Published: April 07, 2007 07:17 pm      

Nearly 850 Miss. Guard soldiers put on alert, could be mobilized

JACKSON, Miss. — Members of at least six Mississippi Army National Guard units have been told they might be mobilized for duty in the Middle East, military leaders say.

“We’ve got about 850 soldiers that have been alerted in various units throughout the state,” said Maj. Gen. Harold A. Cross, Mississippi’s adjutant general. “The alert order means to get ready ... It stabilizes the unit and gets them prepared to be mobilized.”

Cross told The Associated Press that the alert doesn’t necessarily mean the soldiers will be called to duty, but chances are likely they will. He said the affected soldiers have been notified.

“There will be a continuation of that throughout this war,” Cross said. “That’s going to mean that within the next six months, our population of fighting forces (the Mississippi Guard) in (the Middle East) will increase to somewhere around 600 to 800.”

The units were not alerted in response to President Bush’s recent increase in troop levels to help stabilize the volatile situation in Baghdad, Cross said.

There are already 240 Mississippi Guard soldiers and airmen in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. Some of those soldiers will be coming home before the others would deploy, Cross said.

Eighty-four members of the Houston, Miss.-based 288th Engineer Company received mobilization orders this week. Most of those soldiers were pulled from a list of nearly 150 troops who had volunteered to return to the Middle East, Cross said.

“There is a pool of soldiers that want to repeat service. So as long as we have volunteers that have the (needed) skills, we will let them go back,” Cross said.

Tim Powell, a Guard spokesman, said the 288th specializes in construction and maintenance, “and clears routes for convoys and security patrols.”

The 288th, also known as the SAPPER company, will report for duty June 7.

Nearly 90 percent of Mississippi’s Guard forces — or 8,000 soldiers — have served in some active capacity since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. That’s similar to other states, as the Pentagon has depended heavily on citizen soldiers to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cross said.

“The soldier we bring back from ... duty is an exemplary citizen that has had responsibilities far above his chronological age. They continue to get better and add to the value of the state,” Cross said. “That is a Mississippi National Guard soldier.”

Nearly 3,500 Mississippi soldiers, including Poplarville’s Company B, spent most of 2005 in Iraq with the 155th Brigade Combat Team. Now as few as a dozen or as many as 200 soldiers from a particular unit are being alerted and could be asked to fill ranks overseas.

The 890th Engineer Battalion, including Picayune’s A Company, deployed to Iraq in 2003.

“We’re seeing mobilization of our units, not as battalions, but as companies or even subparts of a company,” Cross said. “That’s what they specifically need for specific missions in Iraq. So they can plug and play with what they need.”

It would likely be 2009 or 2010 before the 155th would be called back to duty, if the war in Iraq is not winding down by that time, Cross said.

Bush wants more than $100 billion this year to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but some lawmakers in Washington want to tie a timetable for withdrawal of troops to the funding. A Senate bill would pull most troops out of Iraq by March 2008 while the House would draw down troop levels by September 2008.

Democratic leaders have yet to negotiate a final version to send the president, and Bush has already made clear he will veto it anyway, which will start the process all over.