SLIDESHOW

FORT LEE -- With snapping flags, rattling drumbeats and booming cannon, the flag of command at Fort Lee changed hands yesterday.

Maj. Gen. Mitchell H. Stevenson turned over command of the post and the Army's Combined Arms Support Command to Maj. Gen. James E. Chambers.

Standing on the parade field, Chambers reached into a pocket, peeled off the shoulder-sleeve insignia of his former command and put on the support command's patch.

"I'm now the proponent" for the Army's logistics community, he announced.

"We know the challenges are great," Chambers told the hundreds of assembled troops and guests.

"And by the way," Fort Lee's new commander said, "we're at war."

Gen. William S. Wallace, head of the service's Training and Doctrine Command, praised Stevenson as one of the support command's "greatest commanders," who led the command into "a new era of Army logistics."

"It's been my honor to serve the great men and women in the United States Army Combined Arms Support Command," Stevenson said. "My only regret is that I can't stay here."

Stevenson, 55, is becoming the Army's deputy chief of staff for logistics at the Pentagon. He has also been tapped for promotion to lieutenant general.

Chambers, 55, comes to Fort Lee from Fort Eustis, where he led the Army's Transportation Center and School.

He has served in the war in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf War.

Based at Fort Lee, the 4,100-soldier Combined Arms Support Command trains logistics troops and oversees the integration of their work into the Army's combat forces.

About 270,000 soldiers -- roughly one-third of the entire Army -- are "loggies," supplying, transporting and sustaining the service's troops and their equipment.

The Army's transformation in the era of the war on terrorism is making Fort Lee the service's logistics center. Over the next five years, the Fort Lee community of soldiers, families, civilian employees and contractors is slated to grow by almost 50 percent, to a population of more than 43,000.

Army logisticians are on duty in more than 80 countries, supporting about 600,000 soldiers and their equipment, as well as forces from the other U.S. services.
Contact Peter Bacqué at (804) 649-6813 or pbacque@timesdispatch.com.