Oregon soldier: 'I really wanted to go to Iraq'

by Cali Bagby for KVAL.com and KVAL.com staff

Originally printed at http://www.kval.com/news/46751507.html

KUWAIT -- As the credits finish rolling on "Bride Wars" and the light comes on, Louisa Babcock remembers she isn't at home in Albany anymore.

“It felt like I was in a different world for a while," the Oregon National Guard sergeant said. "I forgot I was even here.”

Just a few weeks ago, Babcock was sitting in a white school bus at Fort Sill, Okla., bound for a 747 double-decker plane as a member of Charlie Company, 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation, a Medevac unit based in Salem, Ore.

Kuwait is the first stop on their 400-day overseas deployment.

For several weeks, soldiers spend their days in large tents in the Kuwaiti desert, alternately struggling with boredom and long workdays in the dust and heat.

The mission: prepare to extract wounded soldiers and others from hot spots in Iraq.

This is Babcock’s first deployment to Iraq, but her second trip to Kuwait.

Back in the winter of 2002, Babcock, then a corporal in the Marines, spent three weeks in Kuwait in transition to her deployment in Afghanistan.

“We were first responders after Sept. 11,” Babcock said.

She spent four and a half years in active duty, working full time for the military. She served three and a half years in the Inactive Reserves (IR) living as a civilian, but she knew a call for duty could come at any time.

During IR, Babcock lived in California and eventually moved to Oregon, where she took classes at Oregon State University.

Babcock joined the Marines in 1999, no small feat considering reports by the US Coast Guard and Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs concluding that just 6.1 percent of Marines are female. These figures didn’t bothered Babcock, who never felt like an outsider looking in -- until she was ordered to stay behind on a deployment.

A year after her tour in Afghanistan and near the end of her four-year obligation to the Marines, Babcock was "stop-lossed," an involuntary extension of service for six extra months.

Babcock was mentally prepared to get out of the military, but she was happy to serve more time with her unit.

“There’s an expression called dropping your pack, you just don’t care as much anymore,” Babcock said about soldiers towards the end of their four or six years of service. “It’s really hard to pick that bag up again, it weighs more and you have to get stiff with the rules again.”

Despite the change of plans, Babcock didn’t complain and dutifully packed her bags for her first trip to Iraq. Two days before she was set to leave, her doctor called to say that she had pre-cancerous cells, which required surgery and made her un-deployable. So she unpacked her bags and watched the war escalate while she stayed at home.

The guilt weighed heavily on her shoulders.

“Even after the surgery was cleared they wouldn’t send me,” Babcock said. “I was the leader. Those were like my little kids, I took care of them. Granted, I was only 23 at the time. I felt that sense of responsibility and duty to them, not so much the nation necessarily, but to my fellow Marines.”

Over the next several months Babcock worked at the base doing barrack duty work, like answering phones and security.

On her last day as a Marine, she joined the National Guard. Near the end of her one-year contract with the Guard, she was headed to another deployment.

“No stop loss was in effect so I could get out, but I really wanted to go to Iraq,” said Babcock who swiftly signed a contract for another six years to get an enlisted bonus. “I figured I’ve got over 10 years now, I might as well get a retirement."

Babcock spent the first few days after Charlie Company arrived in Kuwait waiting for the Oregon Blackhawks to fly in so she could do her job. As a flight operations specialist, she maintains records for the pilots and crewmembers, tracks flights and maintains equipment.

She will also spend a day at the range shooting her weapon. In her free time she takes naps, reads her book or magazine or goes to the gym where she racks up at least 6 miles on the treadmill, which shows in her muscular thighs.

She waits in long lines at the chow hall, which serves anything from lobster to hamburgers to gumbo, depending on the day. For vegetarians like Babcock, rice and the salad bar are the most attractive options. The wide array of meal options and pleasantness of the wooden dining room tables raises the morale of the troops, who happily load their plates.

Once the wait was over and the Blackhawks arrived, the days went by swiftly.

Babcock wakes up between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. to the sounds of others getting ready for the day.

Babcock’s days fill up to the point that she’ll have to wait for a day off to hit the gym. And then, at some point, Babcock and Charlie Company will leave Kuwait behind and head for Iraq.

“I’m excited to get there," she said. "I want to go so bad. I want to do my job, feel like I did my part.”

Cali Bagby is embedded with the Oregon Army National Guard from Charlie Company, 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation, a Medevac Unit based out of Salem, Ore., for KVAL.com. Her work has been published in the Washington Post and the Eugene Weekly.

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