Phila.-based Guard brigade coming home

The largest Pennsylvania National Guard contingent sent into combat since World War II will stream home from Iraq, one planeload at a time, during the new few weeks.

Advance elements of the 4,000-member 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team will start the homeward journey within days, and the entire brigade should be back by late next month, Col. Marc Ferraro said yesterday in an interview from Camp Taji, northwest of Baghdad.

The brigade, which is headquartered in Northeast Philadelphia but includes components from across the state, left for Iraq in January.

Ferraro, the brigade commander, said his troops "have exceeded every expectation" in carrying a heavy load of responsibility rarely given to a Guard unit.

Since late February, the 56th has been in charge of security in a wide swath of territory northwest of Baghdad, working to put down a diminishing Iraqi insurgency, build up the capabilities of the Iraqi army, and even expand the electric supply in the region.

"I think our major accomplishment is our partnership with the Iraqi army," Ferraro said. "We have seen them grow in many areas."

The 56th is the only one of the Army's seven elite Stryker brigades to be contained within a Guard division. The Stryker is a recent type of combat vehicle that looks like a tank but rolls on wheels instead of tracks.

"I think we have proven the concept that a Stryker brigade can exist within the National Guard," Ferraro said. "Everybody back home can be extremely proud of these soldiers."

The June 30 deadline for withdrawal of major American military units from Iraq's cities "did not affect us," Ferraro said. The brigade was already based in a mostly rural, agricultural area.

Ferraro said the Army was not sending another brigade from the United States to replace the 56th. Instead, a unit already in Iraq - the First Brigade of the First Cavalry Division, out of Fort Hood, Texas - will expand its operations to cover the area until now occupied by the Pennsylvania soldiers.

Two soldiers from the Pennsylvania brigade have been killed, and several dozen have been wounded. Staff Sgt. Mark C. Baum, 32, of Quakertown, a corrections officer at the Bucks County prison, was hit by small-arms fire on Feb. 21. Spec. Chad A. Edmundson, 20, of Williamsburg, near Altoona, was killed by an improvised-bomb explosion on May 27.

In an intermittent parade of chartered civilian airliners, the Pennsylvania troops will fly home to McGuire Air Force Base and spend five to seven days at Fort Dix before being bused to their home armories and then being released from active duty.

Some family groups will try to meet units as they arrive at Fort Dix.

Welcome-home parties are being planned at all of the soldiers' home armories, from Erie to Philadelphia, said Dawn Wegscheider, president of the Family Readiness Group for the First Battalion of the 111th Infantry, based in Plymouth Meeting.

"Everybody is very excited," said Wegscheider, a mother of four whose husband, Maj. Mike Wegscheider, is the brigade's executive officer.

"Sometimes, when you're having a bad day, it seems like they've been gone forever," she said. "But now that I'm trying to get the house in order, it doesn't feel like I have enough time."