thedrifter
10-20-08, 10:13 AM
Major shares his experiences serving in Afghanistan
By Cathy Bayer
RRSTAR.COM
Posted Oct 19, 2008 @ 09:14 PM
ROCKFORD —
Maj. Raymond DeGennaro is in Afghanistan with the Army — part of the reason he’d like to talk with the Register Star is because Afghanistan seems to be often forgotten with everything that’s going on in Iraq, he said.
He’s serving with the Afghanistan Regional Security Integration Command — North. They work with the Afghan National Army’s 209th Corps and the Afghan National Police in the North Region.
He said he’s scheduled for 270 days “boots on ground.” He works for a database consulting firm through the Army and is also the medical operations officer for the U.S. mentoring forces in the North Region.
He and his wife have been living in the Rockford area since 2001, and they have two daughters.
DeGennaro is in his early 40s, and he went to college on an ROTC scholarship. He attended Johns Hopkins University and was on an education delay with the military while he attended graduate school. He started working with a reserve unit in 1995.
He’ll be in Afghanistan until late spring.
The Register Star plans to correspond weekly with DeGennaro about his tour and will feature him on a regularly.
Why did you join the Army? It’s hard to say. I had a lot of different reasons. My dad was in the Navy at the tail end of WWII. I had an uncle and a cousin that were Marines, another uncle that was an Army helicopter pilot during Vietnam. I had applied and was accepted at U.S. Military Academy, but I went with the ROTC scholarship because I wanted to study biomedical engineering, which wasn’t offered at U.S. Military Academy.
Also, I felt very strongly that what we have here in the United States is worth protecting.
Although through the years I may have disagreed with some of the deployments of the Armed Forces, I still feel as strongly about the overall importance and plan to stay in until my mandatory retirement date.
Have you been deployed before? This is my first overseas deployment. My previous unit deployed teams to Afghanistan twice since 9/11, but each time I was chosen to be the acting commander for the portion of the unit that was not deployed.
What are things like there? It was hot over the summer. Although I will say that working in the sun, when it’s 110 degrees in the shade, here is much better than the mid-90s in Fort Riley, Kan. That’s where we did our pre-mobilization training.
Today it fell below 70 degrees and we saw the first real rainstorm of the fall season. We’re further north and at a higher elevation than the southern portion of Afghanistan, so we’ll see a winter that’s a touch colder and wetter than what we get in Rockford.
Describe a typical day: I’m the team leader for a Medical Embedded Training Team (ETT). So, Sunday through Thursday, I get up and get ready, attend a morning briefing, meet my interpreter and discuss the morning’s plans as we walk to the corps surgeon general’s office and then work with him and his staff until lunchtime. Our camp is inside the Afghan Army camp for the 209th Corps, so it’s about a 15 to 20 minute walk. My afternoons vary a bit more. I check in with the medics on my team, attend some other briefings, other Army work and physical training.
Friday is the main religious day in Afghanistan, so it’s a “low tempo” day. I don’t visit my counterpart and we don’t have any regularly scheduled meetings, so it’s a light work day.
What’s the morale like? It’s really good. There’s some grumbles about the chow, but it’s good, just a bit monotonous.
What do you miss from home? My family, ice cubes in drinks, pepperoncinis, Macintosh computers and good pizza.
Ellie
By Cathy Bayer
RRSTAR.COM
Posted Oct 19, 2008 @ 09:14 PM
ROCKFORD —
Maj. Raymond DeGennaro is in Afghanistan with the Army — part of the reason he’d like to talk with the Register Star is because Afghanistan seems to be often forgotten with everything that’s going on in Iraq, he said.
He’s serving with the Afghanistan Regional Security Integration Command — North. They work with the Afghan National Army’s 209th Corps and the Afghan National Police in the North Region.
He said he’s scheduled for 270 days “boots on ground.” He works for a database consulting firm through the Army and is also the medical operations officer for the U.S. mentoring forces in the North Region.
He and his wife have been living in the Rockford area since 2001, and they have two daughters.
DeGennaro is in his early 40s, and he went to college on an ROTC scholarship. He attended Johns Hopkins University and was on an education delay with the military while he attended graduate school. He started working with a reserve unit in 1995.
He’ll be in Afghanistan until late spring.
The Register Star plans to correspond weekly with DeGennaro about his tour and will feature him on a regularly.
Why did you join the Army? It’s hard to say. I had a lot of different reasons. My dad was in the Navy at the tail end of WWII. I had an uncle and a cousin that were Marines, another uncle that was an Army helicopter pilot during Vietnam. I had applied and was accepted at U.S. Military Academy, but I went with the ROTC scholarship because I wanted to study biomedical engineering, which wasn’t offered at U.S. Military Academy.
Also, I felt very strongly that what we have here in the United States is worth protecting.
Although through the years I may have disagreed with some of the deployments of the Armed Forces, I still feel as strongly about the overall importance and plan to stay in until my mandatory retirement date.
Have you been deployed before? This is my first overseas deployment. My previous unit deployed teams to Afghanistan twice since 9/11, but each time I was chosen to be the acting commander for the portion of the unit that was not deployed.
What are things like there? It was hot over the summer. Although I will say that working in the sun, when it’s 110 degrees in the shade, here is much better than the mid-90s in Fort Riley, Kan. That’s where we did our pre-mobilization training.
Today it fell below 70 degrees and we saw the first real rainstorm of the fall season. We’re further north and at a higher elevation than the southern portion of Afghanistan, so we’ll see a winter that’s a touch colder and wetter than what we get in Rockford.
Describe a typical day: I’m the team leader for a Medical Embedded Training Team (ETT). So, Sunday through Thursday, I get up and get ready, attend a morning briefing, meet my interpreter and discuss the morning’s plans as we walk to the corps surgeon general’s office and then work with him and his staff until lunchtime. Our camp is inside the Afghan Army camp for the 209th Corps, so it’s about a 15 to 20 minute walk. My afternoons vary a bit more. I check in with the medics on my team, attend some other briefings, other Army work and physical training.
Friday is the main religious day in Afghanistan, so it’s a “low tempo” day. I don’t visit my counterpart and we don’t have any regularly scheduled meetings, so it’s a light work day.
What’s the morale like? It’s really good. There’s some grumbles about the chow, but it’s good, just a bit monotonous.
What do you miss from home? My family, ice cubes in drinks, pepperoncinis, Macintosh computers and good pizza.
Ellie