While some landed on sizzling Cuban shores and others arrived in the frosty Balkans, 175 local troops carried the V.I. flag abroad over the last week as two V.I. National Guard units arrived in Guantanamo Bay and Kosovo for year-long tours.
Maj. Gen. Renaldo Rivera, adjutant general of the V.I. National Guard, first announced their ongoing arrivals on Saturday at a ceremony welcoming other VING troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
On Monday, Rivera said all of the troops had reached their destinations.
“We’re totally engaged, being called into local and national missions,” he said.
“And they’re doing an excellent job,” he said. “We have one of the best trained units in the force.”
Rivera said the 102 soldiers from the 661st Military Police Company, who departed the territory in August, arrived in Kosovo last week after training with their stateside counterparts in Indiana and with NATO counterparts in Germany.
For the next nine months they will perform police duties in Kosovo, where the population voted in the first general election since breaking from Serbia last year. The soldiers will serve as part of the multi-national Kosovo Forces, or KFOR, which has worked to curb ethnic violence and support nation building in the decade since Kosovo’s civil war and NATO’s devastating bombing campaign aimed at Serb forces, who were then attacking ethnic Albanians there.
Members of the V.I. unit were interviewed by military reporters as they arrived.
“I love working with NATO,” said Sgt. 1st Class Lenroy Harry, of St. Croix, the Army News Service reported.
“This is a great experience, and I’m glad to be downrange,” he said. “[A]s an instructor back home, I will be able to relate my knowledge to my students from what I’ve learned here.”
Rivera said the 72 VING soldiers from the 786 Combat Sustainment and Support Battalion, who deployed from St. Thomas and St. Croix on Nov. 3, arrived at the naval base Monday after training at Ft. Lewis, Wash.
According to the U.S. military’s official Joint Task Force Guantanamo website, Ft. Lewis has training facilities modeled after those at Guantanamo Bay, where soldiers “learn the skills essential to undertake the demanding work associated with guarding detainees removed from the battlefield, to include cultural awareness training. Some guards have prior experience in detention or corrections, some do not.”
The VING troops touched down in Cuba amid the clamor following U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder’s announcement Friday that five detainees, including accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, will be tried in the United States instead of in military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay.
That news was widely interpreted as a major step towards fulfilling President Obama’s promise to close the controversial prison there next year. Some 200 prisoners remain, and the search for a suitable location or locations on the mainland to replace Guantanamo all but ensure Obama’s self-imposed January deadline to close the prison will not be met. It is not clear how a timely closure of the facility would affect the VING soldiers’ mission there.
While known for its prison, Guantanamo Bay is an active U.S. Navy base where more than 5,000 people live and work —- complete with McDonald’s and Pizza Hut restaurants, recreation facilities and schools.
Rivera said the VING soldiers will carry out a range of duties, including logistics, training and guarding the facilities and prisoners during their 12-month stay there.