FORT STEWART – The 3,500 men and women of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team are finally all back at Fort Stewart and about to go back to work – at home.
The Raider Brigade has finished its block leave, granted after the last of the soldiers returned from a six-month deployment to Germany. In just a matter of days, the entire brigade – which had been home for six months following a nine-month stint in the Republic of Korea - flew to Germany as part of the national response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The brigade uncased its colors Thursday afternoon at Cottrell Field, marking an official and ceremonial end to its European mission.
“Who’s excited for Raider Brigade being back?” asked 3rd ID commander Maj. Gen. Charles Costanza, eliciting a round of cheers and applause.
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, prompting an international response. As the national command structure looked for troops to send, there were five Army brigades ready for deployment.
One of those was the 3rd ID’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team.
“The most ready armored brigade combat team in the United States Army, at that time, was the Raider Brigade,” Maj. Gen. Costanza said.
Maj. Gen. Costanza said he got a call from Chief of the Staff of the Army Gen. James McConville on what brigade he had ready. The 1st Brigade, he said, was out on the gunnery ranges, but it had been only six months since the end of their deployment to Korea.
But they were ready, Costanza assured Gen. McConville.
“Next thing you know, we get a deployment order and Raider Brigade is out the door on no notice,” Maj. Gen. Costanza said.
The brigade moved so fast, it was seven days between getting the order to leave for Europe and firing the first tank round in training in Germany. The swiftness of the brigade’s move and the start of its duties in Germany surprised many officials.
“We had a lot of members of Congress coming out to visit. I started giving the standard answer,” brigade commander Col. Peter Moon said of how the brigade deployed and took up its mission so quickly. “Then I just stopped for a second and I told her plainly, ‘it was the village. It was the entirety of the village. It was the entirety of the units that are on Fort Stewart. Then it was also the community. It was the supporting community around Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield.’”
Nobody knew what the brigade’s mission was going to be once they landed in Germany. While they were in Germany, they trained with more than 5,000 NATO allied troops.
The recent 1st ABCT deployment is a harbinger of what is to come for the Army, Maj. Gen. Costanza said, as future missions will be based more on contingencies.
“What the Raider Brigade did is the future of the Army and deployments,” he said. “Gone are the days of scheduled deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, where you know a year out when you’re going to go.”
From the time brigade soldiers got the order to go to their initial departure was three days, according to Lt. Col. Stoney Portis, commander of the 3/69 Armor Battalion.
“It is fulfilling to know our nation and our allies needed us to respond to a call, and our soldiers and our families and our community were ready for that,” he said. “Professionally, it’s what we signed up to do. Had we not had the organizations here on Fort Stewart and the surrounding communities to support us getting out the door, I don’t think it would have been possible. We knew we were doing it for an important reason. We knew what we were doing mattered.”
“Our charge is to be ready to go wherever, whenever and as fast as our nation needs us to defend our national interests,” Col. Moon added.
Commanders also praised the brigade soldiers’ families. Many soldiers had been gone for nine months before being home for six months when the call came to head to Germany and the Grafenwoehr Training Area.
“At the center of it is the soldiers and the families,” Col. Moon said. “That is not possible without all the support of the loving families. We absolutely could not have done this without you.”
“It is fulfilling to know our nation and our allies needed us to respond to a call, and our soldiers and our families and our community were ready for that,” Lt. Col. Portis said.
The Raider Brigade soldiers are all back now, the final flight from Germany having landed August 29 and block leave commencing for the soldiers in its seven battalions soon after. They’ll be back at work soon, though, as the brigade undergoes modernization training with a new set of equipment, heading out to Fort Stewart’s gunnery ranges.
