Copter Heroes Of Katrina Set To Go To Iraq

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New Orleans Times-Picayune
January 15, 2008 'It's a busy time' for National Guard
By Paul Purpura, West Bank bureau
HAMMOND -- In the past three years, the Army National Guard's 1/244th Air Assault Helicopter Battalion returned home from a yearlong tour in Iraq, served another six months on active duty because of Hurricane Katrina, and then began re-training for a new combat mission and refitting its helicopters for battle.
And after nearly a year of being on alert for mobilization and seeing a turnover within its ranks caused by their Katrina losses, Task Force Voodoo, as the 400-soldier battalion calls itself, is going back to Iraq.
"It's a busy time to be in the National Guard," said battalion commander Lt. Col. Patrick Bossetta, a onetime LSU linebacker who has set aside his law practice and real estate development ventures in New Orleans because of his ongoing military obligations.
In mid-April, following a send-off ceremony at the Southeastern Louisiana University campus in Hammond, the battalion's troops and fleet of 30 UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters will deploy to Fort Sill, Okla., for intensive combat training.
Task Force Voodoo will then deploy to an undisclosed base north of Baghdad as an air assault helicopter battalion. The battalion resumed that mission on Oct. 1, 2006, and with it, Task Force Voodoo was enlarged by the addition of a helicopter company from the Florida Army National Guard.
In Iraq, they will work for ground commanders, getting their infantry troops and gear into the fights.
"It is getting his combat power where he needs it, when he needs it," Bossetta said of the air assault role.
While active-duty Army units serve in Iraq for 15-month tours, Defense Department policy is that National Guard units serve a year at most, Bossetta said.
An invaluable resource for stateside emergencies, such as hurricanes, the battalion will be gone for the 2008 storm season. Bossetta said three Blackhawks will be available in the state, which has military agreements with other states to supply equipment and manpower during emergencies.
Unlike the active-duty military, the National Guard has a federal wartime mission and a stateside one, such as its work during Katrina or its ongoing operations in New Orleans, where 360 soldiers and airmen are helping the Police Department patrol the city.
The 1/244th is not the first Louisiana National Guard unit to face a second federal mobilization since Sept. 11, 2001, said Maj. Michael Kazmierzak, Guard spokesman.
Last month, the headquarters and service companies for the 769th Engineer Battalion deployed to Iraq, four years after the entire battalion deployed to Afghanistan. About 80 soldiers in the headquarters company for 165th Combat Sustaining Support Battalion in Bossier City will be shipping out to Iraq soon, while the Guard has frequently had individual soldiers and airmen volunteer to deploy overseas to fill vacancies. A small team of volunteers will ship out to Afghanistan this month to help train that country's soldiers, he said.
"We get requests for volunteers a lot," Kazmierzak said.
The last time Task Force Voodoo went to Iraq, its mission was essentially that of an aerial transportation service to fly dignitaries, such as then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and even the deposed dictator Saddam Hussein. Hussein flew at least twice in Task Force Voodoo Blackhawks, said Bossetta, who flew one of those trips.
Seven months after it returned to New Orleans, with Katrina forecast to strike Louisiana, Gov. Kathleen Blanco declared a state of emergency and Task Force Voodoo returned to active duty. After riding out the brunt of the storm in Baton Rouge, their Blackhawks were the first helicopters of their type to be airborne as winds died down. During the ensuing days, they rescued and moved 16,000 people.
The battalion's facilities at the New Orleans Lakefront Airport were swamped by the tidal surge, expediting the unit's move to Hammond, where new facilities are being built. Much of its equipment was destroyed during the storm, and about 100 soldiers who lived in the New Orleans area lost their homes.
"It's been a difficult road back," Bossetta said.
Some soldiers and their families opted to leave the area because of the storm, and others left the unit after the Iraq deployment, Bossetta said.
"It's like a whole new unit came on board," he said. He did not quantify the turnover but said, "It has not been all that horrible."
The unit still has retained experience in both its officer and enlisted ranks, said 1st Sgt. Danny Bergeron of Slidell, the battalion headquarters company first sergeant.
"So I think we know what we're walking into," said Bergeron, who will deploy to Iraq for the third time, including the 1991 Persian Gulf War. "They should be able to do their jobs and not have any questions."
The new blood includes seasoned pilots and some fresh from Army aviation school who are in the hands of Chief Warrant Officer Laz Murphy, a Blackhawk pilot who racked up 500 combat flight hours during the battalion's last Iraq deployment.
Murphy took leave from her job with the Baton Rouge Police Department last month to help prepare the younger pilots, as she braces herself for another stint away. During her last deployment, she returned to the states briefly, got married and then went back to Iraq.
This time, she will leave behind a 1-year-old daughter.
"Going this time is going to be a little harder," Murphy said of the "heart-wrenching" separation that will be tempered thanks to Internet-based communications.
An influx of financing since Katrina has allowed Bossetta to bring air crews on active duty for training that includes replicating desert conditions at a central-Louisiana site, Bossetta said.
That has enabled them to accumulate more flight time, particularly at night, with the aid of night-vision goggles. In Iraq, the pace will more than quadruple. Stateside, the unit typically accumulates about 350 flight hours monthly; in Iraq, they'll fly about 1,800 hours monthly.
"We go every day, everywhere," said Bossetta, who is making his third trip to Iraq, including the 1991 war, during which he was an active duty Army helicopter pilot.
 
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