Spring Break
Balancing personal lives, missions
Eric Conte
Issue date: 10/13/06 Section: News
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It was hard not having control over his life since he had to rely on a lawyer to fight the custody battle for him, Kresge said.
This was one of the personal perspectives shared during a panel discussion featuring military personnel on Sept. 21 at NCC's Main campus. All were NCC students or graduates who served overseas.
Also participating in the discussion in College Center's West Plaza were: Sgt. 1st Class Robert Brockel Jr. and SpecialistJoshua Davis, both in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard; Air Force Staff Sgt. Kraig McFadden; Marine Cpl. Sam Lebowitz; and Navy HM2 Keith Robert.
Like Kresge, Robert found that dealing with life at home while being deployed overseas was one of his biggest challenges. Robert, who was part of the Shock Trauma Platoon in Afghanistan and is in the nursing program at NCC, said his wife was pregnant with their second child while he was deployed in Afghanistan.
Communicating with his wife was not easy, Robert said. Along with worrying about his wife, he sometimes had to deal with having to go 36 to 48 hours without sleep while he treated injured soldiers.
Another issue that the panel addressed was they maintained their morale overseas. Getting letters from home helped a lot, Robert said.
"Don't forget those people that are there," he said, urging people to send letters to soldiers.
Good morale came from getting to know his fellow soldiers, Davis said.
He considers his military comrades closer to him than his own brother. This really helped him get by, Davis said, adding that everyone shared everything with each other, from books and movies to games and cookies from home.
Davis was a Humvee machine gunner and driver in Iraq. A typical day for him would be to wake up early and do maintenance on the Humvees all day, he said. Then he would go on 80-mile convoys at night, the whole time alert for roadside bombs.
Kresge spoke of sharing with his fellow soldiers, saying that everyone would combine their care packages from home and have a block party on the base. They did this for Christmas and had a big holiday party in Baghdad, he said.
Lebowitz, was a squad automatic weapon gunner in Iraq during his first deployment and a radio operator during his second deployment. Something that stuck with him was that the parade for them entering Baghdad was bigger than the one in the U.S. for them coming home. The reception in Iraq was so big because the people were happy to be liberated, he said.
A typical day for Lebowitz included going on six-hour foot patrols, searching for roadside bombs and going to abandoned, bombed-out buildings to hunt for insurgents responsible for planting bombs.
Some of the difficulties in doing this were identifying the enemy and keeping up communications, Lebowitz said.
Lebowitz said he participated in a lot of humanitarian aid efforts while in Iraq, including cleaning out schools and helping rebuild them. The Army helped local businesses by hiring them to fix the schools instead of having their own engineers do the job.
Much more humanitarian aid goes on in Iraq than is shown on the news, Lebowitz said.
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