Photo By Thomas Wheeler | Staff Sgt. Marco Padilla and Spc. Osse Jean-Pierre, soldiers assigned to the 1156th...... read more read more
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KINGSTON, N.Y. - Eighty-five New York Army National Guard soldiers from the Kingston-based 1156th Engineer Company will be spending most of March in Germany working on buildings and training sites at NATO's Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Bavaria.
The Army National Guard engineer company is a "vertical" combat engineer unit, trained and equipped to construct buildings and fortified positions and structures.
The Overseas Deployment Training will last from March 8 to March 29. Two members of the Air National Guard who are trained as civil engineers will accompany the Army Guard soldiers.
During the deployment the company will construct two concrete block buildings and rehabilitate several fighting positions used for training troops. The unit will also rehabilitate other buildings used to house troops training at the facility.
The training will give his soldiers a chance to work in their military occupational specialty, known as an MOS, and hone their construction skills, said Capt. Daniel Colomb, the company commander.
During ordinary Annual Training periods and weekend drills the other tasks the soldiers are expected to master marksmanship, basic military drills, and physical training, leave little time for working in construction Colomb said.
Since two Air Guard civil engineers are accompanying the company to Hohenfels, the training period will also give his soldiers and opportunity to see how Air Force engineers do business, Colomb added.
Overseas deployment training for National Guard troops is a great opportunity for soldiers to travel while improving their military skills, said Lt. Col. James Freehart, the commander of the 204th Engineer Battalion, the 1156th's parent unit. The Army benefits because it gets the skills of trained engineers to do work which cannot be done by the units on hand, he added.
In 2012 the battalion sent 78 engineers from the 827th and 152nd Engineer companies to Hohenfels to work on helicopter landing zones and supply pads. Those companies are "horizontal" engineering units which specialize in roads and concrete structures.
Hohenfels has been a training area since the 1930s when the German Army used it to prepare for World War II. After the war the area was used to house refugees until the U.S. Army took it over in 1951 for use as a training base for American troops in Germany.
Hohenfels served as the primary maneuver training site for American troops in Germany during the Cold War and was eventually used for "force-on-force" training like that conducted by the Army at the National Training Center in California.
Today the center is used by NATO troops preparing to deploy on peacekeeping or other missions.
The soldiers of the 1156th Engineer Company were among the first New York National Guard units to respond when Tropical Storm Irene caused flooding in the Catskills in 2011 and have worked on local community projects on Beacon and Cohoes.
| Date Taken: | 03.04.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 03.04.2014 08:51 |
| Story ID: | 121474 |
| Location: | KINGSTON, NY, US |
| Web Views: | 263 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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