CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 18

FORT BRAGG, NORTH CAROLINA • MORNING, NOVEMBER 2

The deployment of a division is a major event. Even the 17th Airborne, the nation’s most flexible and combat ready division, needed time to prepare itself when ordered to pack up and move out lock, stock, and barrel. Normal twelve-hour work days become eighteen-hour-plus marathons as unit equipment is prepped and moved to marshaling sites. Soldiers who had not done so must find time to pack their personal gear before drawing their weapons and fall in for endless inspections and equipment checks. On top of these combat-related chores each and every member of the division has a personal life that he or she must place in order. Spouses need to be filled in on family matters such as car or mortgage payments coming due in the near future. BDUs that are still at the cleaners have to be picked up. The tube of toothpaste a father took out of his deployment bag when the family ran out one night requires an immediate replacement. All these countless tasks must be tended to almost simultaneously, creating a collective frenzy as officers and enlisted bounced back and forth between the execution of their assigned duties and personal obligations to family and self.

Not everyone is equally affected. The last soldier to leave the post does not turn out the lights and lock the gate. Inevitably every unit has a number of personnel assigned to it that are nondeployable. These people can include newly arrived soldiers who have yet to inprocess and draw equipment as well as those pending imminent discharge or retirement. Personnel with medical conditions, whether it be a broken ankle or a serious case of pregnancy, who would be unable to execute their assigned duties are left behind. In addition there are millions of dollars of equipment that are not required by a unit in the field. This includes items such as beds, wall lockers, office desks, computers, and the other odds and ends that cannot be neatly folded up and stuffed into a rucksack. So a small hand-picked cadre collectively known as the rear detachment, complete with a chain of command, is left to tend to these housekeeping duties as well as respond to the emergency needs of family members of deployed soldiers.