For the 3rd Infantry Division’s newest command sergeant major, returning to Fort Stewart feels a lot like home.

Command Sgt. Maj. Donald Durgin assumed his role as the division’s top enlisted advisor and Marne 7 Friday morning at Cottrell Field. Coming back to Fort Stewart is also for Durgin and his family — he met and married his wife Katie during a previous assignment at Stewart, and the couple’s three daughters were born at Winn Army Community Hospital.

“This is the honor of an absolute lifetime,” he said of his role. “This is home to us. This is important to us.”

Command Sgt. Maj. Durgin most recently was the G-3/5/7 command sergeant major for I Corps, based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. He holds a Legion of Merit, a Bronze Star with three oak leaf clusters, a Meritorious Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters and an Army Commendation Medal with four oak leaf clusters among his decorations.

Durgin said taking care of the thousands of enlisted men and women in his care is his top priority.

“The first order of business, always for me, is the quality of life for our soldiers,” he said. “So I am going to take a deep dive into our barracks. I am going to take a deep dive into our food ecosystems. I am going to take a deep dive into our recreation activities that we offer to the soldiers and families here on Fort Stewart, to make sure they live in a clean, safe and healthy living environment and make sure they thrive and not just survive.”

Brig. Gen. John Lubas, the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said Durgin has excelled at every level of leadership during his 29 years in the Army. The general also pointed out that only 1.9% of soldiers who enlist in the Army reach the rank of sergeant major. From there, only a fraction are chosen as command sergeant majors.

Brig. Gen. Lubas reached out to other command sergeants major and other leaders to assess Durgin and the response was he was the best qualified to help him lead the division.

Durgin was the last of the candidates Lubas interviewed for the position but instead of following the advice of waiting 24 hours to make a decision, the general said he made the call right away.

“I can’t describe how excited we are to have you back with the best division in the Army,” Brig. Gen. Lubas said. As a former “Dogfaced soldier,” Command Sgt. Maj. Durgin also is aware of the demands placed on 3rd ID soldiers. Both its maneuver brigades have been sent to eastern Europe as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve on separate rotations, one of which is set to finish. The division’s aviation brigade is making a second rotation there in the last three years, as is the division’s headquarters.

“This organization has been back and forth to the European theater on training rotations with our NATO partners and allies time and time and time again,” he said. “They know they are going to be taken care of forward and their families will be taken care of back here. They are going to go forward and they are going to thrive in that environment and they are going to make our NATO partners and allies better for having served with them.”

In speaking to the soldiers assembled at Cottrell and elsewhere in the division, Durgin promised the soldiers will be prepared for whatever duty is assigned to them.

“We will not rise to the occasion — we will fall to the level of our training,” he said. “That’s why our training must be deliberate, demanding and disciplined. Combat does not care how we feel. It only cares who we fight. War is not won in briefing rooms. They are won on the range, on the load, in the rain and in the dark.

“When the call comes, it will not come on a day of our choosing, but we will be ready.”

Durgin also said the 3rd ID’s steady deployments, even in peacetime, have effects on the soldiers and their families that have to be met.

“I’ve stressed this — we do a really good job of recovering our equipment that we take to the field. We have to pay greater attention to how we recover our people,” Durgin said. “It must be a deliberate and methodical process. Getting them ready to do the things the nation is going to ask them to do will take some grit, it will take some energy, it will take some focus.”