Nashoba Publishing Online May 16, 2008
94th RRC deactivates Sept. 8, troops being sent to Virginia
By Don Eriksson
DEVENS -- Senior officers, NCOs and soldiers of the 94th Regional Readiness Command's (RRC) Headquarters and Headquarters Company traversed the wilds of South Post's hills, ponds and underbrush armed with compasses and azimuth directions to red and white stakes planted deep in the woods.
Pfc. Telma Bento and Col. Richard Sellner were members of one of the small groups of soldiers sent out on the navigation exercise separated by several minutes from each other.
"We're trying to get something different. This is basic soldiering," Sellner said as he crested a steep hill, ignoring swarms of black flies. "Actually, this is the first sergeant's (1st Sgt. Laurence St. Cyr) idea."
It was the last outdoor exercise for the 94th's soldiers in its Saratoga Boulevard headquarters.
Bento is a native of Portugal who became a U.S. citizen a scant two days after she signed up to protect her new nation. Sellner is an experienced combat veteran in his third decade of Army Reserve service.
Neither are certain of their future, for the 94th RRC and its 6,000 citizen-soldiers is being deactivated. Headquarters and Headquarters Company will leave Devens in September to be dispersed among other units in Virginia.
The 94th's Saratoga Boulevard headquarters building will be the new home of the 804th Medical Brigade.
According to information from www.armyreserve.army.mil, www.globalsecurity.org and other sites, it had become obvious to soldiers at their regional training sites that their unit's days were numbered when Col. Andrew Barclay, commander of the 167th Corps Support Group (CSG), announced the 94th's deactivation on Sept. 16, 2006. Immediately afterward, the colors and guidons on five of its units were cased.
The 94th RRC's mission has been to command reserve units and support the training, planning, intelligence and administration of its own and other New England units assigned to other commands -- 76th, 78th and 98th Divisions, and U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command -- 56 in total.
The RRC mobilizes and deploys troops and provides engineering, utilities, physical security and contracting support to 65 facilities. It also provides environmental services that include recycling, hazardous spill response and environmental training.
The 94th's subordinate units include the 366th Military Police Detachment at 9 Charlestown St. and the 3rd Judge Advocate General Detachment at the Barnes U.S. Army Reserve Center, Summer Street, Boston.
The 94th RRC is a modern-day descendant of the 94th Infantry Division, which landed on Utah Beach 94 days after D-Day in 1944 and moved into Brittany to assume responsibility for containing some 60,000 German troops besieged in the Channel ports of Lorient and St. Nazaire.
The division inflicted more than 2,700 casualties on the enemy and took 566 prisoners before being relieved on New Year's Day 1945.
From Brittany, the division moved west to the Saar-Moselle Triangle, shifting to the offensive two weeks later and seizing Tettingen-Butzdorf. The next day, the Nennig-Berg-Wies area was taken but severe counterattacks followed, and Butzdorf, Berg, and most of Nennig changed hands several times before being finally secured.
On Jan 20, 1945 an unsuccessful battalion attack against Orscholz resulted in the loss of most of two companies. In early February, the division took Campholz woods and seized Sinz.
The division launched a successful full-scale attack on the heights of Munzigen Ridge, backbone of the Saar-Moselle Triangle, on Feb. 19. Working with the 10th Armored Division, the 94th secured the area from Orscholz to the confluence of the Saar and Moselle Rivers in two days. Another successful attack established an expanded bridgehead launching an attack across the Saar.
By March, 1945, the division stretched across a 10-mile front, from Hocker Hill on the Saar through Zerf, and Lampaden to Ollmuth. It repelled a heavy German attack near Lampaden. On March 13, it spearheaded XX Corps in breaking out of the bridgehead to drive to the Rhine River. Ludwigshafen was taken March 24 working with the 12th Armored Division.
The division then moved to the vicinity of Krefeld, Germany, to assume responsibility for containing the west side of the Ruhr pocket from positions along the Rhine. When the pocket was later reduced in mid-April, it was assigned military government duties.
In late 2003, all regional support commands were re-designated to regional readiness commands.
The 94th RRC's disestablishment was recommended in 2005 Defense Department Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) recommendation. The number of RRC's was to be reduced from 10 to four by disestablishing one major peacetime administrative headquarters -- the Devens RRC -- and creating a new deployable headquarters on Westover Air Reserve Base.
Devens Headquarters and Headquarters Company soldiers participated in an exercise at Westover last week following their land navigation refresher.
"The soldiers are being reassigned in accordance with their MOS (military occupational specialty)," said Mr. Jeff Keane, of the 94th Public Affairs Office. "Many are already gone."
As Sellner shot a new azimuth and proceeded East through the deep woods of Devens he mused, "This is better than moving offices."
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