Westside Enterprise

National Guard Reorganization To Take Effect

Fort Huachuca - The Arizona Army National Guard will be reorganized to conform with the new organization of the Army ordered into effect by President Kennedy, Maj. Gen. J. C. Wilson, the Adjutant General, announced here today.

General Wilson said key Army National Guard officers have been assigned to study the reorganization and prepared proposals for consideration of the National Guard Bureau in Washington D. C.

The new Army organization, originally scheduled for implementation in 1965 but pushed

Each of the new divisions will be organized along lines to adapt it specifically to a particular type of warfare in a given theater of operations. For example, divisions destined to fight in Europe probably would be heavy in armor units, while those set up for possible combat in the swampy jungle areas of the Pacific would have fewer armor elements and more infantry units, General Wilson said.

This organization, similar to that used by the armored division in World War II, calls for each of the new divisions to have 11 to 14 battalions of armor, infantry, or mechanized infantry and support troops depending on the theater of operations it would be assigned to. The new division also would have three Infantry Brigade headquarters. Battalions or units from the battalions could be assigned to the brigade commanders to make up a task force for a particular combat mission.

The general said it has not been determined just how the Arizona Army National Guard will be fitted into this new organization. He pointed out that Arizona is one of the few states that has a brigade

headquarters unit similar to the ones called for in the reorganization.

He was referring to the 258th Infantry Brigade commanded by Brig. Gen. Fredrick R. Stofft, a Tucson businessman and veteran national guard officer who fought with the Arizona Guard's 158th Regimental Combat Team in the Pacific during World War II.