Georgia Army Guard Sgt. Louis Gonzalez, a military policeman with Macon’s Headquarters Company, 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team (IBCT), attends required briefings for demobilization at the Fort Stewart movie theatre. Gonzalez, who lives in Springfield, works full-time with the National Guard working alongside state and local law enforcement. He is among the more than 3,000 citizen-soldiers of Georgia’s 48th IBCT who spent a year in Afghanistan supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

The brigade’s mission was to train and mentor the Afghan National army and Afghan National Police. For some members of the 48th that mission changed to one of “full spectrum operations,” whereby they and their Afghan counterparts took the fight directly to the Taliban.