Sunday, Nov. 08, 2009

Fort Mill honors 105 soldiers sent off to war

"Daddy," Dakota Seaford said Saturday.

The 2-year-old beauty from the York County town of Clover snuggled next to her father during a departure ceremony at the American Legion post in Rock Hill. She smiled and ate.

Spc. Scott Seaford wore an Army uniform. He is a National Guardsman from the Fort Mill unit, and he is going to Afghanistan. Again. Seaford tried to smile, but he succeeded it seemed only when his daughter and wife were next to him.

When Dakota was born in June 2007, her father was not at the hospital. He was standing on the back of a Humvee in Afghanistan, strapped in with an assault rifle and machine gun.

Now he is going back again.

"First time he saw her was home on leave at Christmas," said Anita Seaford, the wife of Scott Seaford.

Anita Seaford tried to smile Saturday, too. The ceremony honored the 105 men and women of the 1222nd Engineer Company, who will leave this week for training before they head to Afghanistan in early 2010.

The Family Readiness Group - the spouses and mothers and children of soldiers - held a hamburger and hot dog lunch Saturday. They heard a few words from dignitaries during a brief ceremony with the soldiers standing in formation.

At the tables around the soldiers were the most worried faces of war. Solemn. Downcast. The children and wives and mamas and daddies ate their hot dogs with slaw and mustard and looked down at hands clasped in prayer that these soldiers would come home again.

The war in Afghanistan is not like in 2007-2008, when many of these men were deployed there the last time. It is not like Iraq, where in 2003-2004 the unit served so capably and well. The worst casualties of these wars have come in the past few months, right where these 105 soldiers are going soon.

The soldiers are combat engineers. They specialize in getting rid of bombs. "This time is harder, the situation is worse over there," said Kelly Stewart White, whose husband, Mark, is deploying for the second time in less than three years. "It seems like they just got home."

In this unit are some soldiers with two previous deployments, one, or none. For all, it is brutal.

But still, they go. "They say go, I go," said a 22-year-old sergeant named Russell Kirkland who has already been in Iraq and now heads to Afghanistan. His 1-year-old son, Walker, played on the table as his father stood at attention.

At a big table gathered the family of Spc. Justin Outlaw. Mom and step-dad, dad and step-mom. Outlaw is already a combat veteran from Afghanistan in the 2007-2008 deployment. He left that time when he was all of 18 years old.

He came back and met a pretty girl named Corissa. They are a couple. She is 18 now herself.

His proud family sat around that table in assorted states of nervousness. At another table was Sgt. Blake Klinefelter of Fort Mill and his family. He is 26, and has been married to Mary Beth for all of three weeks. He, too, will be making his second trip to Afghanistan.

Some in the unit are already at training and couldn't attend on Saturday. Spc. Michael Semko, 22, of Rock Hill, is one of them. But his mother, Eve Hawthorne, was there Saturday in his place. Soon, Semko will head to Afghanistan for the second time.

"With what is going on over there in Afghanistan, this time is definitely harder," Hawthorne said. "I am strong in my faith, though."

Then Hawthorne said something that doubtless every wife, every child, every parent, will say a million times: "I pray to God he will come back home from that war to me."