Deployment

“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.” Winston S Churchill

This evening, Saturday, April 14, 2012, my oldest nephew leaves on a nine-month deployment in Afghanistan. In his words:

"When I get there my job will be acting as daytime battle captain. The job is pretty much to be in charge of the '911 call center' for our battalion. I will have approximately 10 guys working with me. The 10 or so guys have different roles from operating the radio and digital communication systems to controlling the indirect fire and aircraft in our battle space. As battle captain I have 2 primary tasks. The first is when the battalion commander, LTC Harkins, walks in and wants to know exactly what is going on, I have to be able to tell him exactly what everything he owns is doing. Basically I take all the information that the 10 or so guys are getting and consolidate it into quick and hopefully accurate answers for the battalion commander (he is constantly trying to play stump the chump).

The second task is to essentially run any incident or fight our guys get into so that the battalion commander can deal with the thousands of other things he is working on. This means that if we have a vehicle break down I have to coordinate for the recovery assets to go get it. If guys get into a firefight, I have to coordinate for air support, air MEDEVAC, ground MEDEVAC, indirect fire or whatever other asset they need. Essentially my team and I are the link between the battalion and brigade level assets (like Apache helicopters), and the guys on the ground in the fight."  April 11, 2012 email from Mike.

Obviously, I’m not the first uncle or other family member to have a heart full of pride and a stomach full of knots with the prospect of a loved one serving our Country and going into harm’s way. My mind is a blur of images of Mike as a babe in arms, a toddler, a goofball teen, and a West Point Cadet. I’m confident that my brother and sister-in-law are in the same place as me, but times a thousand. Mike’s wife, I’m sure, isn’t having the best day of her life and Mike’s siblings are likely not going to sleep as soundly.

I’m happy that the national discourse about our service members has evolved from the days where, upon return from deployment, they were met with jeers and spit by adamant anti-war protesters to an overall acknowledgement that despite one’s feeling about the politics or morality of the mission, the men and women of our armed forces should be assumed noble and thanked for their service.

I send my thanks and respect to the families of those serving our country – especially to those who lost loved ones.

Take an opportunity to say thank you to members of our armed services and their families. Once again, I return to Churchill: “We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”  Thanks Mike!





Churchill quotes from:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14033.Winston_S_Churchill


Image reported in the public domain, from:
http://karenswhimsy.com/american-flag-clipart.shtm