Where do we get such men ...

We had yet another Hail and Farewell today. With the temporary nature of these assignments, we rotate a bunch of folks through each month. Today was kind of special, though. We were saying goodbye to our PSD. The PSD is a Personal Security Detachment. They’re the guys who’s job it is to protect our Commanding General and Sergeant Major (the Army holds the senior enlisted man in the command almost equal to the Commanding Officer, kind of like a co-Executive Officer – the Navy does this as well with the Command Master Chief, but no where near the level that the Army does). The PSD also protects any of the command staff personnel who ride with the General (that basically means all of us on the Command Staff – on any given day, any of us might be riding with the CG (Commanding General). These kids in the PSD are all volunteers hand-picked from a large pool of applicants, needless to say, these kids are the cream of the crop from 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One).

The CG made a point today of giving the history of each of the members of the PSD. To a man, they had all had multiple tours in Iraq and most had recently returned from a tour in Iraq when they volunteered for this assignment. Some may say they did it to work for the CG (He is a pretty amazing man, and a heck of a leader), but I’d like to think these kids did it for another reason – a sense of duty. Who in his right mind would volunteer for a deployment where you know that you will be traveling on convoy in the worst parts of Iraq on a daily basis, and that your job is not to kill the enemy, but to protect the members of the convoy. These men traveled outside the wires over 200 times in their tour in the PSD, logging over 8,000 miles of travel through Iraq (most of that was in Baghdad). Our CG and Sgt. Major’s job required them to travel to the teams around the country daily (the difficulty of this command is that the headquarters is here in Camp Victory, but the teams are spread all over the landscape), if a commander never visits his troops, he will never know what he can do to aid them in their efforts. So, when he goes, these kids take him there. They load up in the Humvees and trek out over the countryside, knowing that a casualty to their protectee would be used by the enemy as propaganda.

The title of this post was, “Where do we get such men.” This is originally from a poem about Naval Aviators who fly onboard ships, but I think it may be more applicable to kids like this. They could be home, enjoying their down-time after an arduous combat deployment, but they’re not – they’re here, doing the job, every day. Remember this as you read the headlines about young people like Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan and wonder if there is hope for the generation of young people we have today. There is hope, they’re right here, on the job, and they have been every day for the last year. God speed, PSD, you have left an impression that will be hard to match (at least until the next group of brave young Americans walk through the door next week to assume the watch). Until tomorrow.

-Grease out.