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Local hero a Purple Heart recipient

A local soldier wounded in an attack in Iraq last month has received the Purple Heart.

Pfc. Michael Campbell, 27, of Ragland was awarded the Purple Heart Oct 5 from his hospital bed at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas.

“It makes you feel that you are appreciated for what did happen,” Campbell said Saturday from his hospital room in Texas. “I am very grateful to receive this. It is such an honor. Secretary of the Army Joseph Westphal presented it to me and some of my family was with me.”

Campbell recalled the incident, which happened Sept. 7 in Tuz, Iraq, between 3 and 5 p.m. Iraqi time.

“An Iraqi soldier climbed a wall used for security and started shooting where we were asleep,” Campbell said. “All total, 11 U.S. soldiers were shot, two of which died. The gunman was later killed by American soldiers.”

Of the nine soldiers who were wounded, Campbell is the seventh to receive the Purple Heart.

One of the nine soldiers injured is in Texas with Campbell.

“Kyle Perry is from Phoenix, Ariz., and he is one of my buddies,” Campbell said. “We stick together and try to keep each other straight. We go eat breakfast together every morning. I’m in room 127 and he is in room 126.”

Campbell’s wife, Tanya, has been by his side for the past several weeks.

“I am so proud of him,” Tanya Campbell said. “I know it is an honor to him and all the other soldiers who are Purple Heart recipients.”

Campbell’s mother, Sue Campbell, said her son has had so many challenges since he was injured in Iraq.

“But God’s blessings in his recovery has been abundant,” Sue Campbell said. “I am so proud of Michael for taking the oath as a soldier to lay down his life to protect our country, its values, and a way of life against all who seek to destroy us. Also for their mission to give the Iraqi people a real chance to realize a free democratic life for the very first time in many of their lives. So to Michael I say, ‘Thank you for serving our country and protecting our most precious gift — Freedom. You make me proud to be your mom and I love you so much.’”

The Campbells have a 4-year-old son, Jax, as well as a 15-year-old stepson, Dakota Gardner.

Tanya Campbell said her husband is scheduled to have another surgery Nov. 2 during which doctors will do a bone graft and insert a plate and pins in his left hip.

“The surgeon said in about four to six weeks we should be able to come home to Ragland for 30 days before returning back out here to Texas,” she said. “We should be home around the middle of December, so we’ll be home for Christmas.”

Campbell joined the Army Sept. 1, 2009. Basic training was held at Ft. Benning, Ga. He was then stationed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

He deployed from Hawaii July 2, and arrived in Iraq a few days later as a member of the 2nd Platoon, 1-27th Infantry where he is a radio telecommunications operator.

Courtesy of Charlie and The Daily Home.

Bessemer’s VFW supports today’s wounded vets with a big donation

Printed in this weekend’s edition of The Birmingham News:

Over the years, the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1762 in Bessemer has dwindled.

Twice-a-week bingo stopped in 2006. Enrollment has fallen to 90, and 89 of those are veterans from World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

Yet one thing hasn’t diminished — a dedication to helping other veterans in need.

Once a month the post does bingo night for veterans in a Tuscaloosa nursing home. Every patient wins coupons to buy sundries.

But next week Commander Paul Calhoun and Quartermaster James Mosier will make the post’s biggest donation ever.

The post will pay $50,000 for naming rights for a duplex being built at the Lakeshore Foundation campus. It’s one of 10 new residences that will offer free lodging for injured veterans and their families when they come to Lakeshore for free Lima Foxtrot programs.

In Lima Foxtrot, injured veterans learn to be active and independent through recreation or sport — despite blindness, amputation, paralysis or other severe injury.

Since 2006, about 800 military service members have gone through the program, but they stayed in dorms while family members had to stay elsewhere.

The new housing effort, dubbed Operation Lakeshore, will change that.

The entire family — including children — will live together on campus. Ground was broken on the $2.3 million project April 5, and the new residences, with their private, home-like atmosphere, will open on Veterans Day.

Calhoun, 80 years old and post commander for the past 18 years, had been looking for a deserving project. The retired U.S. Air Force technical sergeant knew that if the post ever has to close, remaining assets will go to the state VFW. Instead, he hoped to find a local charity to support with money the post has raised from bingo, investment and dues.

“A lot of our people were getting older,” Mosier said.

When Calhoun and Mosier heard about Operation Lakeshore, they invited Mike Mouron, president of Capstone Companies, his wife, Kathy, and veteran Noah Galloway to tell them more at a post meeting earlier this month.

Kathy Mouron was the one who came up with the idea of building the cottages as a charitable effort, which her husband leads. More than 90 companies have donated nearly $2 million in labor, materials and money.

Galloway, an Iraq veteran who lost one arm and one leg in a roadside bombing, did most of the speaking.

He told post members how much he appreciates Vietnam-era veterans, and said he regretted how they had been treated when they returned from the war. Several of the Bessemer veterans audibly said, “Thank you.”

He told them he signed up for the Army right after 9/11 and was in the first invasion of Iraq with the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles.” He told them that he re-upped for a second tour, during which his Humvee triggered a roadside bomb on a night patrol.

Galloway told the post how the cottages will serve injured veterans as they try to gain confidence through physical activities, and how much having families with them will help.

After the Mourons and Galloway left, the members of Post 1762 voted. The decision to make the gift was unanimous.

“This is going to be the largest donation the post has made anywhere,” said Mosier. “This donation is going to help veterans, and that’s what our job is.”

To help furnish the duplex, the post plans to donate photographs of veterans who were VFW members. Even as the older soldiers fade away, a plaque on the door and the historical photographs on the walls will be lasting tributes to Bessemer’s proud VFW post, and a memorial to its many wartime veterans.

New commander takes post at Army Reserve Center near Hoover

Printed in today’s Birmingham News:

Brig. Gen. Joe Chesnut today assumed command of the Fourth Brigade, 75th Combat Training Division at the Horace B. Hanson Army Reserve Center near Hoover.

Chesnut, a native of Starkville, Mississippi, succeeds Brig. Gen. David Puster, who is moving on to take command of the 302nd Maneuver Support Command in Massachusetts.

Chesnut holds a bachelor of arts degree in communication from Mississippi State University and a master’s degree in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College.

He is a contract senior engineer analyst with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

The Fourth Battle Command Training Brigade provides Army Reserve, National Guard and active duty units with specialized battle command and staff training in order to enhance the units’ readiness and meet wartime requirements.

Congratulations, Brig. Gen. Chesnut!

AU veterinarians deploying to Afghanistan

Printed in yesterday’s Opelika-Auburn News:

The veterinarians at Auburn University take care of dogs every day.

But in August they will be traveling thousands of miles to do so – in Afghanistan.

Three AU professors are among the members of the 358 Medical Detachment, a veterinarian unit of the U.S. Army Reserves, that will be deployed to Afghanistan in August.

Their mission is to take care of military animals, inspect food and help the Afghan people with agriculture reconstruction, said Capt. Brad Fields, veterinary medical officer with the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries.

“So just making sure the food our service members eat … is safe and wholesome and free of adulterants,” he said. “And that it has been inspected and is not going to harm any soldiers.

“We want to know every ingredient that goes into the product. We want to have a real tight control of what the troops are eating.”

While there, Fields said the unit will inspect facilities that prepare the food and inspect the foods themselves “even if they have been inspected in this country (America).”

But it’s the opportunity to work with military animals that excites Fields the most.

“I love the dogs,” he said. “I love working with the handlers. The human-animal bond is amazing. Because the soldiers are with the dogs … They’re (the dogs) just another soldier.”

Capt. Soren Rodning is looking forward to helping the Afghan people with agricultural reconstruction.

This is Rodning’s first deployment since joining the U.S. Army Reserves about two years ago.

He said he is feeling “a little bit anxious and a little bit excited.”

The unit’s deployment will last for about a year.

Jacksonville Guard unit to return from Iraq

Posted to The Birmingham News:

The Alabama Army National Guard says about 170 members of its 2025th Transportation Company from Jacksonville are coming home from Iraq after the unit’s second tour there.

The Guard says the unit was sent to Iraq the first time in March 2003. It was called to active duty again last May.

The Guard says the unit is scheduled to arrive at the Jacksonville armory Wednesday evening, and that the public is invited to attend ceremonies welcoming the troops home

Bama Guard unit deploys to Iraq; another heading out later this week

Posted to Breaking News at The Birmingham News:

About 50 members of the an Alabama Army National Guard unit that specializes in explosive ordnance disposal have deployed to Iraq and a transportation unit with about 170 soldiers is slated to arrive there shortly.

The 111th Ordnance Group from Opelika arrived down range last week. While in Iraq, the 111th will head up Combined Joint Task Force Troy, which coordinates and oversees efforts to counter improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, throughout the country. Task Force Troy will oversee 600 to 800 U.S. troops involved in anti-IED operations, and several dozen of those troops are soldiers with one of the 111th’s subordinate units, the 441st Ordnance Battalion out of Huntsville.

Meanwhile, state Guard public affairs officer, Lt. Col. Cynthia Bachus, said the 2101st Transportation Company out of Demopolis, Aliceville and Butler is now in Kuwait and will be moving into Iraq soon. The upcoming tour will be the second one for about a third of the unit’s soldiers. The first was in 2004-05.

This morning, the commander of an Alabama Guard military police unit said in an e-mail Sunday’s national elections went smoothly in his unit’s southern sector of Iraq.

“The Iraqi Security Forces did a great job executing the security plan that they established for the province,” said Lt. Col. Charles
Buxton, commander of Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 203rd Military Police Battalion, now based in Basra Province.

Soldiers with the Athens-based 203rd have helped train Iraqi police and did pre-election assessments to improve security at 20 critical polling places throughout the province.

Through last December, according to the latest Pentagon figures, more than 4,700 Alabamians were deployed in and around Iraq and Afghanistan.

Alabama Ft. Hood soldier intends to deploy to Iraq

Posted today in The Birmingham News:

An Alabama-born Army officer who was shot three times during the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, still has his good days and bad days, but he had a good one over the weekend when he rode on a float in the Saturday Christmas parade in his hometown of Eclectic.

“I had a wonderful time,” said Warrant Officer Christopher Royal, who was the parade’s grand marshal. Royal said he wanted to do what he could to support civic improvements in Eclectic and would be back in town next week to talk about that with local officials.

By mid-January, Royal, 37, will be following events in Eclectic at an even longer distance than he is now. He expects to be on his fourth deployment in Iraq.

“I plan on deploying … in January whether I’m at 100 percent or not,” Royal said Monday during a telephone interview while he was driving back to Fort Hood. “I’ve made provision to deploy and … I’m trusting God that that’s the right thing to do. I feel it’s the right thing to do because if it was the wrong thing, then he would have took me completely out of that realm. But he did not, he allowed me to be able to perform as a soldier, so I am going to continue to be all that I can be.”…

Read the full article here.

God bless you, W.O. Royal!

Bama Guard explosive disposal unit to get final training before Iraq

Printed in The Birmingham News:

Several dozen Alabama Army National Guard soldiers will head out for Camp Shelby, Miss., this week to begin final training for a mission that involves disposing of unexploded bombs and shells in Iraq.

A send-off ceremony will be Wednesday in Huntsville for the 441st Ordnance Battalion (Explosive Ordnance Disposal). Sgt. 1st Class Terri Baker, the unit’s personnel noncommissioned officer, said the 441st will spend several weeks at Camp Shelby and will head to Iraq sometime in January.

“We render safe ordnance that is found,” Baker said. “IEDs, all that.”

In Iraq, the 441st will work under the Army’s 1st Armored Division and will have four active duty Army ordnance disposal companies under its command, Baker said.

More than 1,500 Alabama National Guard soldiers and airmen have been serving in and around Iraq and Afghanistan. About 270 Guard soldiers, with the 135th Expeditionary Sustainment Command from Birmingham, are now training at Fort Hood, Texas, for a deployment to Afghanistan.

Four Alabama soldiers recovering from rocket attack in Afghanistan

Best wishes for a speedy recovery!

Courtesy of The Birmingham News:

Four members of an Alabama Army National Guard unit are recovering from wounds they suffered last week when two rockets landed in the base where they were working and exploded near them.

The soldiers are members of the 166th Engineer Company out of Winfield and Vernon, and they were doing some construction work at a forward operating base when they were wounded. The unit commander, Maj. Lee Thompson, said two of the wounded soldiers were flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and will receive “follow-on care” in the U.S.

“All injured will make full recoveries,” Thompson said in a unit newsletter. “I would characterize the circumstances as miraculous.”

“The morale of the company remains high, but I think most are a little more reserved now … a little more aware of the fact that the enemy can reach out and touch any of us,” Thompson said in an e-mail this morning. “I think we’re all just glad that all of our soldiers remain alive today.”

The wounded soldiers, all of whom suffered concussions, are Sgt. 1st Class Shane Sanderson, of Inver Groves Heights, Wisc., who was heading the team of 166th soldiers when the rockets landed; Sgt. Robert Smith of Arab, Spc. Michael Clackum of Hamilton and Spc. Kyle Thomas of Madison. A fifth soldier, Spc. Seth Leonhard of Bankston, “was untouched but witnessed the event,” Thompson said..

Thompson said Sanderson and Clackum were flown to Landstuhl, treated there, and have been flown back to the U.S.. Sanderson received shrapnel wounds to his legs while Clackum suffered shrapnel wounds in the back “which also caused some internal injuries,” Thompson said. Clackum “required multiple surgeries” before leaving for Landstuhl, “mainly due to the environment and challenges in preventing infection while in Afghanistan,” Thompson said.

Smith and Thomas, the other two wounded soldiers, are expected to rejoin the 166th at its Forward Operating Base, Sharana, in eastern Afghanistan in the near future. Both suffered shrapnel wounds, Thompson said.

Thompson said the five soldiers were doing some winterization work early in the morning at another forward operating base “when two enemy 107mm rockets exploded at their feet.

“The ‘kill radius’ of these weapons is 195 feet, and severe damage can be expected at distances up to 325 feet,” Thompson said. “Four of our five soldiers were standing within 10 feet of the detonation; one was within 100 feet.”

“They should all have been killed,” Thompson said.

Alabama Guard unit returning from Iraq

Printed in this weekend’s The Birmingham News:

An Alabama Army Guard unit that deployed to Iraq last December is due back in Alabama this weekend.

About 190 soldiers with the 158th Maintenance Company were scheduled to arrive Tuesday in Camp Atterbury, Ind., said Alabama National Guard spokesman Norman Arnold.

The 158th, out of Tallassee and Tuskegee, was based in northern Iraq and was charged with maintenance and repair of vehicles in convoys that were supporting military operations in the area. Arnold said the unit should be back in Alabama this weekend.

About 15 Guard soldiers with the 115th Signal Battalion from Decatur returned home a few weeks ago from a mission in Iraq.

At present, the Alabama Guard has around 1,600 soldiers and airmen in and around Iraq and Afghanistan.