04/30/08 —
Cambridge Springs Police Chief Eric Johnson must have been feeling a little bit like famous World War II Gen. George Patton on Tuesday. When about 30 military vehicles were about to roll into his little community, Johnson got the call: “Can you meet me downtown and block off some streets?” a visiting National Guard commander asked.
Then, Chief Johnson led the way, escorting a convoy on a through-town path to a new military base on the outskirts of town.
More than 260 pieces of mobile military equipment — including about 70 cutting-edge Stryker combat vehicles — are descending on Crawford County this week as Northwest Pennsylvania National Guard troops prepare to ship out for overseas deployment.
Maj. Timothy Foor of Erie, the northwest battalion’s executive officer, said the equipment will be shipped by train from the Meadville railroad yards. Final destination is Camp Shelby, Miss., a large training site operated by the Mississippi National Guard.
In all, 263 pieces of rolling stock will be loaded onto railroad cars. A large staging area was set up in the railroad yards Tuesday, the vehicles will begin to arrive there this morning, and loading of the equipment will begin Thursday. The heavy-armor shipment will leave for Mississippi on Saturday.
Included in the transport are Humvees, Hemetts (high mobility truck transfer units), almost every Stryker in the northwest unit, and some 5-ton trucks, Foor said.
“And soon, all of our personnel will be moving out as well,” Foor said. After an annual training from May 31 through June 19 in Mississippi, the battalion’s 700 personnel — about 100 of them Crawford County residents — will be deployed overseas. But exact dates and locations haven’t been released, “just an ‘alert for training’ order,” Foor said. He expects to learn the details sometime in June, and that mobilization will follow later this summer from the Mississippi site.
The northwest battalion has facilities in Meadville, Erie, Bradford, Ridgway, Corry, Butler, Punxsutawney and Torrance.
Because some of the vehicles were coming in from so far away, they began to arrive about a week ago and have been placed in a large parking lot in Cambridge Springs, set up as a pre-staging site at the still-under-construction National Guard base, new home of Pennsylvania Army National Guard’s 56th Stryker Brigade.
A Stryker is a 19-ton, eight-wheeled, light-armored vehicle that bridges the gap between light and heavy forces. A Stryker Brigade Combat Team can be on the ground in any part of the world in 96 hours, according to officials.
A grand opening ceremony at the new Cambridge site is being planned for mid-July, Foor said. It will be used as a primary site for Stryker training, with approximately 70 of the mobile monsters housed there.
“It will be a busy couple of months for us,” Foor said.
Mailliard is the Tribune’s assistant editor. He can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at ed@meadvilletribune.com.
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