Originally posted by Ripsnort
Cool! 
Abrams?
Yeah Thank God he'll be in one this tour. The first deployment he went as a new private. For whatever reason his troop didn't take their tanks. So he ended up like his older brother who was already in Iraq with the 4th ID doing infantry type missions such as patrols, and being on the QRF, which I think stands for Quick Response Force. I'm an Air Force puke so I'm not real sure if thats the correct nomeclature.
The day before my oldest son returned from Iraq I got a call from Ft Hood it was a Lt with the 4th ID telling me what time I could expect Travis's unit to return to Ft Hood the following day. I had just hung up the phone and was telling my wife to get backed we were driving down to Ft Hood, to be there to welcome travis home and the phone rings again...... This time it's a Lt from the 1st Cav. I knew this wasn't good because Thomas had only been there a couple of moths. He told me that Thomas had been wounded the day before by morter fire. He said he didnt have details, but he didn't think it was life threatening. Well needless to say that put a dampner on the Travis's homecoming.
When Travis got back to Ft Hood the following morning I told him about his brother. He asked me if Thomas was still in Iraq, or had been airlifted to Germany. I told him that he was still in Iraq , he said. "He'll be okay then if they left him in Iraq he's not injured too bad." Three days later I finnally get a call from Thomas in the middle of the night. "Hey Dad" I'm so happy to hear his voice I blurt out how bad were you hit? He responds. "How'd you know I got hit?" I told him because the military does thing like notify next of kin , or havent you heard??
He tells me how he just took a couple of pieces of shrpnel in the left shoulder . He was manning the gun in the top hatch of a humvee when the morter hit right behind them. He said the driver, and an NCO inside were injured worse then him. He said it only took a few minutes to dig out the shrapnel , and he was out of the Hospital in no time.
Being ex- Air Force I asked him a question he'd probably been waiting for since he joined the Army...... I asked "Are you on light duty?" His response..
"This isnt the Air Force Dad, we don't have light duty!"
Anyway sorry for rambling on. I'll probably never tire of telling this story.
Thomas was supposed to be out of the Army now. He got caught up in the Stop Loss program. He was supposed to final out process the day after Mothers Day. On Mothers Day he called me and told me he had been extended and would be heading back for another tour in Iraq in late August or early September. I was dissapointed , and thought he would be very dissapointed. He told me that when they first informed him he was being extended, he was upset. He had already started out processing , and was wanting to get settled in as a civilian , and go to college.
He stated it took a couple of days to get his mind adjusted to the fact he was going back. He told me that this time they will have their tanks, and he does love being a tanker, so thats helped. He also stated that his car is paid for so for at least a year he'll sock his money away and be that much better prepared when he does get out. He's hoping to make Sgt while deployed this time, and one other thing he's happy about,,, the NCO thats his Tank Commander is from the same town I live in. So I'm very proud of his attitude, and how he is handling it . If it would have happened to me theres not enough cheese in Holland for the whine this Air force weenie would have put up.
