Just a few weeks into their yearlong mission abroad, 102 soldiers from the V.I. National Guard are already busy maintaining law and order and providing security escorts on base at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.
After a year of preparations at home and intense training at stateside bases and in Germany, soldiers of the 661st Military Police Company from St. Croix arrived in Kosovo last month to join the multi-national task force known as Kosovo Forces, or KFOR-12.
Brig. Gen. Al Dohrmann, of Bismarck, N.D., who is commander of Multi-National Task Force-East in Kosovo, said the VING military police are vital to keeping a safe and secure environment for other soldiers on Camp Bondsteel, who help keep the peace outside the base in the streets of Kosovo.
“The contingent from the Virgin Islands has demonstrated a code of excellence in maintaining safety and security as we’ve moved from one point in our deployment to the next,” Dohrmann said in an update posted this week on the North Dakota National Guard Facebook page —- which received the post from KFOR public affairs officers in Kosovo.
“The fine soldiers of the 661st and its leadership are instrumental in our efforts to bring everyone back home safely,” Dohrmann said. “The people of the Virgin Islands and the United States should be extremely proud of their citizen soldiers here in Kosovo.”
While local VING officials have provided little useful information about their deployment, the Facebook entry and an overlapping article posted this week on the main National Guard website gave at least a glimpse into the local troops’ journey to their new home away from home.
“The MP unit is naturally a close-knit unit, and we’ve been that way for years,” said VING company commander Capt. Arthur Hector, explaining to the National Guard reporter how the unit has handled the many transitions so far. “But we had to pull people in from other units and make sure people connected and the chemistry was right.”
In comments posted on the National Guard website, Hector recounted the arduous training over the year that prepared them for Kosovo. From basic soldiering skills tests and specialized police training in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, the unit deployed to Camp Atterbury in Indiana, where they integrated and trained with the main multi-state task force of the National Guard. At Atterbury, VING soldiers ran through drills at the advanced urban training center, where they learned to use pepper spray and tasers and other law enforcement tools. From the stateside facilities, the VING troops flew to Hohenfels, Germany, where Hector and others said the tempo of training cranked up.
“At that time we went through a more intense version of the training, which incorporated scenarios that we had to react to,” Hector said, according to the National Guard story.
“At Hohenfels the training was rapid and intense, which was good,” said First Sgt. Dale Carty. “It gave the unit a firsthand view of how things could be, especially for those soldiers who were never deployed and had never experienced that kind of intense training before.”
Hector said at least half of his troops had deployed abroad before. Some, like Hector, have deployed three times, he said.
Without describing what exactly he and the other are doing day to day in Kosovo, Hector said their training and previous deployments together have helped as they learn their new roles.
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Just a few weeks into their yearlong mission abroad, 102 soldiers from the V.I. National Guard are already busy maintaining law and order and providing security escorts on base at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.
