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From Atlanta Journal Constitution
Guard unit gets call to war zone
Ron Martz - Staff
November 10, 2004

The 4,500 soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) knew it was inevitable that as the war in Iraq continued, their time in the combat zone would come.

They just did not know when.

But on Tuesday, brigade officials announced they had received orders to begin mobilizing soldiers in preparation for arrival in Iraq by late spring for a 12-month tour of duty.

"We've been anticipating this for a while," said Brigadier Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver of Forsyth, the unit commander.
With about 16,000 soldiers from the active duty 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) headquartered at Fort Stewart scheduled to return to Iraq in January, more than 20,000 soldiers from Georgia will be on duty in the war zone for much of 2005.

The 3rd Infantry Division, which also has units at Fort Benning, led the charge into Baghdad in April 2003 during the first weeks of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
State officials were notified Sunday that 1,500 soldiers from the 48th Brigade will be called up Dec. 6, with the remainder expected to be mobilized Dec. 15, said Rodeheaver.

"We're proud to be selected," he said. "It's important to us as a nation and it's important to us as soldiers to be able to do our duties."

For many of the soldiers in the brigade, a year in Iraq will mean putting jobs, families and normal life on hold.
By the time Sgt. Michael Barry of Macon leaves for Iraq, he will be one semester short of a degree in health services administration from Macon State College. He also expects to miss his son's graduation from high school in the spring.
"I don't like it, but I volunteered years ago to do my duty and you do what you're told to do," said Barry, 39, who spent 10 years on active duty with the Army before joining the National Guard in 1998.

A surgical technician with the 148th Support Battalion out of Forsyth, Barry was in the first U.S. unit that went into Bosnia in 1995 on a peacekeeping mission. He knows what it's like to be in a combat zone.
But this mission is a bit different, he admitted.

"There's a little bit more at stake than just building a new nation," he said. "Our security here in the U.S. is at stake as well, regardless of what some Americans might think."

For Cpl. Tania Nix of Byron, an administrative specialist at brigade headquarters in Macon, going to Iraq is the fulfillment of her desire to do something meaningful.

"I think things in the world need to change and that's one of the reasons soldiers join. They have a purpose to do something," said the 22-year-old freshman at Central Georgia Technical College.

Nix, whose mother served in the Army and whose father recently retired from the Air Force, said she and her fiance may get married before she leaves for Iraq.

"I just want to make sure I spend a good Christmas with my family," she said.

Most members of the brigade, which has units in 40 cities and towns across Georgia, will be able to spend the holidays at home before reporting Jan. 2 to Fort Stewart, near Savannah, for three months of training, said Rodeheaver. That will be followed by a month at the Army's desert training center at Fort Irwin, Calif.

After that, said Rodeheaver, a 29-year veteran of the Georgia National Guard, the timetable has not been fixed. "We could deploy from there or we could come home on leave and deploy from here," he said.

The last time the unit deployed overseas was to Bosnia for an eight-month mission in 2000. That kept the 48th out of the rotation of National Guard combat units for deployment to Iraq, as did its role in providing security for the G-8 Summit of world leaders on the Georgia coast in June.

"We knew we were starting to come up on the bubble again," Rodeheaver said.

Rodeheaver, 52, served as intelligence chief and later as second in command for the 48th's mobilization in 1990 for the Persian Gulf War.

The unit trained at Fort Stewart and later at Fort Irwin but never made it to the fighting.

"It was a big letdown," said Rodeheaver. "We went through training and anticipated doing our duty. But it was a short war."

Army officials learned from that mobilization that National Guard and Reserve forces needed more than the 30 days they were allotted at that time to get ready for war. Now the units are given up to four months of intensive training before being sent overseas.

About 39 percent of the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are National Guard or Reserve. That figure is expected to increase to about 42 percent by the summer.

Rodeheaver said the brigade has not yet been given a specific mission and he is not sure in what part of Iraq the troops will serve.