Deploying nearly 200 Soldiers from Fort Leonard Wood at a moment's notice may seem like a monumental task, but it's one of the 4th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade's missions -- and that's why Nov. 13 and 14, pieces of the brigade held a Defense Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear Response Force exercise.
"Our battalion task forces all have CBRN, military police, engineers, urban search and rescue, and medical companies. We have a very capable force," said Maj. Mike Helton, 4th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade S-3. "If we are unfortunate enough to have a disaster, we are committed to being ready to deploy."
The 4th MEB's DCRF mission is to save lives, mitigate human suffering and facilitate recovery operations in a homeland chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear environment.
"We are doing our nation's business. We are here to support and defend. In case there is a real scenario that takes place, we want to be ready on the spot with no flaws or hiccups. We have to be able to address the issue and save as many lives as we can," said 2nd Lt. Taren Wilson, 94th Engineer Battalion, S-1 Human Resource.
Wilson and his team were at the Main Post Chapel for the Soldier Readiness Processing portion of the exercise.
In addition, Soldiers were staging their equipment at the motor pool, storing their personal vehicles and a crew was at Forney Airfield to practice flying out the Early Entry Command Post.
"We practice it over and over to make sure we can do it and do it well -- quickly to ensure that we are at the incident site and able to conduct life saving operations in a timely manner. Today, Force Package 1 staged on Constitution Avenue for Soldier Readiness Processing. We are conducting this operation as if we were really going to deploy, so we are practicing all of our deployment processes, to include picking up cots as if we were going to have to stay at the SRP site overnight before rolling out. We are on a strict timeline once we receive notification, so we are going through all of the drill that we possibly can to make sure that we are ready," Helton said.
Helton said for this exercise they added flying-out the Early Entry Command Post.
"We are practicing as if we were loading an aircraft. They are loading pallets with bags and center balancing vehicles to make sure that the weights are correct," he said.
"With this being a Training and Doctrine Command installation primarily, we are extremely pleased with how well the installation supports our deployment training. We have no doubt, with the installation's assistance, that we can met our deployment timelines and arrive in time to save lives and mitigate suffering," Helton added.
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