The Departure Ceremony
The weather was beautiful, in fact according to some of the soldiers after the ceremony it was the nicest weather they had ever had during their time at Ft. Bragg, NC. The Brigade had been in Ft. Bragg since January 20th and here it was now March 27th. They had spent just over 60 days on the ground in North Carolina preparing, training, and psyching up for the tour in Afghanistan that lay ahead of them. On this day of the ceremony, not all the Brigade was present, but a majority was. A couple small groups had already left on an advance party (Advon) and arrived in Afghanistan. They were there to help get things ready for the main body of the Brigade to arrive. In addition to the Advon not being here, all of the embedded training team members (the main effort of the Task Force Phoenix mission) were in
Ft. Riley, Kansas wrapping up their training and getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan also.
Embedded Training Team (ETT) members are the guys that operate in small teams (sometimes as small as one person) embedded with the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police for the entire tour; training, mentoring, leading, sometimes disciplining and mostly fighting the enemy. This is what my team did when we were deployed to Afghanistan in 2006-2007, and now I was watching my Brigade go. The Task Force Headquarters which was training in Ft. Bragg are the soldiers that support the ETTs with all they need in order to do their job. They provide most of the support to the ETT teams, in addition to the support that Big Army gives to the ETTs which are scattered all over the huge country of Afghanistan.
So here I am on this beautiful day in Ft. Bragg, NC seeing many old friends and fellow soldiers I have trained with over the years. My wife insisted that I wear my uniform and I am glad that I did. I am a member of the Brigade and I was honored to wear my uniform there with them. I have badges and patches already that many of them will earn by the time they get back, but that was not the purpose of me wearing the uniform. It was to show them that I am one of them and even though I am not going over with them on this tour, I have been there and I made it back.
Besides seeing many fellow soldiers that I have trained with, deployed with, and shared good times with over the last eight years, there were also many soldiers here that I had once led as their company First Sergeant. These were boys that I had led for over four and a half years of which were some of the highest and lowest points of my military career. These were boys, I mean men, that I had taken to Puerto Rico, Germany, deployed to New York City with (during multiple code level Orange alerts and the 2004 RNC convention), put them on a plane for a one year tour in Iraq, stood there to shake their hand when they got off the plane from Iraq and stood side by side with them as we buried one of our own (Rest in Peace SGT David Roustum). These men may not have ever been my physical sons, but I cared for and treated every one of them that way. Even while I was deployed to Afghanistan and not serving as their First Sergeant anymore I was still emailing and instant messaging some of them on a continued basis to make sure they were doing ok and that everything was going well in both their military and personal lives. Seeing them off the first time as they were departing for Iraq was one of the toughest things I had ever done during my career. The Commander and I both fought and argued for the National Guard to take our whole company and not make us select 78 soldiers that would go. We wanted to lead them and take care of them, not someone else. Now I am trusting someone else to not only look after these “sons” of mine again, but also my own son.
In addition to being able to see all of those men that I treated like they were sons of mine, I was also there to see my own son. My own son, who less than a year earlier was waiting at the Buffalo airport with the rest of my family and many close friends holding a “Welcome Home Dad” sign. Now here I was watching him in a departure ceremony performing a pass and review in front of the Brigade Task Force Commander, The 42nd Division Commander, The Adjutant General of New York, The New York State Command Sergeant Major, and many other commanders from both New York and the Active Army. Many of these people I have known personally and are people that both my wife and I consider good friends. The pride that I felt could not be seen or imagined by anyone there. It was hidden behind my sunglasses and my camera as I was constantly snapping pictures. Not only pride, but also sadness, fear, and many other emotions were going through me. All of the men and women of the Task Force made me proud, but none like my own son. My own son who has grown up in the military for most of his life. I remember him sitting on the hood of our car in the parking lot of my unit in Ft. Hood TX as we got ready to board busses to deploy somewhere. I remember him playing with my night vision goggles, wearing my helmet, and even holding my M16 rifle. I remember him running next to me in a Battalion fun run during a family day when we were stationed in Ft. Richardson Alaska and then jumping out of the 34’ jump tower. I remember him running in to see me early on a Saturday morning and jumping on me excited that I was home after coming home after bed time from a long deployment. All of that, plus a ton of other memories were going through my head as I watched him standing there on that beautiful sunny day with 1000+ other soldiers of the 27th Brigade Combat Team.
The ceremony itself was done well and according to protocol, following the same script I have seen in many other ceremonies during my 21 year Army career. My very good friend, the BDE Command Sergeant Major, did a good job making sure everything was where it needed to be, that all the logistics were handled and that the ceremony went off without any noticeable hitches. They even had the 42nd Division band from New York there as part of the ceremony. This was a nice touch and showed that commitment and pride that the state of New York has in its largest combat maneuver unit. Of course the ceremony is truly an example of the pomp and circumstance that the Army still practices today. The soldiers have been trained, vetted, equipped and are ready to go. This was all a formality.
These soldiers are ready to go and get the job done and then get home. Lucky for them, the new National Guard policy is for soldiers to be deployed no more than one year, including train-up time. So these two months in NC count toward their whole year, which I like because that is two less months that they are not getting shot at. When I deployed, we had to do all 12 months in country, so our train-up time in the States did not count. For us, getting into Afghanistan meant that the countdown would finally start on us getting home. For the soldiers now, their countdown started back on January 17th. Even so, all of them are excited to get over there and do the job they are trained for. I can understand that as a soldier, but as a father I am glad that the last two months for my son were two months of him not being in harm’s way.
Going over ahead of my son has been a blessing and a curse in my eyes. A blessing in the fact that I was able to come back and share many experiences and real-world lessons with him as I did with over 800 soldiers of the Brigade that I helped train up to get ready. A curse, because I know better than anybody what he is getting into. That part of it angers me to the point that I have a hard time controlling my emotions sometimes. I know what the country was like when I got there, and what it was like when I left and I can say that I feel overall progress was minimal. I know the threats, dangers, and types of accidents that could happen over there and that is what scares me. But that is something that I have to suppress and deal with on my own and when the time is right.
I know this blog entry covers a lot more than just the ceremony, but I wanted to get some of this other information out there so it would help put things into perspective. I will be writing more soon about some of the other things we did over the weekend and the quality time my family got to spend with my son. Quality time that I know all of us will cherish for the next ten months.
-- Troy Steward
