{"id":190561,"date":"2024-05-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=190561"},"modified":"2024-05-31T21:20:22","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T21:20:22","slug":"29th-infantry-division-hq-heads-exercise-immediate-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=190561","title":{"rendered":"29th Infantry Division HQ Heads Exercise Immediate Response"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n U.S. Army Soldiers from the 43rd Multi-Role Bridge Company, 20th Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade conduct a Wet Gap Crossing on May 11, 2024, at the Drawsko Combat Training Center, Poland, in support of Immediate Response 24. (U.S. Army Reserve photo by Sgt. William China)
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USTKA, Poland \u2013 Spc. Shiquies Branch, an administrative specialist with Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 29th Infantry Division, Virginia Army National Guard, has a birthday coming up. But she\u2019s spending it in the field, which isn\u2019t quite the celebration she had in mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a little sad because it\u2019s my 25th birthday. You know, one of the milestone birthdays,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Though Branch may have chosen other ways to celebrate her birthday, she joins the rest of the 29th Infantry Division headquarters element as it serves as the division-level command in exercise Immediate Response 24. The training exercise takes place in Poland and the Czech Republic throughout May and includes more than 22,000 service members from the United States, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

During the exercise, the division headquarters has been providing overarching command and control over operations of those 22,000 service members, divided into seven task forces.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, what we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re building relationships,\u201d said Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy Hawley, the top noncommissioned officer of the 29th Infantry Division.<\/p>\n

Part of the Defender Europe exercise series, Immediate Response seeks to strengthen interoperability with allies and partner nations while focusing on the strategic deployment of U.S.\u2013based forces, which means moving people, vehicles and equipment overseas.<\/p>\n

The exercise also includes live-fire exercises, a wet gap crossing, and tactical operations based on a scenario of responding to and repelling an invading force from Poland.<\/p>\n

Planning has been a year in the making.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been conducting multiple meetings throughout the year, discussing how this exercise is going to work and what everybody\u2019s responsibility is,\u201d said Hawley. \u201cAs soon as we got on ground, we started building those person-to-person relationships with the other command teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s helped bridge communication gaps and build operational skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis training has been done before,\u201d said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Joe DiNonno, commanding general of the 29th Infantry Division. \u201cIt\u2019s not overly complex. It\u2019s just the ability of getting through the initial friction of being able to talk with partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of that friction comes from language barriers but also from differing ways of planning and executing missions, said DiNonno, adding that learning from those differences is one of the key takeaways of the exercise.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a partner nation who does it a certain way you observe that and it makes you reflect and say, \u2018Hey, that\u2019s not a bad way to get after it,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThey learn from us, we learn from them, and it makes us stronger and better.\u201d<\/p>\n

That also makes for a smoother transition and integration of forces should a real contingency operation occur, said DiNonno, adding that the multinational training also helps build greater readiness within the division headquarters and other U.S. forces taking part.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe phrase we use is generational readiness because you have young officers and you have young noncommissioned officers that are experiencing something that they\u2019re not going to be able to experience anywhere else,\u201d said DiNonno. \u201cWe all draw from our experiences. And so, in that way, we\u2019re building the next set of leaders by going through the Defender series.\u201d<\/p>\n

The branch, whose primary job is to ensure personnel records and Soldier statuses are up to date, said she may not think of it in generational terms. But the exercise has allowed her to see the larger impact of her role.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s forced me to keep accountability and make sure that I\u2019m on my Ps and Qs with the information because I\u2019m not just worrying about myself,\u201d she said. \u201cNow, I\u2019m worrying about someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawley said he\u2019s been impressed with how the division headquarters Soldiers have remained engaged.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy proudest moment is just watching all the things going on,\u201d he said. \u201cEverybody\u2019s doing something, right. And, when you have this many Soldiers, you don\u2019t know exactly what they\u2019re all doing, but you\u2019re seeing things get done.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said that\u2019s helped achieve mission success and made things run smoothly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s in these situations where you see Soldiers take initiative on things that you may not have expected them to and because they did, it made the mission that much better and more successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the same is true working with the partner nations during the exercise, said DiNonno.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been blown away by the level of professionalism in our partners,\u201d he said. \u201cThese are hardworking aggressive officers and noncommissioned officers that are all about getting the mission done. We do hit friction points, but I\u2019m just amazed and proud to have partners who fight through it the way they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exercise has also given DiNonno new experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never worked with the Poles \u2014 I\u2019ve worked with the Brits before \u2014 and I\u2019m getting exposed to the way they do things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe take immense pride in being able to come out here and take a lead role in one of the biggest events that happens in this area of operations,\u201d said DiNonno. \u201cIt says a lot for the division headquarters, it says a lot for our ability to work with our partners. So, we take it very seriously and everybody who\u2019s here realizes the impact of what it is that we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the larger impact of the exercise is important, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese types of events cost a lot of money, take a lot of planning, and are well worth the bang for the buck,\u201d said DiNonno.<\/p>\n

And, it turns out, said Branch, the exercise also makes for a one-of-a-kind birthday celebration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s beautiful here,\u201d she said. \u201cWho else can say, \u2018Hey, I spent my birthday in Poland in the field?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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U.S. Army Soldiers from the 43rd Multi-Role Bridge Company, 20th Engineer Battalion, 36th Engineer Brigade conduct a Wet Gap Crossing on May 11, 2024, at the Drawsko Combat Training Center, Poland, in support of Immediate Response 24. (U.S. Army Reserve photo by Sgt. William China) (Photo Credit: Sgt. William China) VIEW ORIGINAL USTKA, Poland \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190563,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190564,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190561\/revisions\/190564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/190563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}