Spread Thin, Army Calling on Same Units

[RamboLiberal]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=540&u=/ap/20040312/ap_on_re_mi_ea/back_to_iraq_1&printer=1

The Army is spread so thin around the globe that when it needs fresh combat troops for Iraq (news - web sites) this fall it will have little choice but to call on the same soldiers who led the charge into Baghdad last spring.

The 3rd Infantry Division already has been given an official "warning order" to prepare to return to Iraq as soon as Thanksgiving. When those soldiers flew home from Iraq last summer to their bases in Georgia, few of them could have known they were, in effect, on a roundtrip ticket.

They are not alone in facing back-to-back deployments to Iraq. Some of the same Marines who teamed up with the 3rd Infantry to topple Baghdad are already assembling again in Kuwait, only a matter of months after returning home, and more Marines will go next year.

Other Army units that recently returned to the United States or are preparing to come home this spring, including the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., and the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, are candidates for a quick turnaround.

<snip>

Some are concerned that the Army is being squeezed so hard that soldiers will quit in droves. Statistics on reenlistments and recruiting don't show that to be the case — not yet, anyway. And some who know the Army best say its soldiers are willing to accept the hectic pace.