MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune
2nd Cavalry gives its name, history to the 1-25th today at Fort Lewis
The 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division is on its way out of Fort Lewis, headed for Germany, and it’s taking the identity of one of its sister units with it.
At a ceremony today, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, the oldest continuously serving regiment in the U.S. Army, will surrender its name, colors and lore to the 1-25 in a reflagging ceremony at Fort Lewis.
Then the old 2nd Cav will be redubbed the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. And the 1-25’s identity will go into storage until it is handed over to another formation in Alaska.
It’s all part of a major reorganization to increase the Army’s brigade combat teams from 33 to 43.
And it has to do with history.
The soldiers of the 2nd Cav have toiled at Fort Lewis the past couple of years, getting heaping helpings of cavalry folklore from their commanders as they convert to a Stryker brigade. But the unit has old ties to Germany.
From World War II until the end of the Cold War, its scouts sat across the East German and Czech border, looking for signs of a Soviet invasion that never came.
The 25th Infantry Division, meantime, has its roots in Hawaii and has historically been associated with the Pacific, fighting in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Its 1st Brigade has been at Fort Lewis since 1995 and went to Iraq for a year in 2004-2005.
To the Army, it didn’t make sense to have a unit from “Tropic Lightning,” as the division is called, stationed in Germany. Hence today’s reflagging ceremony.
Maj. David Downing, the 2nd Cav’s civil affairs officer, said it’s “bittersweet” to part with the regiment’s heritage. But now the unit will forge its own identity.
“Any unit that has any greatness associated with it, it’s due to its soldiers,” he said Wednesday.
The 2nd Infantry Division has had ties, off and on, at Fort Lewis going back to 1946, when it arrived from Europe. It was the first to reach Korea from the United States after the outbreak of fighting there in 1950.
The post is home to the division’s 3rd Brigade, which leaves soon for a second Iraq deployment. And over the next several months a brigade from the 1st Infantry Division will move from Germany to Lewis, where it will acquire Strykers and be rechristened the 1st Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.
Each of the three brigades numbers about 3,900 troops.
“I always tell the soldiers that no matter what unit you’re in, you’re an American soldier, and you embrace the unit you’re with,” said Alan Archambault, director of the Fort Lewis Military Museum. “If there’s one thing that the American Army has always been, it is adaptable.”
