They battled for 15 months in Baghdad and Mosul, losing 15 soldiers in some of the fiercest fighting since the invasion of Iraq.

Tuesday afternoon, many in the ranks of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team had tears in their eyes as they greeted loved ones during a Fort Carson homecoming ceremony. The brigade is out of danger now with all but 250 of them back in Colorado.

“It’s like Santa Claus, Valentine’s and the Super Bowl all rolled into one,” Col. John Hort shouted with an emotion-choked voice.

Hort, the brigade’s commander, is slimmer than he was when the brigade left for war just after Thanksgiving, 2007. He led his brigade through the battle of Sadr City last spring, an intense two-month fight that left 700 Shiite militiamen dead.

Now, for the first time since 2003, Iraqis can walk through the eastern Baghdad neighborhood in relative safety.

Iraqi troops have taken control of the area after American forces wrested it from insurgents. Markets have reopened and factories have resumed work, an important step in an area where unemployment was at 50 percent or more last year.

For Hort, though, that was yesterday.

“It’s like a big weight got lifted off my shoulders,” he said.

Lt. Col. Chris Johnson was just as happy.

His 3rd Brigade battalion spent their 15 months in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, and what was the last bastion of al-Qaida violence in that country. Violence there has dropped 75 percent since the battalion took control, Johnson said.

“You wouldn’t recognize it,” he said.

The time in Iraq took its toll, though on soldiers and their families.

Hort said the next two weeks will be dedicated to watching soldiers identified as “at-risk” for trouble on their return to ensure they get the help they need to reintegrate with their families and society.

“We’re very focused on our high-risk soldiers,” Hort said.

Hort said that will include learning from other units that have returned and had to deal with crime, family problems and war-caused mental illnesses.

But the colonel has other priorities, too.

Like other soldiers in the brigade he gets four days off before he has to return to Fort Carson to start the medical checks, paperwork and training in how to readjust to life in America .

“It’s going to be four days of drinking Corona and playing basketball with my kids,” he said.
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By Tom Roeder The Gazette

This is the year of the boom at Fort Carson, where thousands of soldiers are expected to relocate this summer.

The post’s population of troops will climb to 24,600 from 18,100 in 2008, and officials there will continue building at a furious pace to house the soldiers with $580 million in construction planned this year. The number of military family members in town will grow from 45,600 in 2008 to 62,000 in 2009, according to Army estimates.

But that won’t mean a sudden economic rebound in Colorado Springs. With ongoing and planned deployments expected to keep 10,000 soldiers overseas at any time, the new troops will put the post’s economic impact at about the same level it was before the 2003 Iraq invasion.

The growth will bring stability and is breeding optimism, business leaders say – two things that have been in short supply amid economic turmoil that has rocked the Pikes Peak region and the nation.

The Pentagon first announced growth plans for Fort Carson in 2004, then pledged additional troops in 2005 and 2007, making the post one of the biggest in the nation, on paper.

But the Iraq war delayed the arrival of most of the additional troops, and wartime deployments have kept thousands of Colorado Springs troops overseas.

“We’ve had a couple of false starts simply because of Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Rich Walker, whose firm, First Properties, is developing the Mesa Ridge shopping center in Fountain.

Most of the soldiers headed to Fort Carson are now serving in Iraq with the headquarters of the 4th Infantry Division and the division’s 1st Brigade Combat team. They’re scheduled to start returning to Fort Hood, Texas this month, where they’ll prepare for the move here.

Col. Gene Smith, Fort Carson’s garrison commander, said the soldiers who are part of the units moving to Colorado will be given the option of staying in Texas and going elsewhere within the Army.

So while the bulk of the soldiers coming to Fort Carson will move from Fort Hood, hundreds, if not thousands, of others will come from Army posts worldwide.

And while troops could start moving here as early as April, commanders expect most to arrive this summer.

Smith said soldiers, most of whom have families, will want to limit school disruptions for their children.

Meanwhile, there will be deployments from the post. The 3,600-soldier 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division leaves in May for a year in Afghanistan.

The 3,800-soldier 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 4th Infantry Division left last fall for a year in Iraq and won’t be home until late this year.

The post is also getting thousands of soldiers back from war soon. The 3,800-soldier 3rd Brigade Combat Team will come home in February from 15 months of combat in Baghdad and Mosul.

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Colorado Springs Republican, said the local economy will be bolstered by growth despite the pace of deployments. He said, unlike earlier in the war when military families often left Colorado during deployments, spouses and families of soldiers are increasingly likely to stay in the Pikes Peak region.

And it looks more likely that deployments will slow as the Iraq war winds down.

If peace takes hold, businesses here are in for a payday, said Brian Binn, president of military affairs for the Greater Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce.

By 2013, the post will be home to another 5,000 soldiers on top of the ones coming this year, with a planned additional brigade that’s being built to grow the Army. If they’re all in town at once, that would push the number of soldiers in Colorado Springs to levels not seen since the Vietnam War.

But with peace still in the distant future, Binn said he is happy with what the community has.

“You will see one of the highest populations of soldiers at Fort Carson this summer that you have seen in four or five years,” Binn said. “We will feel the impact of the arrival of the additional soldiers and their families, even with the reluctance of consumers to spend.”

Businesses had been salivating over that military money for years.

“So often when we talk to the businesses around here, they ask us where is the growth at Fort Carson that we’ve been told about?” said Lisa Cochrun, economic development director for the city of Fountain. “Businesses expected to see greater increases than we’ve had, but we have to recognize that there is a war going on and troops have been deployed.”

Cochrun said that she expects traffic and business in the Fountain Valley to increase this summer and that she is already seeing more interest in Fountain from retailers, restaurants, medical offices and entertainment and recreation businesses in anticipation.

The economic gains from additional troops at Fort Carson won’t be enough to pull the local economy out of recession, but likely will prevent an even deeper downturn, said

Fred Crowley, senior economist for the Southern Colorado Economic Forum.

He estimated the arrival of the troops will reduce local job losses by between 2,500 to 5,000.

If deployments slow, Crowley said soldiers are more likely to make big-ticket purchases such as cars and homes. He estimated deployments in the past five years have trimmed local vehicle sales by 10 percent and inflated the local apartment vacancy rate by 2 or 3 percentage points.

Preparation for growth has also buffered the region from the worst of the nation’s economic ills. While homebuilders have shed workers during the housing bust, Fort Carson has put out the help wanted sign.

The $500 million annual building budget to house soldiers has brought an average of 2,000 construction workers daily to the post. That is expected to last through 2010, said Maj. Mark Himes, who oversees building at the post.

In Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8, which has 6,500 students, officials will make room for 3,000 more students in the next five years at a time when state education money for districts with military families is expected to be cut.

The district will have to cut $1 million from this year’s budget because the state is expected to suspend supplemental payments made to districts with large military populations. District 8 had received more than half of the state’s $1.8 million kitty for such schools.

The $1 million already had been built into the budget, and so district officials will have to make cuts before the end of the year, according to Dave Roudebush, assistant superintendent for academic support services.

The district, however, receive a big shot in the arm in November, when voters passed a mill levy override, which will bring in $700,000 in local money. Passage guaranteed federal money of about $70 million and will be used for construction costs, increasing teacher salaries and expanding school curriculum.

Already, a new elementary school is on the architectural drawing board and is expected to open in August 2010. It will be 87,000 square feet, and will comfortably hold 750 kindergarten through fifth-graders, Roudebush said.

Gazette staff writer Carol McGraw contributed to this report.