FORT LEWIS, Wash. – First Army Division West - the unit responsible for the post-mobilization training of Army Reserve and National Guard Soldiers in the western United States - is "bringing the desert in" to help prepare more than 1,000 Minnesota Army National Guard Soldiers for their deployment to Iraq this spring.

The 34th "Red Bull" Infantry Division will take over command of Multinational Division - South from the 10th Mountain Division in April.

In addition to experts from a spectrum of Army and government organizations, 10 Soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division came from Iraq to join Division West in training the Red Bulls during two command post exercises in March. "The 10th Mountain Division Soldiers are on the ground [at Fort Lewis], providing real-time situational awareness," said Division West commander, Maj. Gen. Mark Graham. Exercise coordinators are also receiving live input from 10th Mountain Division personnel in theater.

"It's an evolution in training," said Col. Joseph Maher, who is head of Division West Plans, Operations and Training and the architect of the 34th Infantry Division command post exercises. During these exercises, the units being trained must react and respond to "storylines" that require them to take various actions and hone their communication and coordination skills. A storyline can be as innocuous as a visiting Congressional delegation in the unit's area of responsibility, or as serious as the crash of an unmanned aerial vehicle.

Typically, Maher said, storylines for command post exercises are drafted months in advance and locked into place several weeks before the exercise actually takes place. But, in the meantime, real events in Iraq can make the storylines obsolete. That time lag is what Maher set out to overcome with the Red Bull exercises.

"What happened here that is somewhat different is we stayed very, very close with the 10th Mountain Division in Iraq," he explained. "To get absolute relevance, you want to be as close as you can in time to what's going on in the desert. As [the 10th Mountain Division's missions] have developed in the real world, we have incorporated them into our training exercise." For the 34th Infantry Division command post exercises, events that are 24 hours old in the desert are being played out in simulation.

"Our program is very real-time," Maher said. "We're on the move, adjusting to stay as close as we can in real time to what's going on [in theater]."

Ideally, the 34th Infantry Division will have already encountered, in simulations, every situation they might expect to have happen during their first month in Iraq. "The idea here," Graham said, "is to make sure that we've given them the opportunity to see every type of thing they'll have to do and anything they'll have to deal with in theater the first 30 days."

For the Red Bull exercises, Division West brought in experts from Training and Doctrine Command, Forces Command, First Army, I Corps, 3rd Infantry Division, 1st Cavalry Division and III Corps. Prior to the start of the first command post exercise, these experts "trained the trainers" during what Maher has dubbed "Warfighter Functional Training" - 80 classes broken down into 126 blocks of instruction in 10 days.

"It's a new way of doing business to have this many players engaged," Maher said. "This is the latest and best that the Army can offer for any division - National Guard or active duty."

The innovative Division West command post exercises are "a major event for our Army and for our country," Graham said. "What makes this unique is that this isn't just a National Guard event. We have active Army forces, National Guard, Army Reservists, plus interagency personnel, all here together working with [the 34th Infantry Division]."

No matter their organization or area of expertise, the command post exercise instructors "make sure that we succeed," said 34th Infantry Division command sergeant major, Command Sgt. Maj. Doug Julin. "The training has given [34th Soldiers] the opportunity to test their own skills. That's what I need. I need my Soldiers to be trained mentally, so that they can go forward and do their job."

The Soldiers of the 34th Infantry Division come from 273 towns across Minnesota and also from 14 other states, so the command post exercises orchestrated by Division West give the National Guard staffs the opportunity "to train together and communicate and coordinate," said 34th Infantry Division commander, Maj. Gen. Richard Nash. "[Division West] has been able to provide mentors and role players to us, plus bringing in the very important 10th Mountain Division and their Soldiers out of theater with current information and data - what's really going on yesterday, if you will, in Iraq. It's very valuable to have those role players come in to mentor and to assist our staffs as we go through the command post exercises."

Since 2001, about one-third of the Soldiers of the 34th Infantry Division have been deployed, whether to Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, or in Europe providing security at U.S. military installations, or on the southwestern border of the United States. "We have Soldiers that have been deployed up to four times," Nash said.

In Iraq, the 34th Infantry Division will have command and control of 16,000 multinational forces in eight of the country's 18 provinces and will work in partnership with more than 40,000 Iraqi Security Forces, including the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Department of Border Enforcement. Not only will the unit continue the ongoing security mission, Nash said, but Multinational Division - South will prepare for the eventual withdrawal and downsizing of U.S. forces and "build confidence in the Iraqi people that their Iraqi Security Forces can do the mission once the 34th leaves."

The deployment of the 34th Infantry Division is only the second time a National Guard division has been deployed in the Global War on Terrorism. The New York Army National Guard's 42nd "Rainbow" Infantry Division deployed to Iraq in 2004. The 34th Infantry Division was last deployed in 1941 to Ireland.

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