Ever Forward
So you pull a bunch of folks out of their jobs, you give them some guns and a nebulous political/military mission and you send them off to some foreign land where they don’t speak the language and don’t recognize the food and you leave them there for a year to separate warring factions and stave off hostilities. Then you bring them home, let them relax for the holiday and throw them a big party.
You’d think you’d let them rest awhile, but no. You grab them out of their weekend celebration and put them out in a field to put out a different kind of fire.
More than 120 Virginia National Guard Soldiers went on state active duty Feb. 11 to join in the Commonwealth’s battle against wild fires raging throughout the state. While a Virginia National Guard helicopter dumped 600-galllon buckets of water to help contain fires in the Tazewell area, more than 100 Soldiers trained at Fort Pickett to be prepared for duty on Feb. 12 in Roanoke and Bedford.
One hundred soldiers from 1st Battalion, 116th Infantry—the same combat brigade as our Monticello Guard—came from Lynchburg, Danville, Martinsville, South Boston as well as other cities throughout Virginia to fight brush fires. The battalion recently returned from a year-long mission in Kosovo and was celebrating their return at a Freedom Salute on Sunday. This is their first call to state active duty since their return in November.
As the Virginia Guard aviators were helping contain fires with their water dumps, approximately 100 Virginia Army National Guard Soldiers conducted firefighting training with the Virginia Department of Forestry at Fort Pickett. The soldiers are scheduled to leave Fort Pickett this morning. They will be sent to the Roanoke Armory to establish a command post and help with fire fighting in the Carvin’s Cove area and Bedford to assist with fires in the Smith Mountain Lake area.
The Soldiers will be supporting Virginia Department of Emergency Management and the Virginia Department of Forestry by providing fire line construction and clean-up efforts in the effected areas.
As often was we pull the National Guard off their jobs and into duty, we should rename the citizen soldiers as soldier citizens.
Posted by Bryan McKenzie at 06:21 AM. Filed under: We, The People •
