SKOWHEGAN — Sgt. 1st Class Tenney Noyes said there were mixed emotions this week when the soldiers of the 136th Vertical Engineer Co. of the Maine Army National Guard heard they would not be deployed to Kuwait in 2016.
“We received an order dated yesterday that our notice of sourcing has been rescinded and to stand down,” Noyes, 33, of Canaan, said Friday. “For all the soldiers in our unit, there’s two types of feelings that they have — disappointment because they were looking forward to deploying. The majority of our soldiers signed up after 9/11 for that purpose with Iraq and Afghanistan, with that understanding. They’re disappointed that they won’t be able to use their skill sets at a high level.”
However, Noyes, the 136th’s operations noncommissioned officer at the Skowhegan and Lewiston armories, said the men and women of his unit also are relieved that they won’t be leaving their families for an extended period of time. The company was first told in December it would be sent overseas, and it was scheduled to provide installation upgrades supporting the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Noyes said the men and women in the company now will have to adjust to the idea of not being deployed.
“There’s certain checkpoints we have to meet along the way to show that we are properly trained and that we meet all the requirements to go overseas — and we’ve done all that,” he said. “The reaction now that we’re stood down is relief that we won’t be gone for an extended period of time, that we’ll be there to have family time.”
Noyes, who is married and has two children, ages 7 and 5, was in Iraq for a 2003 deployment. He said his family took the news of him not being deployed next year with relief.
“We set them down and explained to them what was going on,” Noyes said of his children. “We just had a sit-down and I informed them what was going on with work, and they were happy because I’m going to be around next winter and next summer.”
The unit specializes in carpentry, masonry, electrical work and plumbing in the construction, repair and maintenance of base camps, internment facilities and other vertical structures supporting troops in the field.
Noyes works full time for the Maine Army National Guard and is the wrestling coach at Skowhegan Area High School. He was the only one of five command personnel at the Skowhegan Armory on Friday.
But the question remained whether the 136th Company — part of the 133rd Engineer Battalion — eventually will be swapped for an infantry unit. Gov. Paul LePage has vowed to keep the 133rd Engineer Battalion in Maine.
Capt. Norman Stickney, public affairs officer for the Maine National Guard, has said the engineer-to-infantry transition is possible. If the proposed transition is overturned, Stickney said, the 136th company deployment still would be canceled.
“We’re planning on going ahead with our engineering projects and training unless told otherwise, and if that happens, we’ll go from there,” Noyes said. “If there’s a change, we’ll go with the change. There’s plenty of educated, great leaders up in Augusta who know what to do and will make a well-informed decision.”
The unit is split between two armories, Skowhegan and Lewiston, and has roughly 150 to 160 soldiers combined, Noyes said. The 133rd Engineer Battalion has multiple companies within the command structure, but only the 136th was scheduled to be deployed.
Noyes, a graduate of Skowhegan High School, said because the deployment was not scheduled until February 2016, there was still plenty of time to make family arraignments and plan for the adjustments that would be needed with him gone.
The entire battalion was sent to the Middle East in 2003-04, but on other occasions, units prepare to deploy and military plans can change.
“We had been through other deployments — 2009, when the unit got stood down; and most recently the (262nd Engineer Company) got stood down this summer. We understood that that was in the background,” he said, “but it was still a long ways away.”
Doug Harlow — 612-2367
Twitter: @Doug_Harlow
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