Santa delivers holiday message to North Dakota families

(12/14/09) - Jolly Ol' St. Nick and wife, Mrs. Claus, helped Brig. Gen. Al Dohrmann of the North Dakota National Guard deliver a special holiday message back to North Dakota to families of Kosovo Forces (KFOR) Soldiers serving here Dec. 13. Dohrmann, commander of Multi-National Task Force-East in Kosovo, offered the greeting via Video Interactive Conferencing technology from the main U.S. headquarters for NATO operations here. He was joined by commanders and senior enlisted Soldiers from various units in his command.

"I need to tell you how proud I am of each and every Soldier here," Dohrmann said. "The morale is extremely high. I see Soldiers supporting each other, helping to make time away from you (their families) go a bit easier."

Toward the close of the hour-long video conference, Santa and Mrs. Claus made an appearance, standing behind the general and his cadre and waving to children in the audience back in the U.S. The conference could be seen by Family Readiness Groups gathered in Bismarck, Valley City, Fargo, Grand Forks, Camp Grafton, Minot, Dickinson and California.

Father and Mother Christmas, played by James Webber and Rene Favors, contracted civilian workers at Camp Bondsteel, even took time to call out some of children by name to add extra-special holiday spirit.

U.S. Congressman Earl Pomeroy, North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven and Maj. Gen. David A. Sprynczynatyk, the adjutant general of the North Dakota National Guard, joined the North Dakota families in Bismarck, N.D., for the video conference.

Though the message from Dohrmann was rife with warm holiday cheer and season's greetings, it also contained a number of important points aimed at rumor control.

Dohrmann told families, that contrary to information they may have heard in the media, Soldiers in his task force would not be cutting their deployments short. "This is not the case," Dohrmann said. "At this time, there are no North Dakota Soldiers scheduled to come home early."

He added that the North Atlantic Council, NATO's Supreme civilian political body recently announced that NATO forces in Kosovo would be reduced from 15,000 to 10,000 in January of 2010.

"But the roughly, 2,200 Soldiers of Multi-National Task Force -East (U.S. and multi-national), to include all 600 plus North Dakota Soldiers are part of that 10,000-Soldiers force after January," he said.

Other key points stressed by Dohrmann:

"We were deployed for a one-year period, starting when the first Soldier was mobilized around Aug. 1, 2009. Based on this fact, I would expect North Dakota Soldiers to return home no later than August 2010.

"Redeployment of the 1,400 U.S. Soldiers of MNTF-E , into include North Dakota Soldiers, will be by unit, in a phased manner, based on the mission in Kosovo, the security situation here, and done in a manner to transition authority with the incoming U.S. KFOR unit from Puerto Rico. This could mean that some Soldiers/units may redeploy early, but that would be days to a few weeks early at best."

"I have been asked a number of times if your Soldiers serving in Kosovo can in any way be sent to Afghanistan through this redeployment. The answer is 'no;' any redeployment will have your Soldiers coming back home."