A company of Arkansas National Guard soldiers will return to North Little Rock this week after a nine-month deployment in Kuwait, a Guard spokesman said.
With the return of the 1038th Engineering Company, all Arkansas National Guard units will be home in time for annual training in May -- signalling a lull in deployments that Guard officials have said won't last long.
Members of the 1038th Engineering Company returned to the United States on April 10 and are currently going through a debriefing process at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. They will be welcomed home at Camp Joseph T. Robinson on an undisclosed day this week.
Command Sgt. Maj. Steven Veazey, the Guard's senior enlisted leader, told a group of community members Thursday that there's been a recent drop in the number of Arkansas Guard deployments. He compared it to being "in the eye of the storm."
The Guard frequently deployed overseas during the 12 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, he said. He added that deployments would start again soon.
"We have annual training coming up," he said. "We'll stay ready."
The 1038th's mission in Kuwait brought the number of Arkansas Guardsmen who have served overseas since 9/11 to 14,300.
In Kuwait, the 150 soldiers in the 1038th reinforced existing structures at two U.S. bases that were first built in 2003 at the start of the Iraq War, said Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Keith Moore.
They put in approximately 65,000 man-hours completing 72 engineering projects, which included installing miles of protective barriers, improving drainage systems to control flooding and building a runway.
"At one of the bases, the 1038th added a helicopter runway, taxiway and staging ramp space large enough to handle a brigade-size squadron of Apache helicopters," Moore said in an email.
A brigade-size squadron is approximately 20 aircraft, he said.
Just before the soldiers left Arkansas on June 7, the unit's commander, Capt. Clayton Shelley, said they were "ready to show our skills that we've learned throughout the training, put them to good use," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.
"As an engineering unit the soldiers not only got the chance to do what they train for each year, but they also got to see the results of their work," Shelley said in an April 10 release. "At the end they get to say -- We built that."
After the 1038th left Camp Robinson in June, soldiers trained for about a month with hundreds of others from Louisiana, Oregon, North Carolina and Ohio. All of the National Guard and Army Reserve units from those states joined to form an engineering battalion.
Before its return, the 1038th Engineering Company had been the only Arkansas Guard unit overseas since November. The last group to return was the 111 soldiers with the 216th Military Police Company, which had deployed to Afghanistan last May.
The 216th was greeted by a large group of family and friends at Fisher Armory in North Little Rock the day before Thanksgiving.
"They're all back," said Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Joel Lynch after the 1038th landed in Texas. "It's the first time in awhile."
The number of Arkansas National Guard deployments has dropped since the 39th Infantry Brigade Combat team --made up of more than 3,000 soldiers -- deployed in its entirety twice during the Iraq War, once in 2004 and again in 2008.
Without providing specifics, Moore said Arkansas units will soon "get back in the fight."
All units are expected to be home at least until late this summer, when contingents of the Arkansas Air National Guard will deploy, Moore said.
Lynch said the 238th Aviation Regiment, an air ambulance unit, is currently undergoing training at Fort Chaffee Maneuver Training Center in Northwest Arkansas to prepare for a deployment to Kuwait. Soldiers in the 238th are also expected to mobilize late this summer.
Metro on 04/20/2015