For Army, it's Operation Stretch

"In the midst of a war, we knew we had to change in eight to 10 months versus eight to 10 years," he says, drinking black coffee from a thermos. "The chief [Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter Schoomaker] said, 'I think we can create 15 new brigades. You guys figure out how to do it.' We just had to run through this thing on the fly."

Webster's task was daunting. Not only did the 3ID have to prepare for a rapid return to combat - honing its skills in seven major training exercises and repairing equipment that included thousands of sand-encrusted vehicles. It also had to keep one brigade ready at all times to deploy within hours for a crisis in Korea or around the globe - an indication of the military's lack of a strategic reserve.

Above all, the 3ID had to serve as the catalyst for the Army's biggest experiment in reorganization in decades: a bid by General Schoomaker to create more powerful, uniform, and autonomous brigades that the Pentagon can quickly shift around the world and snap into different commands like so many Lego blocks.

The urgent shift is a matter of strategy and survival for the Army - strategy, because today the Army fights in brigades of 3,000-plus troops rather than divisions of 16,000, a trend underscored by the Iraq war; survival, because only by increasing the pool of brigades by at least 10 can the Army shorten overseas rotations and lengthen time back home.

The change has affected virtually every element of the Georgia-based 3ID. Its ranks have swelled by 3,300 soldiers to a total of 19,000, straining housing. The division has reconfigured each of its three existing combat brigades and built from scratch a new one, the 4th Brigade. Each brigade more tightly integrates infantry, armor, and engineers at lower levels as well as specialized units such as intelligence and reconnaissance troops.

With thousands of his soldiers destined for the teeming and violent streets of Baghdad, Webster sees the more lethal brigades and robust intelligence capabilities as vital to targeting a shifting enemy.

Yet to swiftly reinvent the 3ID, Webster has had to wage his own quiet insurrection against a slow-moving military bureaucracy. "It's like guerrilla warfare," he says, describing tactics he's used to skirt the constraints of budgets and regulations to secure vital weaponry, personnel, and equipment. Several times in the past year, Webster has confronted obstacles so severe he called them "war stoppers."

"At one point, I didn't have enough rifles to give to all the soldiers, or radios to give to the leaders, or armored vehicles. That's a war stopper," he says. "So by hook or by crook we got what we need." That meant, for example, using artful accounting to spend $11 million on add-on armor for 885 Humvees.

Meanwhile, the Army's wartime bid to redesign itself is generating turmoil and risk, as soldiers with diverse skills must quickly learn to work together and operate new gear.

"The doctrine of the Army hasn't kept up with the redesign," explains Lt. Col. Bob Roth, commander of 4th Brigade's 4-64 battalion, which has an unusual combination of light infantry and tanks. "We got a list of people and a list of equipment" and "had to figure out how it should work," he says. "You can imagine the chaos that creates at lower levels."

At Fort Polk's sprawling urban training center, for example, Colonel Roth is trying to educate his foot soldiers about the tactical and psychological advantages of a ground-shaking, 60-ton vehicle. "You have this big thing called a tank, so bring that in first and work around it," says the career armor officer from Park Hills, Ky.

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