A bit at a time, the U.S. Army is leaving Vancouver.

While the big move is still months away, the Army Reserve’s 104th Training Division (Leader Training) has already taken some small steps toward its new home near Tacoma.

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 Timberwolves from the Vancouver Barracks to Fort Lewis.

“By June 2010 — July, at the latest — we’ll be completely moved to Fort Lewis,” York said a few days ago.

Some of that will be forced by time limits for the division’s civilian employees in Vancouver.

“Our civilian jobs here run out then, so we don’t have choice. Any new hires are automatically going to Fort Lewis,” he said.

Joseph Piek, U.S. Army spokesman at Fort Lewis, said the 104th Division’s new headquarters has been built.

However, work remains to be done on information technology systems, York said.

And when all the wiring is done, more finish work — including bringing in furniture — will remain.

“The communications piece probably won’t be finished until February or March,” York said. “Once the IT piece is done, we could all move, but I’m not going to move families in a school year.”

The division also is fighting a war while all this is going on, by the way.

“We’ve got folks constantly deployed,” York said. “We continue to be mobilized on a weekly basis, with somebody being called up and sent over.”

A few of York’s staff already have made the move to Fort Lewis.

“Some folks are already up there: the inspector general, a key position that deals with soldiers’ concerns; our family readiness person; and our forward support element, which does all our coordination for summer training.

“Those are the only positions being managed on a day-to-day basis” at Fort Lewis, York said. “I’ll continue to focus our battle assemblies out of Fort Vancouver as long as I can.”

The new location is just one of the shifts for members of the 104th Division. But the other transitions are more personal, said York, who took over the 104th as a colonel and then was promoted to brigadier (one star) general.

“It’s sad news,” he said. “As a two-star command, we had 165 employees. As a one-star command, we dropped to about 60 full-time employees.

“We take a huge hit. The struggle for us now is finding jobs for wonderful people that we can’t continue to employ.”

And in what York calls “another tough thing,” many of the division’s reservists who live in Clark County will have to make some decisions.

“Some may decide they don’t want to commute (to Fort Lewis) and will find other units,” York said. “We could lose so much structure.”

Print this article