FORT BENNING, Ga. – Buses pull in to transport Soldiers

FORT BENNING, Ga. – Buses pull in to transport Soldiers newly graduated from initial-entry training at Fort Benning to Fort Stewart, Georgia April 9 amid elaborate health-and-safety precautions. The 40 Soldiers, graduates of Infantry and Armor One-Station Unit Training here, had been unable to head to Fort Stewart under a Pentagon COVID-19 travel ban, but became the first to depart Fort Benning when the Army okayed the move. Precautions included screening bus drivers on arrival for COVID-19, screening the departing Soldiers, taking their temperatures and marking them on wristbands, cleaning the buses under government guidelines, filling the buses to only half-capacity to ensure safe distancing, making the trip non-stop to Fort Stewart to further minimize exposure, and re-screening the troops on arrival there. The troop movement was a "pilot" effort which, if deemed successful, could open the way for further departures of Fort Benning's OSUT graduates to their first units of assignment.