Photo By Scott Sturkol | An engineer Soldier with the Wisconsin National Guard’s 157th Maneuver Brigade...... read more read more
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Combat engineers with the Wisconsin National Guard's 157th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade became the latest Army engineer unit to work on an ongoing troop construction project just outside the cantonment area fence at Fort McCoy.
The 157th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, according to the Wisconsin National Guard, “provides a versatile, flexible combat force that can be tailored to a wide spectrum of military combat and support missions, and it can provide specialized forces to support brigade combat teams and other combat units. The brigade includes two subordinate battalions and units specialized in communications networking, military police, a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System field artillery battalion, and combat engineers spread all across Wisconsin. The 157th is headquartered in Milwaukee, and has an assigned strength of more than 2,100 Soldiers.”
The project work is located in an area of land near the old Gate 20 and Improved Tactical Training Base Liberty and the cantonment area fence, said Troop Projects Coordinator Larry Morrow with the Fort McCoy Directorate of Public Works (DPW).
The site plan is to make it into a base operations support site for installation service con-tractors, such as facility maintenance, roads and grounds, solid waste, custodial, pest management, and more, Morrow said.
Soldiers with the 157th helped bulldoze parts of the project area to give unit members heavy equipment training, and more. In July 2021, another Wisconsin National Guard engineer unit — the 4th Platoon of the 950th Engineer Company (Route Clearance) — completed work on the same project.
At that time, 2nd Lt. Nick Bures, 4th Platoon leader, said this kind of training is beneficial for Guard engineer Soldiers.
“With this project, they are moving a lot of dirt that has an end result in a completion of a project,” Bures said in 2021. “This work is wonderful, especially for the new guys. They’ll remember the work we did here.”
DPW Operations and Maintenance Division Chief Nate Sobojinski said DPW is combining all of its service contractors in one location near commercial gate access to keep suppliers from having to drive around post bringing supplies to various locations.
While the post is developing this site for base operations support contractors, Sobojinski said a lot of material can be taken from the site in the future for other projects.
“We will have ample material to use the site as a borrow fill site,” Sobojinski said. “This site allows easy access for North Post range work and other project areas.”
Morrow said the site work at the site at first was mainly moving out organic material, such as tree stumps and vegetation. Now more of it is being developed with each unit completing work on it.
“Work will continue to be ongoing in the entire area,” Morrow said. “And again, we really appreciate having units coming in to help with projects like this.”
Morrow also said completing these projects is very important.
“If we didn’t have these projects, many troops wouldn’t get the training they need, and the post wouldn’t benefit from the work they do to improve Fort McCoy training ranges and quality-of-life programs,” he said.
Fort McCoy’s motto is to be the “Total Force Training Center.” Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.
The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on the Defense Visual Information Distribution System at https://www.dvidshub.net/fmpao, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”
Also try downloading the Digital Garrison app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base.
| Date Taken: | 06.28.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 06.28.2022 13:25 |
| Story ID: | 423953 |
| Location: | FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
| Web Views: | 747 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Wisconsin National Guard engineers support Fort McCoy troop project during June 2022 training, by Scott Sturkol, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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