By Blake Farmer
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkno/local-wkno-902077.mp3
Nashville, TN – The Volunteers of the Volunteer Guard Since 9/11, Tennessee Guard soldiers have racked up 20,000 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The military is leaning on the Guard like never before in wartime. But many guardsmen aren't just accepting the fate of certain deployments; they're raising their hands to go. WPLN's Blake Farmer has the story of volunteers in the volunteer Guard.
The Tennessee Army National Guard band belts out Rocky Top in a surprise spring rain. Members are soaked, despite their ponchos, on the tarmac at the Smyrna airfield. After a year in Iraq, guardsmen with the 1/230th Air Cavalry step off a plane to tearful wives and children.
"You know, I signed on the dotted line to fulfill a mission and I feel that this is part of that mission," Staff Sgt. Danny Woods explained.
Woods just completed his third tour. He's been gone three of the last eight years, and missed little league games for his son, beach vacations with the kids. Woods says it's tough to choose a job over family - at least at first.
"I hate to say it, once you get away, you tend to block everything out and you get in that zone to accomplish the mission," Woods explains. "Now the mission's accomplished. I can focus on them."
Nationally, about 20% of Guard soldiers have deployed multiple times in the last decade, and many like Woods went by choice. They purposefully transfer to a unit that has orders to deploy.
The National Guard doesn't keep good statistics on this phenomenon, but consider one randomly chosen unit. The 253rd Military Police Company from Lenoir City is about to deploy to Iraq. Of its 170 members, 51 moved to the unit in order to go along.
"I was deployed as an aviation supply supervisor, and that's not normally my job. I'm normally a mechanic," Billy Davenport explains.
After 32 years in the Tennessee Guard, Davenport switched jobs - in part - so he could have a war experience before retiring.
"There's a pride, yeah, there's a self pride to wearing a combat patch," Davenport explains. "But that's not what we do it for. We do it for our country. As silly as that sounds to some people, we're here for our country."
That comment carries extra weight with Davenport. Part of the reason he volunteered was to share the experience with his step-daughter, Billie Jean Grinder of Gallatin. The 25-year-old pilot didn't come back alive. She was killed in a helicopter crash.
The very real dangers made Chief Warrant Officer Scarlett Bernier of Nashville think she'd never go back. She was part of the first waves to Iraq in 2003.
"When I came home last time, we all sort of had the mindset, thank goodness that's over and we won't have to go back. But as time has progressed and the mission continues, we realize that yes, not only do we have to go back twice. Maybe we have to go three times," Bernier said.
Speaking from her base near Baghdad, Bernier is in Iraq with the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment. She transferred to the unit in order to go and still almost got bumped.
"You certainly don't want to be the one that's left behind. You don't' want to be the one soldier that doesn't come. I would not have been able to look people in the face," Bernier says.
Pilot Marc Acton of Antioch draws a sports analogy - staying home is like warming the bench in the big game.
Acton said, "I had done all this practicing and rehearsing and training and all that kind of stuff and never got the actual opportunity to put it into practice."
Acton volunteered for a pilot slot with the 1/230th because he knew the unit was going to see action. He also needed a job.
"How crazy would you have to be to volunteer for a deployment?" Acton asks. "But on the other hand, it was a year of work."
In his day job, Acton sold drywall. When sales slowed with the construction industry, he was laid off for a year. That strained the family, especially his wife, and made the decision to go to war easier.
"If we hadn't had that year of me not being employed it would have been incredibly more difficult for her. That year was kind of like what Michelle needed to get her head around the idea of deployment could actually be a good thing," Acton said.
Acton's wife was able to quit her nursing job to be a stay-at-home mom because Acton was making $72,000 - mostly tax free.
Now that he's back, the combat pay is gone. His wife has returned to work while Acton looks for fulltime employment. So the Blackhawk aviator is now piloting the minivan.
"How was tennis?" Acton asks his six-year-old son Wesley.
"Good," Wesley said.
Acton says he's starting to realize just how much he missed being gone.
"I don't know what time Wesley gets picked up from school. I didn't know where to go to pick him up from school. I didn't know how to get to the Y that we went to, you know," Acton says.
Acton's three-year-old daughter has been a little confused too. The night her dad got home from Iraq, she asked where he planned to spend the night. Acton says that question will be ringing in his ears as he mulls raising his hand again to go back.