Amid political change, BCT preps for Iraq

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First Sgt. Lewis Walls, 38, with the the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, is seen before target practice at Fort Dix, N.J., on Dec. 19. The 56th SBCT, scheduled to deploy to Iraq, makes up the largest contingent from the Pennsylvania Guard to deploy to a combat zone since World War II.


Amid political change, BCT preps for Iraq
By Kimberly Hefling - The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Dec 30, 2008 17:11:26 EST

FORT DIX, N.J. — Over his holiday leave, 1st Sgt. Lewis Walls will put a ring on his new bride’s finger, hold their baby boy one last time, and then report back to deploy to Iraq.

Even as signs point toward the winding down of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, there’s been no slowing in the deployment schedule for Walls and more than 4,000 other members of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.

They’ll be assuming their positions in Iraq around the same time that President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office on Jan. 20. Later, if things go according to plan under a newly ratified U.S.-Iraqi security agreement, they will be among the troops moving out of Iraq’s urban areas by June 30 — a major step toward withdrawing U.S. troops from the country by 2012.

The changing political landscape has prompted questions among the troops about what’s ahead. But there’s a resigned acceptance, too, that when it comes to the Iraq war, the one certainty is that there is uncertainty.

“Every deployment is different and you can prepare for different things and try to situate them the best you can, but you never go into it looking too far forward,” Walls, 38, of Browns Mills, N.J., said in an interview at Fort Dix, where the soldiers were packing equipment and firing their final rounds at a shooting range.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/12/ap_iraq_deployments_123008/%2e