JOINT FORCES TRAINING BASE ALAMITOS, Calif. – For the Soldiers of Troop A, 1st Squadron, 18th Cavalry Regiment, California Army National Guard, the past few years have been busy.
“In 2018, we started off with our Jordan deployment,” said U.S. Army 1st Lt. Dylan Martinez, the troop commander. “That lasted about 10 months.”
Unit members were then called out in 2020 to respond to civil unrest in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death. The following year saw them respond to wildfires near South Lake Tahoe, California, then deploy to Kuwait for about a year.
Once they returned, they were called out again to respond to wildfires and other events while continuing their normal training schedule. Earlier this year, they responded to the Palisades and Altadena wildfires that scorched the Los Angeles area.
“We were out there for about two months to protect buildings and property,” Martinez said.
Now the unit is back in LA as part of the 4,000 National Guard troops on duty to protect federal buildings and property as part of the Federal Protection Mission.
“I like it,” said U.S. Army Sgt. Carlos Moya, a team leader with the unit, of the busy operational tempo. “I mean, who wants to stay home and not do anything?”
For the cavalry Soldiers, the call to respond to events in LA came while they were preparing for upcoming gunnery training.
“On the way home of our second day of drill, we got the texts that we’re being activated,” said Spc. Marcos Islas, a Soldier with the unit. “From there, we went back to our armory in Azusa, [California], to set up all our trucks.”
The unit was first sent to bolster security at the federal building in Paramount, California. After four days there, they shifted to Joint Forces Training Base Los Alamitos, just outside of LA, to await follow-on missions.
“We’re staged in Los Alamitos to wait to be called to protect federal buildings and federal property,” Islas said.
In the meantime, that means continued training on crowd management and riot response techniques.
“Today, we were focused on any violent protesters that may come our way, how to protect ourselves,” Islas said. “If they try to break through our security, we would have to detain them and then give them over law enforcement. But hopefully that doesn’t happen.”
Most importantly, Martinez said, the training also included de-escalation efforts and techniques.
“We’re here to help protect, to make sure that we calm everything down,” he said, adding that the overall training also helps ensure Soldiers know how to respond in situations that may quickly change.
“Our mission is to protect federal property and personnel who are performing federal functions and to make sure that if any of these guys see what we may have displayed to them [in training], that they react the right way,” Martinez said.
The deployments and high operational tempo also have helped prepare the unit’s Soldiers for the LA mission.
“When they come out here, they’re mentally and physically prepared for what may come,” Martinez said.
Those deployments also have helped build unit readiness and cohesion.
“It’s a very, very tight unit, that’s for sure,” Martinez said.
That’s especially true among the unit’s noncommissioned officers and junior Soldiers.
“My troop - Alpha Troop, 1-18th Cav - has a lot of good NCOs that look out for their Soldiers,” Islas said. “That, you know, makes our mission a lot easier to do with their help.”
For Moya, who was recently promoted to sergeant, the LA mission is one of his first in a leadership role.
“I’m an NCO now, a new NCO,” he said. “I get to get hands on and develop that leadership skill with new Soldiers and other NCOs.”
And there’s no other unit he’d rather be with.
“I like my unit,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot with my unit. A lot of good events, positive events – deployments, activations, trainings. I feel like we’ve done a lot, and I’ve been in at the right time.”