Vermonters ready for deployment

Over the next couple of months Vermont is preparing to send its National Guard members overseas in the largest deployment since World War II while still maintaining its mission here at home.

"Roughly 1,400 soldiers will be deployed within the next two months from Vermont to go overseas to support Operation Endure Freedom," said LTC Michael Heston, Task Force Warrior Commander for the 86^th IBCT. "The remaining soldiers that are going to be left in the state will be approximately 470."

"The 86^th IBCT will start their first phase of their deployment cycle in December and they will go to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, where they will spend two to three months," Heston said.

"Once they finish up their time in Atterbury they will be deployed over to Afghanistan for nine months and they will start coming back into the states somewhere between December 2010 and January 2011," Heston said.

"The 470 soldiers [in Vermont] will be located within five drilling locations throughout the state, which would be St. Albans, Ethan Allen Firing Range, Berlin, Rutland and Windsor with Bradford as a detachment," he said.

"That doesn't mean that we don't have other locations; as the brigade goes forward I still have a responsibility to maintain 17 armories that we do have in the state and make sure that they are supporting soldiers overseas," he said.

With the breakdown of the brigade and what Heston has left in the state, the Guard is going to have three National Guard Reaction Forces that will be activated should a natural or manmade disaster occur in the state. Those will be located in Rutland, Berlin and St. Albans, according to Heston.

"Each of those teams in those locations has 40 men per team. If we had to activate all of the National Guard Reaction Force for the 86^th Brigade I would be able to have 120 soldiers available to react to the disaster," Heston said.

However, that number is just the number of men from the Infantry Brigade, that's not to include assets that are with the Air Guard forces and the two other troop commands that have a 40 man pack, and RTI has another 40 men, according to Heston.

"Within those 40 teams of the National Guard Reaction Force they have five designated missions. For example, one of the missions would be a rout clearing team, and another mission would be a generator contact team, which is a team that goes out to support getting heavy duty generators like the 125 kilowatt generators to support and light up a town," Heston said.  

The Vermont National Guard would hope that it would not be necessary to call on other states. "We always try to stay organic to what our mission is and what we do for the state but should a emergency happen, especially now with the majority of the soldiers being deployed overseas, I can see the need to call in other states," Heston said.

"Right now we have already worked out memorandums of agreement with New Hampshire, New York and Massachusetts to support our mission should we need those troop to come in," Heston said.

"We use the memorandums of agreement to keep the peace with the governors of the state and politically we don't want to say ‘hey you have to come up and help us' without the support of the governor," Heston said.

Heston also mentioned that usually when a disaster occurs the governors have their own memorandums of agreement.