Warriors in Peace Operations - Strategic Studies Institute - U.S. Army

could do to change it now. The good news was that there was
at least one knowledgeable person per staff section staying
behind, excluding the S-2. But I knew deep down inside that
I could not have a robust staff, as every able-bodied person
was needed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. What I failed to realize
at the time was how important my little staff and new rear
detachment commanders would be.
THE DUST SETTLES
It was not until the end of January that I finally had an
idea of what lay ahead. All of our deployments were done,
but there were daily calls from deployed units, asking for
additional items to be shipped their way. Routine and not so
routine paperwork was starting to pile up on the brigade
commander’s desk, and the staff kept calling to get my
approval on a myriad of issues. So I was slowly forced to
wean myself away from my nearly total focus on my
battalion, and I began to spend half the day at the brigade.
One of the first things I had to do was to move some
members of my battalion to the brigade staff. This was
essential because there just were not enough soldiers to
answer the phones or fill critical billets like the Logistics
Officer (S-4) and the Intelligence Officer (S-2). It did not
make me, the battalion commander, very happy, but it was
the right thing to do.
My change of command at the end of February was a
blessing in disguise. I was now able to focus completely on
the operations of the brigade. The timing could not have
been better. Unlike DESERT SHIELD/STORM where a
stop-loss personnel policy was in effect, the deployment for
OJE required troops to have only 90 days or more remaining
in their tours to be deployable. That meant that come the
first of March, rear detachments would need to start
out-processing those returning soldiers. This just
overwhelmed the rear detachments, as their resources were
already taxed to the limits by the mission of in-processing
new soldiers. Although in-processing sounds easy, it was
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