Iowa National Guard Soldier Send Off

With tears all around, Staff Sergeant Boyd Brinker hugs his four-year-old son Braydon, after a send off ceremony at the Aviation Support facility at Waterloo Thursday. (BRANDON POLLOCK/Courier Staff Photographer)

Friday, June 6, 2008 12:13 PM CDT
Soldier send-off
By LAURA GREVAS, Courier Staff Writer
WATERLOO --- It was standing room only. So they stood, in the oppressive heat, to say goodbye.

More than 200 family members and friends attended a send-off ceremony Thursday for the Waterloo detachment of the Iowa National Guard's 248th Aviation Support Battalion.

The 18 guardsmen will leave from the Waterloo Army Aviation Support Facility and travel to Fort Sill, Okla., where they will spend several weeks in additional training before being deployed to the Central Command theater of operations in Iraq. Once there, they will provide aviation maintenance support to a combat aviation brigade. Lt. Col. Tim Eich, the facility commander, said the unit could work on repair, maintenance and testing of several hundred airplanes.

"They have people who specialize in all the airplanes the Army has," he said.

Their tour is scheduled to last a little more than a year, but members of the Iowa National Guard can serve as many as 24 consecutive months.

This will mark the battalion's third active-duty deployment since 9/11, and Eich said the majority of the men on this mission had been deployed before.

Several of them, like aviation maintenance technician Alan Kakac, have dedicated much of their lives to the National Guard. Kakac, 51, has been in the Guard for 32 years, serving in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
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