Noted for supplying specialists to military actions in World War II and Vietnam, the 579th Engineer Detachment has found its way to Vicksburg and is growing gradually in its new home.

“I’m the new guy here,” said Lt. Col. Sam Jaynes Jr., commander of the specialist-heavy Army unit based in locales worldwide since it was constituted in 1944 and put to work in the Pacific Theater. “We’re hitting the ground fresh.”

Activated locally in 2007 after nearly 20 years of dormancy, the 579th is one of two Forward Engineer Support Team units of the Army that aids engineer commands, such as the Vicksburg-based 412th, at the start of missions, including natural disasters and overseas war-fighting. The other is the Fort Knox-based 533rd Engineer Detachment.

The 579th reports to Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Mississippi Valley Division. The 533rd reports to the Corps’ Great Lakes and Ohio Rivers Division.

Forward operating bases and other living spaces are built to support commanders just arriving in the field, with construction designed and managed “cradle to grave” by the detachment, much like an engineering firm, Jaynes said.

Staffing for the 579th has been under way, with Jaynes’ arrival in May and experts in mechanical engineering and public works either hired from the private sector or “plugged in” from other parts of the Corps since June. Plans are for the eight-person civilian staff at the detachment’s rented space at the Vicksburg District’s East Clay Street complex to swell to 27, with nine military personnel to aid the 579th’s first deployment — wherever that might be.

Support for equally fast responses to military and disaster relief operations have become an emphasis for the Corps, an agency stretched in recent years by hurricanes at home and support of civil works reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military and disaster relief support has hit “an all-time high,” said background supplied by the Corps, which has prompted a move to reorganize its system of deploying specialists. The 579th’s team of specialists will provide support in areas ranging from safety engineering and intelligence analysis to legal counsel — an effort to make those functions part of a permanent team able to go quickly into any disaster relief or national security operation.

“We’re basically like a pretty good-sized engineering firm right now,” Jaynes said. “We have a lot of depth on the bench.”

The 579th’s first base was at Camp Claiborne in Louisiana, as the 179th Engineer Foundry Detachment. During World War II, the unit participated in campaigns at New Guinea and at Leyte and Luzon in the modern-day Republic of the Philippines, where it earned a Philippine Presidential Unit Citation.

It was redesignated at the 579th Engineer Foundry Detachment in 1948 and based at Fort Belvoir, Va., for most of the next two decades. During U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the 579th was deployed from Fort Bragg, N.C., and was involved in several counteroffensives from 1965 to 1970, including those following the 1968 Tet Offensive.

There, the unit was decorated with a Meritorious Unit Commendation from the Army and a Republic of Vietnam Civil Action Honor Medal, First Class.

An eight-year activation in Germany ended in 1988, the last period of activity for the 579th until its re-establishment in Vicksburg.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com