Activities
In December 1990, the unit was called to serve in Operation Desert Storm. The unit was activated for 180 days unless sooner released or later extended. The 201st left Fairmont and went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky for training. It joined XVIII Corps Artillery, 18th Field Artillery Brigade.On the exact 256th anniversary of its founding, the unit fired 256 rounds downrange at Iraqi forces. David Tucker was a chaplain's assistant of the unit at the time and noted this in a letter to The Fairmont Times.
The units of the 201st returned to their home base in May, 1991. The unit did not lose a single man during the war.
In December 2003, the 201st was again called to active duty for Operation Iraqi Freedom. The soldiers trained at Fort Drum, New York in January and February, 2004 before going overseas. While in theater, the battalion was subordinated to the 197th Fires Brigade of the New Hampshire National Guard and commanded by Colonel James Guise. The 197th reported directly to III Corps Artillery, under the command of Brigadier General Richard Formica. The unit spent one year in Iraq before returning home in February 2005. The Battalion Headquarters (HHB) operated out of Camp Cedar II and Tallil Airbase, both of which are approximately 10 miles (16 km) west of An Nasiriyah in the Dhi Qar province of Iraq. B Battery and Service Battery were co-located with the HHB. A Battery operated out of Convoy Support Center (CSC) Scania and C Battery operated out of CSC Navistar in Kuwait. The Battalion's mission was convoy security and route clearanace for Main Supply Route (MSR) Tampa, the primary route for supplies in Iraq at the time. C Battery would later move north to Camp Cedar II and Tallil Airbase and continue convoy security. Some members of C Battery were also attached to the 1st Cav Division in Jan 2005 to provide extra security in Baghdad (they were stationed in the Hotel District: the Baghdad, Palastine and Sheraton Hotels across the river from the Green Zone)for the first elections while the rest of the unit and battalion trained their replacements.
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Famous quotes containing the word activities:
“No culture on earth outside of mid-century suburban America has ever deployed one woman per child without simultaneously assigning her such major productive activities as weaving, farming, gathering, temple maintenance, and tent-building. The reason is that full-time, one-on-one child-raising is not good for women or children.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Love and work are viewed and experienced as totally separate activities motivated by separate needs. Yet, when we think about it, our common sense tells us that our most inspired, creative acts are deeply tied to our need to love and that, when we lack love, we find it difficult to work creatively; that work without love is dead, mechanical, sheer competence without vitality, that love without work grows boring, monotonous, lacks depth and passion.”
—Marta Zahaykevich, Ucranian born-U.S. psychitrist. “Critical Perspectives on Adult Women’s Development,” (1980)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)