A Virginia National Guard battalion boasting some 800 soldiers and based in Gate City will be nationally honored today for its excellence in preparing two units for duty in Iraq last year while effortlessly conducting another unit’s return from Iraqi service.
The state National Guard’s 1030th Transportation Battalion, 329th Support Group, will be recognized as the nation’s Most Outstanding Army National Guard Battalion for training year 2009 during a luncheon ceremony in Washington, D.C.
The honor is known as the General Walter T. Kerwin Award. Among those expected at the luncheon is Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr.
While its headquarters are in Gate City, the battalion has individual companies in Gate City, Emporia, Rocky Mount, Blackstone and Martinsville, Va. Their responsibilities range from supplying transportation and logistics support to decontaminating chemicals and providing maintenance resources.
“I’m extremely proud of the men and women of this battalion,” Lt. Col. Doug Messner, who served as the 1030th Transportation Battalion’s commander last year, said Monday.
“We didn’t set out to win an award,” Messner said. “But this honor is a great testament to the professional conduct of the men and women in our battalion companies, the way they approach their jobs, the way they accept all we ask of them. And we ask a tremendous amount.”
The 1030th Transportation Battalion won the Kerwin Award based on its performance last year in numerous categories, including percentage of personnel qualified for their specific jobs, weapons-training scores, attendance at training sessions and overall readiness for duty if called to deploy.
During 2009, the battalion had two companies training for deployment to Iraq – the 1032nd Transportation Company in Gate City and the 3647th Maintenance Company in Blackstone. At the same time, another battalion unit – the 1710th Transportation Company in Emporia – was returning after nearly a year on Iraqi soil.
In the end, neither unit preparing for Iraq ended up going, thanks to the U.S. government’s decision to begin withdrawing troops from that country this spring and summer. But the 1030th Transportation Battalion was still honored with the Kerwin Award because of the effective work it did preparing the two Guard units for deployment, as well as flawlessly bringing back the 1710th Transportation Company, which won praise for its work while in Iraq.
“Our whole focus was to give our people heading to Iraq all the training, preparation and everything else they would need to do their jobs and come back safely,” Messner said.
“At the same time, we were also working hard to smoothly bring back our people who had been in Iraq, and had done such a fantastic job. But, in the end, the professionalism of all our personnel made things very easy.”
Retired Maj. Cotton Puryear, the Virginia Department of Military Affairs communications director, said the battalion’s award was extremely impressive because its units carry out so many different duties.
“There’s been a lot of hard work put in by a lot of dedicated people,” Puryear said.
The Kerwin Award honors the late U.S. general who served as the Army’s vice chief of staff during the 1970s. Kerwin also played a key role in helping the military transform to operating as an all-volunteer force.
rbrown@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2512
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