Military is in transition

1848: Secretary of war sets aside 10 square miles for Fort Vancouver military reservation; soldiers arrive.

1849: Capt. Ulysses S. Grant arrives as regimental quartermaster.

1853: Post reduced to 1 square mile between Fourth Plain Boulevard and Columbia River.

1860: Troops leave for Civil War.

1879: Name changed to Vancouver Barracks.

1906: Construction of Barnes Hospital, forerunner of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and Camp Hatheway, on current site of Clark College.

1916: Vancouver Barracks bustles with soldiers serving in combat under Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing in Mexico.

1917: World War I brings in 30,000 soldiers for training, deployment.

1945: 30,000 military personnel come and go from barracks, a hub for soldiers returning from World War II.

1986: Lt. Col. Royce Pollard arrives to take command of barracks.

2000: Last four active-duty Army officers and six civilians pull out of Vancouver Barracks, leaving only Reserve and National Guard units.

2004: Many troops with Vancouver ties deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan.

2006: The Army Reserve’s 104th Division remains in Vancouver, while another 300 prepare for deployment to Iraq. Members of the Washington National Guard’s 791st Chemical Co. and the 396th Combat Support Hospital also are deployed.

2007: Brig. Gen. Eldon P. Regua takes command of 104th Division.

2008: Col. Daniel L. York assumes command.

2009: York is promoted to brigadier general; the Army announces plans to build a $28 million training center in Orchards, scheduled to open in 2011.

Vancouver’s status as a military town is heading for a couple of transitions.

Since it arrived more than 160 years ago, the U.S. Army has been a significant presence in Vancouver’s historical core. But now Brig. Gen. Daniel L. York is getting ready to lead his Army Reserve’s 104th Training Division (Leader Training) out of town.

The 104th is slated to leave Vancouver Barracks this year and make its new home at Fort Lewis, south of Tacoma.

“By June 2010 — July, at the latest — we’ll be completely moved to Fort Lewis,” York said. “That has to happen because our civilian jobs run out down here, so we don’t have a choice.”

The new headquarters at Fort Lewis is built, but work still is being done on the technology piece. When the move happens this summer, “It will be the end of an era,” York said.

That era includes distinguished soldiers like future president Ulysses S. Grant, who served here as a quartermaster.

Others include Gen. O.O. Howard, who was awarded a Medal of Honor during the Civil War; Gen. George Marshall, the only career soldier to win the Nobel Peace Prize; Gen. Thomas Anderson, the first general to lead U.S. troops in combat overseas, in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War; and Joseph K. Barnes, who became surgeon general of the U.S. Army in 1864 and attended President Abraham Lincoln after he was shot.

While other units of the Army Reserve and the Washington National Guard will remain in Vancouver, their command structures top out at colonel.

Those units will be in transition, too. The Army has announced plans to build a $28 million training center in Orchards.

Scheduled to open in 2011, the three-building Orchards campus will be a weekend training base for about 1,000 soldiers who now report to the Vancouver Barracks.

The U.S. Army has been at the Vancouver Barracks since 1849. It took over Fort Vancouver from the British Hudson’s Bay Company, which had arrived in 1825 to oversee the fur trade. Vancouver Barracks, which grew out of the old fort, swarmed with soldiers through World War II.

The 104th Division previously had been assigned to an institutional-training mission.

In its current role, leader training, it provides professional development education to Reserve and National Guard soldiers across the U.S. while supporting more than 100 college ROTC programs. It also supports leadership courses at Fort Lewis and at Fort Knox, Ky.

One of its East Coast units supports annual cadet summer training for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Many troops from other Guard and Reserve units based at Vancouver Barracks have seen action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Members of the 396th Combat Support Hospital have been assigned to duty in spots ranging from Fort Lewis to the Middle East, and assigned to new units. Some members of the 915th Forward Surgical Support Team were wounded in Iraq and returned home in 2003.

Fifty Clark County soldiers in the Washington Army National Guard’s 791st Chemical Co. were activated in 2006 to train for deployment to Iraq, where they served before coming home in 2007.

About 250 Clark County members of the Washington National Guard’s 81st Armor Brigade were deployed to Iraq in 2004 and returned home in 2005.

Also deployed from the Vancouver Barracks were the 100-member Service Battery (B), 2nd Battalion, 146th Field Artillery Regiment of the 81st Armor Brigade. Many of those soldiers have returned home, and many have been redeployed to war zones.

Other Clark County troops serve on many ships, aircraft and in units of all service branches.

At the start of this year, at least 19 soldiers, Marines and civilian contractors with local ties have been killed in war on terror since 2003.