Good, 'cause I kept thinking about this. I seem to have formed habits by reading over my sons' school papers. Both are in high school this year, and one is in AP English.
Quote:
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p.3, 1st para."It was felt that although the division was prepared for a European role it was not the ideal unit so mechanised and armoured units took priority although the 2-1 Infantry, 2-23 Infantry and 2-47 Infantry were detached and became the 199th Infantry Brigade (Lt). The division kicked its heels and trained hard until January 1997 when the order came to prepare to deploy to the Persian Gulf. At this time the units that had become the 199th Infantry were replaced. This deployment was rather ironic as its primary mission was with I Corps for a Pacific region contingency mission with a secondary mission of reinforcing NATO.
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This paragraph kind of contradicts itself, if the division was prepared for Europe, but its primary mission was to the Pacific.
Were the 3 separated battalions not motorized, or were they de-motorized when they were detached? If they hadn't yet been motorized, maybe that could be mentioned on the previous page; if motorization was a work in progress. What units replaced them, new creations or transfers from somewhere else? What's the irony, I could infer that the 199th went over the Pacific, is that what happened?
Were the deployment orders and detachment of the 199th simultaneous?
Further on, the 3 battalions mentioned above aren't in the 1995 OOB on page 10, before their detachment.
Aside: FWIW, I'd long thought that the 9th was one of the divisions experimentally motorized before deployment to Europe in WW2, but Wikipedia tells me I'm wrong. One of its brigades was more or less amphibious in Vietnam, though, I got that right.