Units begins first leg of deployment
Georgia National Guard
Public Affairs Office
June 13, 2007 – More than 170 Soldiers of Waynesboro’s Battery C, 1st Battalion, 214th Field Artillery, boarded buses outside that city’s Burke County Recreation Center and then headed to August Airport for the trip to Fort Dix, N.J., and the first leg of their year long deployment to Kuwait.
The tearful goodbyes were many as were the words of praise for the unit, as family, friends and fellow Soldiers gave the Guardsmen a send-off they’ll remember for years to come.
“It’s oh, so hard to let him go,” said Augusta resident Elizabeth Kovolew of Spc. Richard Worley of Tunnell Hill in North Georgia. The two only started dating a week before Worley, a full-time M1 Abrams tank mechanic with Calhoun’s 108th Armor volunteered to go with the Waynesboro unit. “I can’t lie about. It’s gonna be especially hard since we’ve only known each other for so short a time, but I know he’ll come back…I know he will.”
Holding his new found love in his arms, Worley admitted going now hurt, but, “she understands that this who I am, this is what I do, and I would never turn away from the opportunity to do my part.”
There are many like Worley, whose just one of a group of eight Soldiers of the 108th, who volunteered to go with Battery C. Some come from units such as the Guard’s 201st Regional Support Group and, of course from within other elements of the 214th.
Waynesboro mayor Jesse Stone voiced his pride in each and every Soldier as he watched them mingle with loved ones and friends and waited for the buses that would take Battery C away.
“You can’t see this and not be proud of these people, Soldiers and families alike,” he said. “They’re all giving up so much to answer their country’s call. It just makes me proud of them all.”
Now that the unit is at Fort Dix, it has left behind its traditional role of confronting an enemy with large artillery pieces from miles behind the front lines. At Dix the artillerymen are training to get up close and personal with the “people” they’ll deal with as they learn to guard detainees.
“It’s definitely a whole new deal for us to go from a field artillery mission to one of a military police nature,” said Capt. Clint Johnson, Battery C’s commander. “What’s helped us better prepare for this deployment are the Soldiers who’ve joined our ranks who have prior civilian and military law enforcement experience.
There seemed to be no doubt in Johnson’s mind or in anyone else’s that Battery C would meld into its new mission and carry it out successfully. Following that old philosophy of “remaining flexible and ready for all contingencies” is the life of a Soldier, said Spc. Tavaris Thompkins, one of the unit’s Paladin crewmen. If that’s what it takes to get the job done and get home, then that’s what they’ll do, the Warren County resident said.
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