"MAKE IT MATTER"

Excellent rundown on the 1st Armor Division. Go read it all.

When Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey learned his 1st Armored Division soldiers would be ordered to stay and fight longer than any U.S. soldiers have in half a century, he asked for two things.

“I said, ‘Keep the unit together. Don’t parcel us out.’ And I said, ‘Give us a mission,’” Dempsey said during an interview this week.

Dempsey got what he asked for. Sometime soon, the division’s two brigades, which are based in Germany but for the past year have more or less run Baghdad, will decamp. The city of 6 million will be the responsibility of the 1st Cavalry Division.

One brigade-size unit from 1st AD will head some 50 miles south to Babil Province to protect supply-line convoys that have been attacked and major highways that have been closed, and to battle “former regime elements.”...

The other brigade will be the Ready First Combat Team in reserve, and deploy where needed. Dempsey declined to say exactly where that might be.

One regiment already has moved south — to Najaf, where coalition troops for more than a week have surrounded the city in which radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has holed up — and to other spots in the south-central region of Iraq. A multinational force of 9,500 soldiers has been stretched in that area, and Spain’s decision to pull its 1,300 troops out could exacerbate the problem. The regiment also is shoring up efforts to protect supply lines, Dempsey said...

The pace of the past year has been “absolutely frenetic,” Dempsey said, and challenging in many ways. It can’t be compared to two-year tours in Europe during World War II, for instance, in which fierce battles alternated with long lulls, and battle lines were clearly marked.

“This is 24-7, 365, 360-degrees,” Dempsey said....

Dempsey said in his 30-year career, he had seen no other U.S. soldiers required to stay in a combat zone for more than one year, including Vietnam.

The Pentagon has pledged to pay extended soldiers an extra $1,000 a month. There’s really only one other thing that can be done for them, Dempsey said.

“I’ve been to a hundred-and-some memorial services,” he said. “Commanders [at the services] say to each other, ‘Make it matter.’

“That’s really all you can do for them in circumstances like this. Make this sacrifice matter.”

And please...give your political support to those leaders who are committed to making it matter.