An Angel in Our Midst

This week has truly proven to be a difficult one at most. Last Sunday, I received two calls - one from Shane (in Wisconsin) and another from his buddy Stuckey's wife (Peggy). A soldier's wife was driving from Corinth, MS (close to Memphis) to San Antonio TX. Her husband is a medic in Shane's unit and had been really sick for 3-4 weeks. They kept telling him it was allergies. Well, in short, he was hospitalized for a viral infection that attacks your heart. His military career is over and he has to wear a defibrulator vest all the time now until his heart recovers, if it does. He is 28. I was able to stop his wife in Jackson and she spent the night with me. I booked her a flight from Jackson, MS to San Antonio. This was the first time she had flown. While she was here I learned that at the first drill after they were activated, that their rental house burned to the ground and they lost everything - no insurance. They also both had lost their jobs earlier this year.

I share this to say that when you think your life couldn't get much worse, that there is also someone whose life is. I truly think that God sent her to me because of all the struggles I have personally been through this year. (My dad's surgery and strokes, death, mother's wreck, shane deploying, etc.) I really don't think that I really made an impact in their life but at least it gave me a little hope and a chance to pay forward acts of kindness.

This week we learned that our Mississippi soldier's were not going to secure a flight home from Wisconsin and that they would need to pay for their own flights. A little disappointed to say the least. The boiling point of the situation was that the 1203rd unit from Alabama had the good fortune for a VFW post to raise funds to fly the ALABAMA soldiers home during leave.
We were truly upset that we (MS) had not been made aware of this so that we too could have possibly raised money to pay for our 95 soldiers to fly home together as well.
After I spent $700 on a plane ticket for Shane, I started emailing every legislative person in Alabama and Mississippi that I could think of.

As part of the family support group, it was my duty to try to help get these guys home without adding additional expenses on their families. In most cases, they do not have friends and family offering to help pay with the cost of a ticket. I know this from personal experience. If it would not have been for the patriot guard (motorcycle group) taking up a collection - Shane would not have made it home for my dad's funeral. Nor would the wife of the soldier in San Antonio have had a ticket to fly to SA. THANK YOU PATRIOT RIDERS!!!


It is not that we blame the 1203rd soldiers that they got a plane ticket home, we are angry because Mississippi could have taken care of their soldiers (if they wanted to). We blame the MS command staff for falsely leading our guys to believe that they were going to be taken care of. Although this unit legally falls under the US Army DOD, I know that if our legislative team asked the US Army DOD to fly our guys home they would. The MS Air National Guard flies missions called Air Guard Lifts all the time.

My platform was not to raise money for my husband's ticket, that went on a credit card. My platform is that there are young soldiers who have never seen war before, they have sacrificed their time with family back home to fight a war in a foreign country. Coming home is not guaranteed. This is a moral issue for me. Why can't our state military officials do the right thing and bring these guys home for a break. This may be the last chance some of them get.

To this end, I just want to say that there are good people out there. A dear friend put me in contact with a father who lost his son during the last deployment of the 155. He offered to pay for a ticket for a young soldier with wife and kids who could not afford to fly home.
I talked to Shane and told him that this had to be a very special person. He gave me the name of a solider - Andrew. He is in his early 20s with two small children at home. This ANGEL paid almost $1000 to have this soldier flown home. Ironically, this father's some was named "Drew" too. It brought me to tears.

God is in this for sure. May God Bless both families - the giver and the recipient. I am blessed to be a part of this kind act.

"Greater love hath no man that this, that he lay down his own life for his friends." John 15:12

In honor of Specialist Joseph Andrew Rahaim - Det. 1 Company A, 155th Infantry Batallion
This Soldier Laid down his life on February 19, 2005 - Operation Iraqi Freedom

http://www.mississippifallensoldiers.com/