With only five days together as man and wife, Georgia Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Jason and Lisa Taft held each other tightly outside the Decatur Armory, and then said goodbye as the he and 20 his fellow Soldiers of Savannah's 122nd Rear Operations Center (ROC) began the first leg of their journey to war.

This latest group, hand picked by the 122nd's commander Lt. Col. Kenneth Lee, left the armory on a chartered bus headed for Camp Shelby, Miss., near Hattiesburg. They join the ROC's main body of 26 Soldiers who have been there since early May getting ready for a yearlong deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It will be mid or possibly late July when the entire unit repacks its gear and heads to the Middle East. Just where the 122nd will go once it's in Iraq cannot be disclosed for security reasons, Lee said.

For many of the Soldiers, sergeant Taft among them, this is their second tour-of-duty in the War on Terrorism. 

"I was with the 178th Military Police Company when it deployed in 2002 to Guantanamo Bay to guard the 500 or so detainees being held there," the 36-year-old Athens-Clark County police corporal said. "It was a different mission for us then because the 178th is a combat MP Company and we were doing the 'other side of the MP house,' in guarding the detainees."

While it is Taft's second deployment, it is his wife's first. And as much as she's concerned about her new husband's safety, she knows it's what he must do, 25-year-old Lisa said. She and Taft met not long after he had returned from Cuba, she said. She understood from the very first what it would mean to be a Soldier's girlfriend or his wife. It was the same for her when they decided to become man and wife five days before he was to leave. 

"I knew what he was when I met him, and when I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, I knew that I would have to deal with his being gone," she explained through a slight smile and her head resting on her husband's shoulder. "He's a Soldier, and I'm now a Soldier's wife, and that means being strong for me and for him while he's away because he's doing the right thing."
As for what her Soldier will be doing while he's gone, Lisa said she didn't know. Even Taft said he wasn't sure what the 122nd would have him doing. All that matters is that he's out there accomplishing the mission and then bringing himself and his fellow Soldiers home safe when the deployment is over, he said. 

"Besides that," Taft said as he prepared to board the bus to Camp Shelby, "If I'm there, that means someone else got to come home."

According to Lee, the 122nd's commander, the active Army has tasked his unit with an "expanded mission." Traditionally, the ROC and its Soldiers are responsible for force protection, terrain management and movement control of convoys while in theater, he explained. 

The added role the Army has given the unit is that of "Government Transition Team, thereby helping local Iraqi officials transition from a military to civilian government, Lee said. 

Among the tasks he and this second group Soldiers is working with Iraqis in the Coalition's Police Partnership Program. They also will work along side and help train members of the Iraqi Security Force and that nation's border guard force. 

"Each and every Soldier of this group was hand picked by me either because of their military occupation, because of their record for getting the job done or because I personally know their abilities," Lee said. 

Such a mission as the one the Army has given the 122nd ROC requires people, like Staff Sgt. Taft, who are dedicated to getting the job done and doing it right, he said.