Bases race to prep for post-deployment influx - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Bases race to prep for post-deployment influx

Installations across the country are bracing for the return of tens of thousands of soldiers to their home bases and the resulting crush of people on roads, in barracks and other post facilities.

Twelve brigade combat teams, or about 43,500 soldiers, and dozens of smaller units totaling about 63,000 soldiers will return from combat tours between July and December.

Some posts will welcome home at least 10,000 soldiers; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., will have about 17,000 returning. That is expected to translate into traffic gridlock, shortages of training space and a race to finish barracks construction before the soldiers arrive.

Bases across the country are engaged in a flurry of activity to get ready for “maxed-out” traffic routes, crowded commissaries, full barracks, competition for training ranges, higher demand for behavioral health care and post-deployment baby booms.

“In the October timeframe we’ll have almost 90 percent of all of our soldiers redeployed back to Fort Bragg and an all-time high in post population in the modern history of Fort Bragg,” said Col. Steve Sicinski, garrison commander of the North Carolina post.

Due to base closure and realignment, Fort Bragg has expanded from about 45,000 soldiers assigned before Sept. 11, 2001, to about 55,000.

“However, we’ve never had all 55,000 of the troops here because they’ve been deployed,” Sicinski said. “For the first time since 9/11, we’ll have all of our maneuver brigades home but also their combat enablers and multipliers. For the first time in Fort Bragg’s recent history, we’re going to have the bulk of our soldiers home for Christmas.”

The same thing is happening at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

“This will be the first time in several years that we’ll have … all the major units home at the same time,” said Col. Thomas Brittain, garrison commander there. “It’s a good thing for the families and the soldiers.”

About 19,000 soldiers from Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield, in Georgia are deployed; three of its brigade combat teams will come home later this year along with the 3rd Infantry Division headquarters and its combat aviation brigade.

Fort Bragg will welcome home about 10,000 soldiers, including two 82nd Airborne Division BCTs.

“We will have more soldiers home this coming year than we have ever had,” said Mike Lynch, director of plans, training and mobilization for Fort Bragg. “Many of the soldiers that are coming back have never been at Bragg all at once.”

Joint Base Lewis-McChord will celebrate the return of its three Stryker brigade combat teams.

Staff members at these three large bases, which have regularly sent their troops to the war zones, have been busy preparing for the crush of returning soldiers.

After combat

One of the key priorities for the three bases is identifying signs of combat stress.

Officials at Fort Bragg are adding 40 military family life counselors to the 20 already on post and five social workers to assist during the reintegration process, said Lt. Col. Robert Malsby, division surgeon for the 82nd Airborne.

Once the soldiers are home, they will undergo one-on-one meetings with providers and complete health assessment forms. These meetings and checks go on after a soldier returns, 90 to 180 days later and six months on.

“What we’re doing right now to help with the redeployment is doing a behavioral health surge, if you will, so we ensure everyone is seen and make sure those who are at risk are seen by a provider,” Malsby said.

To help soldiers reconnect with their families, the Army offers retreats for couples and single soldiers. These retreats focus on building more resilient families and soldiers, said Chaplain (Col.) Joel Jenkins, the rear-detachment chaplain for the 82nd Airborne.

The process of identifying combat stress begins even before the soldiers head for the combat zone. “You need to start looking at folks from pre-deployment, through the deployment and when they come home,” Malsby said.

Throughout a deployment, commanders communicate with experts back home to assess how their soldiers are doing.

At Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield, officials are preparing to run up to 1,000 soldiers a week through the 10-day reintegration process before returning troops are released for block leave.

“This whole reintegration process is all ... about bringing soldiers home from deployment, getting them into a home station mindset, reacquainting them with their families and to prepare again if the Army needs them,” said Brig. Gen. Jeff Phillips, deputy commanding general (rear) for the 3rd Infantry Division and senior commander for Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield. “But doing so at a pace that benefits them. That’s what’s nice about not having deployment orders for the division again. We have the time now to do this. We can do this human reset as well as equipment reset at a pace that benefits soldiers.”

There are about 50 behavioral health providers at Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield. That number will increase by 300 percent, Phillips said.

“We’re already plussed up and we believe we can handle what we need,” he said.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord has more than 200 behavioral health providers, said Col. Mark Thompson, deputy commander for clinical services at Madigan Army Medical Center, which is on the joint base.

“We’re just starting to get some of the first downrange assessments back [from the deployed units],” Thompson said. “Legitimately, there is much concern about our [5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team] that’s in Afghanistan and how much combat exposure it has had and how much potential problems that combat exposure could be causing.”

“Time will definitely tell if this plays out,” he said. “While there’s certainly going to be trauma associated with their combat exposure and the loss of a number of their colleagues, the fact that they’ve been engaged in their mission is going to result in some positive behavioral health benefit.”

Dealing with behavioral health issues that stem from each redeployment is challenging, Thompson said.

“This level of redeployment, at least at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, has never been experienced before.”

Training

Each base is busy preparing in other ways for the redeployment.

At Fort Bragg, Lynch and his colleague, Scottie Custer, chief of the post’s training division, are facing a shortage of training space. Forces returning there will have to compete for the space.

“Today we sit with 55,000 active-duty soldiers assigned to Fort Bragg and next year all of those will be home,” Lynch said. “That makes it challenging for resources in the training arena. We’re short 100,000 acres of training land, [which] makes scheduling and using the land efficiently critical.”

About 93,000 of the 160,000 Fort Bragg acres are dedicated to training, he said.

“Fort Bragg has been operating with much less training requirements because the units have been deployed,” Custer said. “They’ve not had to compete for training space. That’s going to change.”

Possible solutions to the shortage — apart from more efficient scheduling — include more virtual and simulation training, Lynch said.

“We’re very happy to see all of our units come home,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming. It will be challenging, but it is always challenging. We can’t give you everything you want, but we will certainly meet your needs.”

‘No slack’

While the soldiers have been gone, their barracks have been getting a makeover.

“All of our barracks are being repainted, all furniture is being replaced, to ensure these barracks are in, basically, hotel condition when they come back,” said Phillips, of Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield.

An additional 1,440 new barracks spaces also are being built at Fort Stewart, at a cost of $40 million.

Officials at Joint Base Lewis-McChord repaired 33 permanent party barracks for about $41 million, said Bill Velez, the barracks program manager for the base.

“Every barracks troops are coming back to have been touched in one way or another, or they are new enough that they didn’t require any repairs,” Velez said.

In addition, 1,328 new barracks spaces in six buildings have been added to Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the last year or two, and 1,304 more are under construction, he said.

Other construction in the last couple of years includes new facilities for the 17th Fires Brigade and 5th SBCT, a satellite education center, and five child development centers.

Similar projects also have taken place at Fort Bragg, and the work is moving quickly, said Gregory G. Bean, the director of public works there.

The 82nd Airborne’s two deployed BCTs — 1st and 4th — will return to renovated barracks and updated facilities.

The post also is preparing for some major BRAC moves.

“We have $1.3 billion in construction ongoing at Fort Bragg, including $300 million for Forces Command headquarters,” Bean said. “It’s a delicate dance to try and synchronize construction schedules, deployment schedules [and] redeployment schedules.”

After all the BRAC moves are complete, about 10 percent of the Army will be stationed at Fort Bragg, Bean said.

“It’s not always the optimal solution, but we’ve got space while construction catches up with the growth on Fort Bragg.”

Roads ‘maxed out’

Traffic gridlock is one of the biggest concerns for some installations.

Adding to the already large military population on Fort Bragg are the 10,000 civilian employees (13,000 after BRAC moves are completed in 2011) and 10,000 contractors.

During a recent count, about 130,000 vehicles entered and left Fort Bragg daily, said Sicinski, the garrison commander. There are more than 150,000 people on post during the day and about 50,000 at night.

“We think the vehicle traffic count will top 150,000, which will be a significant stressor to our access control points and roads,” he said. “We’re planning on things such as a comprehensive parking plan, trying to set up flex times and different report times for our civilian work forces.”

In the near term, Fort Bragg is repairing intersections, paving roads, fixing potholes and adding traffic lights to critical intersections, Bean said.

“We’ve done major traffic studies to determine what projects we might need,” he said. “We’ve identified road projects that need to be done on Fort Bragg to reduce the congestion. The key now is to get funding.”

At Joint Base Lewis-McChord, there will be 90,000 to 100,000 soldiers, civilian employees, contractors and family members based there when the soldiers return from the war zone, said Larry Mickel, the acting transportation engineer for the base.

To ease some of the congestion, officials will add more exit lanes to the two main entrances to the base. They will add traffic lights to critical intersections and are even looking to install a roundabout at one busy intersection, Mickel said.

“This road network was built back in the ’50s,” he said. “We have not improved the network over time. We haven’t built any new roads. Now we’re finding ourselves in a situation where we’ve maxed out the capacity of our road system, so you have to look at how to keep traffic moving, whether it’s stop lights, roundabouts or more lanes.”

A lot has changed since the soldiers deployed, said Brittain, the garrison commander for Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

“You will come back and be pleasantly surprised and pleased with the renovations that we’ve done, the new construction that we’ve done and the upgrades,” he said.

Brittain’s thoughts on the work done to prepare for returning soldiers can be echoed across the installations.

“I think in everything that we do, it is to support the soldiers and their families,” he said. “Supporting them while they’re forward deployed, supporting them while they’re redeploying and providing the requisite quality of life to their families while they’re deployed and maintaining the training resources that we’ll need to reset these units so they’re able to do whatever the Army needs them to do.”

The next boom

Medical centers are preparing for a baby boom.

For example, about 2,500 babies were delivered at Lewis-McChord’s Madigan last year, the largest number the hospital has seen, said Thompson, adding he expects the hospital to see 2,500 to 3,000 babies again this year.

“We get very busy nine months or so after redeployments,” Thompson said.

DISCUSS: POST DEPLOYMENT INFLUX