Missouri
National Guard Hosts Ceremony For Kosovo Deployment
By Bob Hudson
Mar 3, 2008 - 11:03:17 AM

The Missouri Army National Guard will honor 1,000 Citizen-Soldiers, from 300 communities across the state, as they deploy in support of peacekeeping operations in Kosovo. They will be honored at a departure ceremony, in the Hearnes Center at the University of Missouri in Columbia at 11 am on March 22.

Many Soldiers have been training since February, but most are still going through pre-mobilization training at Camp Clark, Camp Crowder and Ft Leonard Wood in Missouri. In April, the three main body groups of the mobilization will report to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, for mobilization training, which focuses on putting soldiers in an environment similar to that in which they will encounter while deployed.

After that, the task force will travel to the Joint Multi-National Readiness Center at Hohenfels, Germany, where soldiers and their leaders will be trained for tactical situations that might arise while in Kosovo.   After that the task force will deploy to Kosovo. The task force is expected to finish its mobilization in late March 2009. Several units from the task force will hold smaller, community level, departure events across the state before the Citizen-Soldiers depart for Indiana, but this will be the only gathering of the entire Kosovo Force 10 mobilization in Missouri.