Area Guardsmen to be deployed later this year

Duty in Iraq likely by December

By BRIAN FERRY bferry@timesobserver.com
Specialist Pete Ochocki of Warren is among about 40 Warren County members of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard getting ready to leave for Iraq.

Ochocki is part of the 1st Battalion, 112th Infantry Regiment, Stryker Brigade Combat Team based in Erie.

“This is pretty big for Warren County,” he said. There are “forty families that will be affected by this. A lot of these guys still live and work in the communities there.”

Ochocki’s family is, for the most part, taking the news of his pending deployment pretty well.

His children, daughter Shoshanna, 12, and son Ian, 10, “seem like they’re OK” with Dad shipping out.

However, his mother, Patricia Ochocki, is not so comfortable with the idea. “She says she wants to lock me up in my basement,” Ochocki said.

In the battalion, spirits are high. “Morale is pretty upbeat,” he said.

Many of the guardsmen are college students and are excited about the opportunity, he said.

Ochocki is ready, but he’s no bundle of nervous energy.

“I’m not worried about it,” he said. “I’ve been a career soldier for 19 years now. It doesn’t bother me.”

He plans to wrap up that career after the deployment – his first. “My first and my last,” he said. “I’m retiring.”

Before he’s done, he expects his unit to do just what it’s asked to do and to do it well.

Ochocki and the 112th won’t know its exact tasks until closer to the deployment, but in general, “We’re protecting their freedom over there right now,” Ochocki said.

The 1-112th will head for Camp Shelby, Miss., late this month for its annual three-week training and then again in September for a pre-mobilization deployment.

After that, the 700-member, northwestern Pennsylvania battalion is “scheduled to go to Iraq in late December, January time frame,” Ochocki said.

The battalion loaded its vehicles onto trains April 30 through May 2 in what Ochocki said was “the largest movement of military equipment ever in northwest Pennsylvania.”

A total of some 260 vehicles, including about 80 “Stryker” light armored vehicles, were loaded on 74 flat-bed rail cars in Meadville. The train was nearly a mile long.

That equipment will arrive at Camp Shelby ahead of the soldiers.

The 1-112th has facilities throughout northwestern Pennsylvania – in Erie, Meadville, Bradford, Ridgway, Corry, Butler and Punxsutawney.

The Pennsylvania Army National Guard 56th Stryker Brigade, which includes the 1-112th, is the only National Guard Stryker unit in the country.

“We are the first National Guard to become a Stryker Brigade,” Ochocki said. “All of the other Stryker Brigades are active duty.”

The deployment is a big deal.

“It’s a historic thing for us,” Ochocki said.