• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Reserve component, major USAREUR player

by Joe Burlas

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Nov. 4, 2002) -- U.S. Army Europe relies heavily on reserve-component soldiers in almost everything it does, according to USAREUR's top soldier.

Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, USAREUR commanding general, made that observation to more than 100 state adjutant generals and other senior National Guard and Army Reserve leaders during an Association of the U.S. Army dinner Oct. 19 in Washington, D.C.

"When I first started in the Army, you didn't see the Guard and Reserve very much in Europe -- boy has that changed," Meigs said. "This Jacob's coat of forces we have now is fascinating."

Reserve component forces in theater have allowed USAREUR to do a lot more than it could with its active-duty forces, he said. Specifically, 7,000 mobilized National Guard and Reserve soldiers have taken over a one-third of USAREUR's Operation Enduring Freedom force protection requirements -- guarding almost 500 installations and facilities.

Meigs listed other reserve-component contributions to USAREUR, including numerous country-to-country contacts through joint military exercises, training range construction through the continuous flow of engineer units on two-week active-duty tours, riggers helping prepare humanitarian assistance ration shipments to Afghanistan and providing the bulk of manpower for recent peacekeeping rotations in Bosnia and Kosovo.

"We rely on these (National Guard and Reserve) units to supplement what our active units are doing, or do the things we could not do without them," Meigs said.

The success of the reserve component in USAREUR is attributable to three things, Meigs said. Those are a realigned 7th Army Reserve Command in Germany that has a close working relationship with USAREUR, the purposeful integration of the reserve component with active-duty forces and enforcing the same standards across both the reserve and active components.

"When you talk to a USAREUR soldier, you maybe talking to a banker, detective, school teacher, a college student -- you just don't know unless you look at their shoulder patch that they are a reservist," Meigs said.

USAREUR's area of responsibility has grown significantly since the Cold War when the Army had two corps standing alongside NATO partners facing east toward the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies in Eastern Europe. Now, USAREUR has one corps responsible for covering contingencies across 97 countries expanding all the way from Russia in the east to the tip of Africa in the south, Meigs said.

And as USAREUR covers its responsibilities, reserve-component soldiers are there as equal partners with their active-duty counterparts.

Meigs is scheduled to turn over USAREUR to Lt. Gen. B.B. Bell, current commanding general of III Corps and Fort Hood, Texas, in early December.