely new. We haven't seen this kind of land warfare since World War II in Europe," said Sgt. Maj. Michael A. Grinston.
Grinston, the highest-ranking noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Army, doesn’t typically attend these town halls. His appearance underscores the current circumstances – that this deployment wasn’t a scheduled rotation but a response to a contingency and a gray area that the Army leadership is still figuring out themselves.
Credit: Nancy Guan / Savannah Morning News
Credit: Nancy Guan / Savannah Morning News
While President Joe Biden has repeatedly said he will not send U.S. troops into Ukraine to engage with Russian forces, the situation is fluid, and the brigade has to train and “be ready for anything,” said Grinston.
Since Biden announced sending reinforcements to Europe almost a month ago, nearly 4,000 troops from the 3rd Infantry Division (the combined arms division based at Fort Stewart) have deployed from the Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah. They were part of more than 12,000 U.S. troops called on to bolster NATO's eastern flank as Russian aggression has intensified the past several weeks.
On March 2, the first round of about 3,800 soldiers from the 3rd ID left for Germany after cramming months of training into mere weeks, then bidding goodbyes to their families. A week later, an additional 130 troops from the 3rd ID's Combat Sustainment Support Battalion followed suit, many of them young soldiers anticipating their first mission overseas.
The deployments, currently scheduled to last six months, could be extended or shortened depending on developments in Ukraine.
“Morale is high … they’re extremely motivated,” said Grinston, who visited troops in Europe in early March. “But it’s hard to work in an ambiguous environment. I looked some of them in the eye and said, ‘You’ve got to be ready.'”
The ambiguity of the mission was thrown into the light as Grinston fielded an array of questions from audience members for nearly two hours.
Credit: Nancy Guan / Savannah Morning News
Credit: Nancy Guan / Savannah Morning News
Expecting mothers asked about paternity leave. Others wanted to know what financial compensations would be given – if hazard pay or other entitlements applied; if child care services would be offered in light of the rapid deployment and as effects of the pandemic linger; if the austere conditions their spouses were put in were normal; and what the worst-case scenario could be.
“We’re kind of in this new space, where it’s not combat, but it's a deployment,” Grinston reminded everyone.
Some concerns would be worked out at the base level. Each military family has a family care plan and Fort Stewart’s Army Community Service offers programs and family support.
Other answers, such as those regarding entitlement pay and other family incentives, are contingent on the type of operation, which has yet to be named. The Army is three weeks into the mission so assessments are still being done, according to Grinston.
Queries about the direction of the deployment were left open-ended.
“I apologize if it felt like I was pushing back…,” said Grinston, who tried to keep the tone light throughout the evening with occasional banter. “I promise I’m going to look into every issue … I’ll take this to the whole department of the Army and they will help us answer your problems, but I have to know your problems.”
With a situation like this, a massive cultural understanding takes place, according to a 3rd ID spokesperson. The town hall was ultimately a learning experience for everyone and a way for the Army to take a pulse on the families.
“There was a lot of stress and part of the stress is because we told their spouses to 'Go right now,'” said Grinston, who noted some soldiers had returned just a few months ago from a scheduled rotation in South Korea.
Leaving so quickly marked a historic moment for the division. Usually, shipping Bradley troop carriers and tanks to the deployment location is part of the process, but that wasn’t the case this time.
“This is the first one I can remember where we said ‘we’re going to draw equipment from an APS (Army Prepositioned Stock)’,” said Grinston.
The plan is for soldiers to train with the equipment from the prepositioned stock in Europe.
“With this situation that we're in right now, I can't say, ‘this is exactly what we're going to do tomorrow.’ We don't know what the world's gonna look like,” said Grinston, “But these are our families. I have to hear that and come out with that frustration because then that motivates me. I really would’ve loved to have all the answers, but that’s just not how this works.”
Nancy Guan is the general assignment reporter covering Chatham County municipalities. Reach her at nguan@gannett.com or on Twitter @nancyguann.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: 'Go right now': For Fort Stewart spouses, Ukraine-related deployment came suddenly
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