FORT CARSON — After Thanksgiving, 3,700 soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team will again say goodbye.
They’ll head out for their third tour of Iraq, the first brigade from Fort Carson to be deployed three times to that country. This time, the brigade will be gone 15 months instead of 12. They will miss Christmas with their families not once, but twice. By the time they return to Fort Carson, the nation will be preparing to celebrate Easter 2009.
So with only a few days left before her husband leaves, Jessica Keller, 26, is trying to make memories. She and Sgt. Jaeson Keller, 25, are taking their two children, ages 3 and 2, to see Santa and to Chuck E. Cheese’s. Jessica Keller is trying to keep the last days special, and not let life’s little annoyances — her husband buying the wrong sweet potatoes for their Thanksgiving dinner — bother her.
“It is hard because you don’t know when that last day is going to be, so you still have your fights and you still bicker. And then, you think: ‘Oh, gosh, he’s not going to be here. Why am I making such a big deal about the sweet potatoes he got at the store?’ ”
Meanwhile, hundreds of troops with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, are beginning a joyous return to Fort Carson after 15 months in Iraq.
But the 3rd Brigade Combat Team held a “casing ceremony” on Tuesday, a solemn event that signals departure and separation.
“We’re not going to Disney World,” said Col. John Hort, the team’s commander and the father of children ages 13 and 9.
At least 65 percent of the soldiers deploying with the brigade have been to Iraq twice before.
“There is an extreme level of stress put on multiple deployments,” Hort said. “There is a level of frustration from the soldiers and families. . . . It’s kind of a reality of the war that we’re in, and I think we all face it.
“Even myself, I will tell you that I am not excited about leaving my son and daughter, about watching my son play basketball now on a DVD that my wife sends me.”
Nevertheless, Hort said, the commitment of the all-volunteer Army is strong. In the past few months, the 3rd Brigade Combat Team’s leaders have placed extra emphasis on cultural awareness and language training.
“We call it the beat-cop mentality,” Hort said. “Our focus is to instill that mindset in young soldiers who have been very focused on their weapon. And now, their weapon is their mind and their mouth and how they use that overseas.”
Spec. Lester Garland, 21, an unmarried soldier from Houston, is headed back for his second tour. The cavalry scout says he can’t wait to get there.
“I want to go; I want to go so bad,” Garland said. “I love doing what I can to protect people over there and I love doing what I can to protect us.” Garland said he is more confident this time, but still has a healthy dose of fear.
“It’s like swimming with sharks, or whatever is dangerous — sky diving — but you want to do it and you get that little bit of fear and it pumps you up a little bit,” Garland said.
“The first time, I was real worried, I’m not going to come home. . . . This time I feel 100 percent confident that I’m coming back.”
For Elizabeth Farr, 23, who gave birth Aug. 29 to a little boy she named Hunter, the feeling is the same. She is not as nervous this time, but she is sad that Spec. Clifton Farr, 23, will miss his son’s first spoonful of pureed carrots, first words, first steps.
“Fifteen months — that’s huge; it’s the whole first year,” Elizabeth Farr said. It will be equally tough for her husband.
“I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.” said Clifton Farr. “Knowing that he will be here for me makes it that much more to come back to.”
