FORT BRAGG, N.C. —The 1st Special Warfare Training Group (Airborne) held a change of command ceremony for its support battalion June 24 on Fort Bragg’s John F. Kennedy Plaza.
Lt. Col. John T. Corley, the battalion’s outgoing commander, passed command of the unit to Lt. Col. Michael Stefanchik, a Special Forces officer reporting to Fort Bragg from Washington, D.C., where he served as a liaison officer in the U.S. Special Operations Command’s Washington office.
“[Stefanchik] is no stranger to war, or this group,” said Col. B. Ashton Naylor, Jr., who commands the 1st SWTG(A). “He’s deployed in combat to operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the liberation of Kuwait, operations in Haiti and Bosnia, and Operation Enduring Freedom.”
Stefanchik is also no stranger to 1st SWTG(A), or the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. He completed the Special Forces Detachment Officer Qualification Course in 1994, and returned to SWCS in 1998 to become one of the command’s first small-group instructors for Special Forces Qualification Course officer training.
“He has all the qualities and experience to lead the Support Battalion here at SWCS,” Naylor said.
The Support Battalion provides logistical support to the instructors who educate Soldiers in the Army’s three special-operations branches: Special Forces, Civil Affairs and Military Information Support Operations. This logistical support includes administrative in- and out-processing, academic records-keeping, vehicle maintenance, transportation, electronic and communications equipment maintenance and repairs, food service and parachute rigging.
“Shortly after I took command of this unit, the U.S. Special Operations Command took measures to formally recognize the support of the many non-special-operations forces in the conduct of our wartime mission,” Corley said.
“The addition of the fifth declaration to the special-operations forces truths recognized the importance of the enablers and their contributions to mission success,” he said.
“Not to mischaracterize [Adm. Eric Olson’s] comments, he was speaking specifically about the joint services, engineers, intelligence analysts and the numerous other processions that contribute to special operations,” he said. “Nonetheless, I sense that it’s appropriate to extend the precept to the officers, non-commissioned officers, soldiers and civilians in the service of the Support Battalion,” he said.
Stefanchik told the soldiers and civilians within the battalion that they have done outstanding things in support of special-operations training.