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Bama Guard unit deploys to Iraq; another heading out later this week

Posted to Breaking News at The Birmingham News:

About 50 members of the an Alabama Army National Guard unit that specializes in explosive ordnance disposal have deployed to Iraq and a transportation unit with about 170 soldiers is slated to arrive there shortly.

The 111th Ordnance Group from Opelika arrived down range last week. While in Iraq, the 111th will head up Combined Joint Task Force Troy, which coordinates and oversees efforts to counter improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, throughout the country. Task Force Troy will oversee 600 to 800 U.S. troops involved in anti-IED operations, and several dozen of those troops are soldiers with one of the 111th’s subordinate units, the 441st Ordnance Battalion out of Huntsville.

Meanwhile, state Guard public affairs officer, Lt. Col. Cynthia Bachus, said the 2101st Transportation Company out of Demopolis, Aliceville and Butler is now in Kuwait and will be moving into Iraq soon. The upcoming tour will be the second one for about a third of the unit’s soldiers. The first was in 2004-05.

This morning, the commander of an Alabama Guard military police unit said in an e-mail Sunday’s national elections went smoothly in his unit’s southern sector of Iraq.

“The Iraqi Security Forces did a great job executing the security plan that they established for the province,” said Lt. Col. Charles
Buxton, commander of Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 203rd Military Police Battalion, now based in Basra Province.

Soldiers with the Athens-based 203rd have helped train Iraqi police and did pre-election assessments to improve security at 20 critical polling places throughout the province.

Through last December, according to the latest Pentagon figures, more than 4,700 Alabamians were deployed in and around Iraq and Afghanistan.

Alabama Guard members to receive Alabama Commendation Medal

Remember hearing about the Bama Guard unit who “was in the right place at the right time“? Well, I just read in The Birmingham News that they will be receiving a well-deserved medal. (You can read the full story here.)

Congratulations, 2101st Transportation Company!

Bama Guard unit in the right place at the right time

There’s a great story posted in The Birmingham News about an Alabama National Guard unit who were in the right place at the right time. Sunday the unit was returning from training at Camp Shelby in Mississippi when their bus came upon a crashed church bus on I-20/59 near the Mississippi-Alabama line. The bus, carrying youths and chaperons from First Baptist Church in Shreveport, La., was on its way to Atlanta when a rear tire blew out, causing the bus to flip several times. This happened less than a half-mile in front of the Guard unit’s bus, and the Guard members initially thought they had witnessed a van crash, and expected to find only a driver.

Sgt. Brian Pearson (who is also Aliceville’s assistant fire chief) said, “We got up there and saw we had kids strung out everywhere. Then we started getting the kids out of the bus and then we heard a young lady up under the bus yelling for help and … so we called for all the rest of the soldiers … to come help lift the bus up off there. And as soon as we lifted it up off her and thought we had one, we discovered we had two trapped under the bus.”

The article goes on to say:

For about 15 minutes, until ambulances started arriving, the injured from Shreveport were in the hands of Pearson and his fellow Guard soldiers. With little more than the clothes on their backs, they used tree limbs and towels for splints and immobilized the injured to prevent spinal cord injuries.

You can read the article here.

These soldiers are heroes, and I’d love to see a unit commendation for their actions!

Aliceville loses a hero

Our thoughts and prayers go out to Specialist Brown’s loved ones:

Pickens County soldier dies in Afghanistan

Michelle Harris said she had been expecting a phone call from her daughter, who was serving with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan.

Instead, she received the unwelcome news from an Army official that her daughter, 22-year-old Army Spc. Seteria L. Harris Brown, died while serving in Sharana, Afghanistan.

‘I was shocked and devastated,’ Harris said. ‘I still can’t believe it. I had spoken to her on the phone just a week before.’

Harris said she was told that her daughter died July 25 from a gunshot wound to the chest. An Army news release said Brown died of ‘injuries sustained in a non-combat-related incident.’

Exactly what happened isn’t clear.

‘All I know is what they told me,’ Harris said.

A spokeswoman at Fort Hood, Texas, the Army base where Brown had been stationed before deployment to Afghanistan, said Thursday afternoon that Brown’s death is still under investigation.

The spokeswoman said she did not know how long the investigation would take.

Brown was a few months into her second overseas deployment, her brother said.

She was an enlisted soldier assigned to Fort Hood’s 36th Engineer Brigade since February. She was sent to Afghanistan in April.

Brown joined the Army shortly after graduation from Aliceville High School in 2004. She enjoyed Army life and re-enlisted after her initial four-year contract expired not long ago, her mother said.

She had a seven-year-old daughter, Harris said.

‘She was such a sweet person,’ Harris said. ‘Everybody liked being around her. She always kept a smile on her face.’

Brown’s younger brother, Keiwan Harris, said he had been unable to talk his sister out of joining the Army.

‘It was something she really wanted to do,’ he said. ‘She was always an independent person.’

Brown’s decorations and awards include the Army Commendation Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon and Overseas Service Ribbon.

Services will be held 2 p.m. Saturday at New Canaan Baptist Church in Aliceville.