In 2019, members of the 2nd Battalion, 127th Infantry returned home from Afghanistan. In early October, the 127th left Appleton, Wisconsin and traveled to Fort McCoy for training.
Unfortunately, Fort McCoy was already occupied by an estimated 13,000 Afghan “refugees”
According to Rep. Tom Tiffany, who has paid several visits to Fort McCoy, the base only has the capacity to house 10,000 people, and is struggling to cope with the overflow in tents. When they first arrived some 600 Afghans had been quarantined with a variety of infectious conditions.
Fort McCoy, located in rural Wisconsin between the small cities of Sparta and Tomah, started out as an artillery range and its barracks were intended to house military personnel arriving for training exercises, not huge numbers of foreign migrants. The barracks, which were built during World War II, are in poor condition and a new construction project only recently got underway.
Even while hosting the largest population of Afghan migrants in the country, Fort McCoy struggled to maintain its training role. Over 100,000 troops had trained there during the fiscal year with personnel from all of the services participating in everything from cold weather operations (it gets pretty cold in that part of the country) and various exercises.
When the 127th arrived, the barracks they were meant to sleep in had already been taken. With Afghans sleeping in their barracks and their beds, they reportedly had to sleep outside instead.
“The summers are warm and wet; the winters are freezing, snowy, and windy,” is how the local weather has been described. In October the weather had begun its slow descent from warm and wet to freezing, but it was not the Afghans who were expected to deal with the weather.
According to a Department of Defense spokesperson, “The 2-127 Infantry Battalion was offered access to the hard structures in the field, as the barracks on post are currently occupied by our Afghan guests.” The spokesperson also insisted that, “There were no unexpected weather events during the training and no impact to the Fort McCoy mission or training for the service members.” And yet according to some the impact on morale has been quite serious.
The displacement of American soldiers to make way for Afghan migrants was symbolic of events in Washington D.C. and at Fort McCoy where refugee meals closely follow Islamic Sharia and liquor was removed from the shelves of the PX so as not to offend the Afghans.
The men of the “Red Arrow” are used to challenges. With a history that includes the Iron Brigade of the Civil War and the Les Terribles in WWI, and as members of the Wisconsin National Guard, they’re not afraid of weather. But the displacement drove home to them where the priorities of the military brass lie, not with the soldiers who served in Afghanistan, but the Afghans whom the Taliban waved past their terrorist checkpoints in Kabul and on to America.
Some no longer recognize Fort McCoy, divided into Afghan “neighborhoods” where the hated Shuras (an Islamic form of tribal governance) have been reconvened and are dictating to base personnel the way that they did during the failed “hearts and minds” efforts in Afghanistan.Read the rest from Daniel Greenfield HERE
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