CAMP SHELBY, Miss. - The first wave of soldiers with Arkansas' 39th Infantry Brigade arrives Tuesday night at this southern Mississippi post, the last stop on their journey home from Iraq.
The contingent will consist of about 160 soldiers, with the remainder of the more than 3,000 troops who deployed with the state's largest National Guard unit arriving over the next few weeks.
"This place will be rocking 20 hours a day," said Col. Keith Klemmer, who is overseeing the state's portion of the demobilization process.
State officials have spent thepast six months devising a plan to jump-start what is likely to be the Arkansas National Guard's lengthy recovery from recent years of deployment, which have taken a heavy toll on the brigade and the Guard as a whole. Every unit in the state supplied soldiers for the deployment earlier this year when the 39th fell short ofmanning requirements. And that pull of soldiers affected each of those units' abilities to deploy again in the near future.
Every major unit in the state has now deployed to Iraq at least once.
There are no deployments scheduled for Arkansas Army troops in 2009, which will give the state time to assess the health and size of its force. It will be the first year since 1996 that Arkansas has not deployed troops overseas.
After the brigade gets home, Klemmer said, "Then we're out of [the mobilization] business for a while."
Bringing a brigade home from war is no small task, simply because of the number of people involved. The 39th's demobilization is even more complicated, with the more than 1,000 soldiers from other units woven into its ranks. State officials must first get the soldiers back to their home units before they can truly assess readinessand the force's future deployability.
The Arkansas Guard created its own demobilization process that other states have asked to replicate.
The demobilization process historically involves a standardized system followed by U.S. Army personnel that shifts a soldier out of federal active duty after he completes a battery of medical checks, questionnaires and paperwork. That process is not changing and will consume the first few of each returning soldier's estimated five days at Camp Shelby.
After that process is complete, Arkansas soldiers with the state Joint Force Headquarters-Forward will take over, processing the soldiers back into their home guard units. They will also counsel any soldiers who refused recommended medical treatment.
Lt. Col. Ronnie Anderson, mobilization and readiness officer for the Arkansas Guard, said the state demobilization is necessary to account for and assess its troops as quickly as possible.
"We are resetting the brigade. We are resetting the Arkansas National Guard. But the bottom line is we want to take care of soldiers," Anderson said.
The challenge for Klemmer and the rest of Arkansas' Joint Force Headquarters-Forward is twofold: They must return non-39th soldiers to their home units while trying to ensure that all of the soldiers report any medical problems they have and thatthose problems are properly treated.
While the federal demobilization process helps identify soldiers who have mental or physical illnesses, such problems don't always immediately surface. Also, many soldiers ignore medical problems so that they can head home sooner. By doing that, however, they risk losing military medical benefits and face having to shoulder the financial burden of those problems years down the road.
The brigade learned that in the first deployment.
THE COST OF WAR
The 39th Infantry Brigade was the first National Guard unit in the nation to be called up in its entirety for a second tour of duty in Iraq last year. Three other units - from Ohio, Indiana and Oklahoma - were called up for second tours but had previously only partially deployed.
The 39th deployed to Baghdad in 2004-05 with the 1st Cavalry Division. Its second tour began in March, where its battalions spread across Iraq to escort supply convoys crisscrossing the war-torn nation.
The first deployment was followed by a decline in the size of the brigade's ranks, when more than half of its soldiers eventually sought medical and mental treatment at Veterans Affairs facilities. Those medical problems led, in part, to the need for soldiers from other units to fill the brigade's ranks for the second deployment.
Maj. Gen. Bill Wofford, Arkansas' adjutant general, hopes that this new demobilization plan will prevent that in the future.
Wofford issued a memorandum on Sept. 25 detailing his philosophy about mental-health awareness and assistance.
"I am very concerned about the second and third order affects the Global War on Terror has placed on our soldiers and airmen as they have mobilized and endured traumatic events," he wrote. "Many of our soldiers and airmen may hesitate to seek professional counseling because they are concerned about the potential stigma associated with being treated by a mental health provider or other health provider or other health care professionals. ... I want every soldier and airman to understand that it is my intent that seeking and obtaining medical assistance of any kind will not result in repercussions or be held against them when competing for assignments, schooling and promotion opportunities."
There is little the Arkansas team can do to make returning soldiers report problems.
The team has established the new demobilization policy that requires counseling for soldiers who refuse medical treatment and requires that a document noting that decision be added to the soldiers' military files.
The U.S. Army Medical Command has supplemented Camp Shelby with six additional doctors and mental-health professionals for the brigade's federal demobilization. Hattiesburg Medical Clinic is also under contract to evaluate soldiers for everything from back and shoulder pain to digestive problems.
Under a new Army policy, soldiers will also be given a dental assessment before being cut loose from active duty.
Col. Ed Boland, commander of Camp Shelby's medical facility, told the Arkansas team that his soldiers will be "singing the same song" by telling returning soldiers that if they were hurt on active duty, they need to stay on active duty.
Boland acknowledged that there is no way to ensure that soldiers will tell the truth about their injuries.
"All I can really do is beg," he said.
A COMBINED FRONT
Boland and his team of doctors are part of the standard federal demobilization, not the state's.
But he and other active-duty specialists in charge of the Camp Shelby demobilization have attended the state team's drills and planning meetings over the past week to ensure that both parts of the demobilization are in sync.
"The whole process started back in June," Klemmer said of devising the state demobilization plan. "Over the course of the last several months, we've taken a concept and added details. It formalized one month ago."
Klemmer's team arrived at Camp Shelby on Veterans Day and began transforming Building 350, a World War II-era warehouse, into an operations center with telephones and Internet lines feeding a bank of computers trucked down from Camp Robinson in North Little Rock.
The team will stay at the camp near Hattiesburg, Miss., through the holidays - until the last 39th soldier heads back to Arkansas.
The plan was hatched in an unorthodox way, following the problem-solving and planning method used for combat.
"Just like when you're in a convoy in Iraq, you have to react to events," Klemmer said. "We build a plan on how to react tobringing the brigade home."
Klemmer looked out over the rows of desks and computers on the warehouse floor below. Each desk has a team of soldiers over which a picture of the team's unit patch hangs.
"It is important that these soldiers are welcomed home by a representative of their unit," Klemmer said, adding that it's a matter of making the soldiers know there are people looking out for them and telling them what to expect in the coming months.
Many of the soldiers were fresh out of training when they deployed with the 39th. They hadn't been to a monthly drill yet, and many don't even know in what unit they actually belong.
"The alternative is to not do this, and then spend months tracking these kids down," Klemmer said. "And we'd never find them."
Over the past week, members of Joint Force Headquarters-Arkansas have been practicing and testing the plan. They have been going over potential problems, trying to make sure they're ready.
Demobilization is a bit of a dance. Only so many soldiers can work through the system in a day, so the main concern is that the line is always moving forward and never standing still.
"We have to run the plan now and find out where the bottlenecks are," Klemmer said to the soldiers gathered for the day's drill last week. "This could take six hours. I don't care. We're going to stay here until we get it right."
The soldiers ticked down the list of jobs as they walked through the process of moving a planeload of soldiers from the airport onto Camp Shelby.
A Camp Shelby representative noted that welcome-home ceremonies should wait until morning, if planes arrive late at night. Arkansas leaders shot down that idea and said families will be reunited with their soldiers within hours of a plane's landing.
Klemmer called that initial reunion "essential."
A telephone number - (501) 212-8000 - has been set up for families to call to get updates on returning flights. The information is updated daily. Families are encouraged to travel to Camp Shelby to welcome their soldiers home. Welcoming ceremonies will be held within hours of the planes' landing. Families may stay while their soldiers are demobilizing, but there will not be a lot of time to spend with the soldiers until the process is complete.
Front Section, Pages 1, 16 on 11/23/2008