Fort Stewart Soldiers Prepare To Deploy To Kuwait

Just more than a year after it returned from Afghanistan, the Fort Stewart-based 3rd Sustainment Brigade in the coming weeks will once again deploy to the Middle East. Army Col. Anthony Coston Friday morning cased the Provider Brigade’s colors at Marne Gardens during a time-honored Army ceremony that officially marks a unit’s preparedness to move into a new theatre of operations — Kuwait. “It’s our turn again,” said Coston, who took command of the brigade in November, about two months after it returned from its nine-month deployment. This rotation — the unit’s sixth since 2002 — will be markedly different from its most recent, when it headed support, sustainment and retrograde operations throughout southern Afghanistan. While most of the brigade’s 2,000 soldiers will remain at Fort Stewart, Coston will take almost 300 Provider soldiers into the small desert country tucked between Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf with the mission of providing support and sustainment — including food, water, mail, fuel and ammunition — to forward deployed troops in seven countries throughout the region. Provider soldiers, additionally, may be asked to help with sustainment operations for troops in Afghanistan as the U.S.