700 ND guardsmen headed for Kosovo - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

700 ND guardsmen headed for Kosovo

BISMARCK, N.D. — In the largest deployment of its kind since the Vietnam War, some 700 North Dakota Army National Guard solders will be sent late next year to Kosovo to help keep the peace in the Balkans region.

Brig. Gen. Alan Dohrmann said Wednesday that an official deployment date has not been set, but it will be about this time next year. The soldiers will train at Camp Atterbury, Ind., and in Germany for about two months before deploying to Kosovo for 10 months, he said.

It will be the state’s largest single deployment since Vietnam, the Guard said.

The North Dakota Army National Guard has about 3,300 soldiers. The military said the soldiers headed to Kosovo are from across the state, whose units are based in Bismarck, Fargo, Valley City and Grand Forks.

“This will probably touch most communities in North Dakota,” Dohrmann said.

Many of the soldiers already have served multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003, he said.

During their tour in Kosovo, the North Dakota soldiers will join a U.S. task force of about 700 Guard soldiers from up to 20 states, Dohrmann said.

Soldiers from Greece, Poland and Ukraine will bring the total NATO-led task force to about 2,200, of which about a third will be from North Dakota, Dohrmann said.

The North Dakota Guard soldiers will replace about 1,000 Missouri Army National Guard troops, Dohrmann said.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February. Serbia refuses to accept the separation of the predominantly ethnic-Albanian region.

Dohrmann, who served a year in Kosovo beginning in 2004, calls the situation in the country “calm but fragile” and said the ethnic tension remains.

The soldiers’ mission will be to “ensure a safe and secure environment for all residents of Kosovo,” he said. The large deployment will not hurt the Guard’s ability to respond to emergencies in North Dakota, he said.

1st Lt. Dan Murphy said the Guard’s Fargo-based 191st Military Police Company, with about 180 soldiers, is serving in Iraq, and is the only unit currently deployed. The soldiers are to return home early next year, he said.

Dohrmann said about a dozen soldiers from that unit have volunteered to serve in Kosovo.

The deployment to Kosovo will be the third for Murphy. He acknowledged that deployments are hard on families but said his wife, Laura, and their two children, ages 9 and 13, support him.

“They stand ready to support what I do and understand the reason that I’m called,” he said.

“In each case, in each deployment, we have a job to do and mission to do. We are prepared to do these missions,” he said.

“It’s hard to be without a husband and father, and the hardest part is that I just miss my best friend,” Laura Murphy said. “But with the more deployments we go through, we have learned to appreciate the soldiers who have sacrificed for our freedom, past and present. And I think, ‘Why not our family?”’