http://www.pensitoreview.com/2007/06/11/as-hurricane-season-starts-entire-82nd-airborne-redeploys-overseas/As Hurricane Season Starts, Entire 82nd Airborne Redeploys Overseas
Posted by Jon Ponder | Jun. 11, 2007
The 82nd’s Robert Stanley patrols the flooded streets of New Orleans in 2005. He was killed March 2007, in Samarra, Iraq.
Earlier this year, with recruitment tanking and its forces strapped down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army’s famed 82nd Airborne Division was forced to disband one of its best known missions, the “division ready brigade” — a contingent of troops on stand-by at all times ready to deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours.
The 82nd’s ready brigade has been an integral part of the United States’ relief preparations for domestic disasters such as hurricanes for years. But now, as the 2007 hurricane season begins, the entire 82nd Division is leaving United States for the first time since it was deployed to Iraq in 1990 as part of Operation Desert Storm — and none of its divisions will return until September, when the season is over:
When a jet lifts off Sunday at Pope Air Force Base with the commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team and the last load of his 3,300 paratroopers aboard, the 82nd Airborne Division will notch one more hard-earned mark in a history so often described as “storied.”
For only the second time since World War II, all of the division’s combat infantry brigades will be at war. Other 82nd units are deployed also, bringing the total overseas to nearly 17,000 paratroopers.
One of the most memorable successful stateside deployments of the 82nd’s ready brigade was to South Florida in response to the Hurricane Andrew disaster in August 1992. The 82nd provided food, shelter and medical attention in the region for 30 days.more...