National Guardsmen ready for Olympic security duty

National Guardsmen from Company B of the 1140th Combat Engineers conducted final exercises Saturday, preparing for their duties to help provide security for the Winter Olympics, to be held Feb. 8-24 at Salt Lake City.

A group of 102 area National Guardsmen will be among 400 Guardsmen from Missouri who will help provide security.

The group will leave Jan. 24 to join approximately 17,000 Guardsmen who will be part of the security force for the games, expanded after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

They will be in Salt Lake City through March 1.

"We're re-qualifying with our weapons this weekend," said Sgt. 1st Class Chad Craft, a full-time Guardsmen with the 1140th. "We'll be completing the field issue of cold-weather gear."

Craft recently returned from a trip to the Olympics site and planned to brief his comrades on what to expect there.

The group will leave Perryville on charter buses for Whitman Air Force Base, where the guardsmen will fly to Salt Lake City.

Company B of the 1140th is stationed at Perryville and has a detachment at Jackson. Every soldier on the deployment list volunteered for the active-duty assignment, said Craft.