Data released by the National Guard after a request from the Grand Forks Herald show more than 1,150 National Guard members were sent to locations across the country and the world since 2014.
Data released by the National Guard after a request from the Grand Forks Herald show more than 1,150 National Guard members were sent to locations across the country and the world since 2014.
By Pat Fenton
A Christmas Eve memory comes back to me, almost hauntingly in this crazy long night of the Pandemic, the Corona Virus we’re all living through. And it makes me think again of the importance of memory and how it brings us back so faithfully to the way we were.
I’m 20 years old, a young soldier from 17
th Street in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. And I’m down in Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia. And the furthest I have ever been from Windsor Terrace is Staten Island.
I’m marching cadence on the black Southern tarmac, singing to the count of a young southern Corporal: “Christmas Eve and we’ll be home drinking beer with lots of foam. Sound off, one-two, sound off, three-four, break it on down, one-two, three-four… “ And I don’t think I was ever happier than that moment in my young life. In the morning I would be going back home to Brooklyn on a two-week leave for Christmas before shipping out to Mannheim Germany on a troopship. So far away.