DVIDS – News – FOUNDING MEMBER OF ELITE ILLINOIS ARMY NATIONAL GUARD UNIT AT ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL RETIRES AFTER 23 YEARS OF SERVICE

Illinois Army National Guard Master Sgt. Jennifer Dorsey of Moline, one of the founding members of the Rock Island Arsenal-based 6th Battalion, 54th Security Forces Assistance Brigade (SFAB), is retiring after 23 years of service.

“Master Sergeant Dorsey was instrumental in establishing the 6th Battalion, 54th SFAB as a new unit in the Illinois Army National Guard,” said Lt. Col. Matthew Kreiter, the Commander of the 6-54th SFAB. “She always brought a significant level of experience, professionalism, adaptability, and problem solving that every NCO and Advisor should aspire to. What she helped built will carry on throughout the organization for years to come.”

The 6th Battalion, 54th SFAB holds the logistics and medical advisors for the 54th SFAB, the Indiana-based brigade with a mission to “conduct train, advise, assist, support and liaison operations with allied and partner nation foreign security forces worldwide.”

When the 6th Battalion was stood up in 2018, it started with four full-time Active Guard Reserve (AGR) Soldiers – Dorsey, Maj. Keri Wolf, 1st Sgt. Kyle Hacker, and Sgt. 1st Class Jake Anderson. Because the unit’s mission required experienced elite Soldiers to train foreign militaries, finding and recruiting those seasoned NCOs and officers was its most difficult first hurdle. Dorsey started as the unit’s Senior Human Resources NCO in 2018 and tackled that manning problem with a multi-prong approach.

“What a remarkable career and impact Master Sergeant Jen Dorsey has had in the Illinois Army National Guard!  Jen is in a league of her own,” said Wolf, now the 34th Infantry Division Sustainment Brigade’s operations officer who was the original full-time officer-in-charge of the 6-54th SFAB. “Jen and I served together in the 6th Battalion, 54th SFAB. She is one of the best noncommissioned officers I have served with. I learned a lot from her. She is that NCO who makes everyone better.”

Dorsey helped man the new unit, putting the right Soldiers in the right jobs. She convinced Soldiers coming off active duty to continue their service in the National Guard, drew some Soldiers from other components, helped convince units in the Illinois Army National Guard to give some of their best and brightest to 6th Battalion for a few years, and helped convince other Soldiers to stave off retirement to serve in the newly established unit. None of these were easy tasks.

“It was definitely a challenge,” Dorsey said. “We were figuring out a whole new organization.”

Like the Soldiers she was drawing into the 6th Battalion, 54th SFAB; Dorsey had a lot of experience going into the job. She spent her first 16 years in the Illinois Army National Guard’s Galesburg-based 444th Chemical Company including a deployment to the Middle East in 2012. She was a full-time NCO in the chemical company for 14 years, which had the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and high-yield explosive Enhanced Response Force Package (CBRNE) mission.

The CBRNE mission is a domestic response mission with National Guard troops working closely with local, county, state, and federal emergency response officials to train for and respond to a complex attack against the homeland. The CBRNE brings search and extraction, decontamination, medical triage, and fatality search and recovery capabilities to this mission.

Dorsey spent most of her career as an operations NCO with the 444th, helping to ensure the unit was ready to respond to both its federal Army decontamination mission when deployed and its homeland security mission which included elements such as search and recovery.

Like the 6-54th SFAB, the 444th Chemical mission was complex. “With both units you also had to juggle more than one higher headquarters,” Dorsey said.

After spending her first three years with the 6-54th SFAB as the Senior Human Resources NCO, she took another critical position within the battalion, the Headquarters Support Company Readiness NCO. Then in 2023 she became the battalion Operations NCOIC.

From 2023 to 2024, she deployed to Romania with the 6-54th SFAB’s Battalion Advisor Team 660. Led by 6th Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Matthew Kreiter, 6-54th SFAB deployed approximately 20 Soldiers to Romania for six months returning in April 2024. The team conducted security cooperation activities with Romania’s 2nd Infantry Division strengthening NATO alliances, increasing interoperability, and improving logistics.

The team conducted more than 350 military engagements, provided 26 recommendations to improve the Romanian Traumatic Combat Casualty Care course, supported a two-week intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) academy, taught a noncommissioned officer (NCO) leadership course, facilitated decision-making planning to develop and execute a logistics command post exercise, and presented at the War and Disaster Medicine Conference in Estonia on how physical therapy could expedite Soldiers’ return to the battlefield. As the Operations NCOIC, Dorsey was an integral part of all these accomplishments.

While Master Sgt. Dorsey is retiring, she isn’t the last of her family to serve in the Illinois National Guard. Her daughter, Sgt. Lydia Dorsey, is also a Soldier in the 6-54th SFAB and a son, Lincoln Dorsey, is a loadmaster in the Illinois Air National Guard’s 182nd Airlift Wing. While her other two children, Kylee and Caleb, are not in the military they are still within recruiting ages. Her husband, Tony Dorsey, is a regional truck driver.

Retiring from the Army is “still a little unreal,” Dorsey said. “It’s bittersweet. I’m leaving a lot of great friends and colleagues but have a whole lot of new adventures ahead.”

Wolf said the Illinois Army National Guard will miss Dorsey. “As the 6-54th SFAB Officer-in-Charge, I leaned on her a lot to help troubleshoot the unique challenges that we first had in establishing the 6-54th. The 6-54th SFAB would not have been as successful without her.”