Last Thursday a color casing ceremony was held at Fort Stewart as the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team prepares to deploy to Europe.

“Today marks another important and historic day for the Spartan Brigade,” Commanding General of the 3rd ID, Major General Antonio Aguto said. “Once again leading the Army as they’ve done in World Wars, as they have done in the cold war…today marks the day where again the Spartan Brigade will lead the Army in an important and strategic exercise for the U.S. Army. Today we have cased the colors as the Spartan Brigade culminates a number of months and days training and preparing to deploy the entire army brigade into the European Theater and participate in an exercise with numerous countries and numerous NATO partners and execute a wet river gap crossing which hasn’t been done by an armored brigade in 30 plus years. And they will do so as part of a NATO force. A true partnership signifying what our commitment is to Europe.”

Col Scott O’Neal, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team Leader, said the Spartan Brigade will spend about four months in Europe training with multiple countries comprising a total of 30,000 troops.

He said they will head to Germany and Poland and later the United Kingdom and other NATO allies.

“What we are trying to do is exercise strategic readiness,” he said. “It means we use the local ports here and we rapidly deploy the brigade combat team into Europe. It’s really one of the biggest things we try to do in the army. It demonstrates our ability to strategically deploy a brigade across the world.” O’Neal said strong families and community support make deployments easier for those that stay behind. He added that the 2nd ABCT looks forward to working with NATO allies.