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Emotional sendoff here for unit of medical professionals

Friday, May 10, 2002

By Lillian Thomas, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

A hundred medical professionals spent a last hour with their families in Coraopolis yesterday morning before hoisting duffel bags and boarding buses for a destination unknown.

	Army Reserve Sgt. Christina Ritchey hugs her six-year-old daughter, Kaitlyn, as Ritchey's unit, the 339th Combat Support Hospital left Coraoplis yesterday for Ft. Dix, N.J., before heading overseas for as assignment that remains, for the moment, classified. (John Beale, Post-Gazette)

Their status as reservists of the 339th Combat Support Hospital had suddenly shifted their lives when they were called up this week. The word that they would probably be deployed came down about three weeks ago, but the date and time of departure weren't fixed until a few days ago. The destination is still classified information.

The nurses, doctors and medical technicians gathered in a large room with tables and benches at the headquarters of the 99th Regional Support Command of the Army Reserve before their 9:30 a.m. departure time. Parents took pictures of their soldier offspring, reservists quietly spoke to their children; a few with no one to see them off sat reading on the floor. Some kids ran around. Some moms and a boyfriend cried.

The 339th is one of 200 units under the 99th, which supervises 25,000 soldiers in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia, said Jack Gordon, chief of information services.

The soldiers of the 339th compose the human component of a hospital. Most do the same jobs in military and civilian life.

They don't carry in the equipment like a MASH unit. The physical facility -- probably Army-built C-huts -- will be there. But the unit has all the expertise to create a fully functional hospital, typically located behind the battle lines, with triage, trauma, surgical and extended-care capabilities, as well as pharmacy, radiology and all the other services needed.

"Wherever their assignment takes them, they'll move in and fall in on the equipment," Gordon said.

Some of the reservists will go for three or six months, others for as long as two years.

The soldiers have an idea of where they are going when they ship out from Fort Dix, N.J.

"There's a generalized knowledge of a generalized region, but it's still classified," Gordon said.

The word circulating among the soldiers was somewhere in Central Asia.

"I heard the mother of a child who was asking, 'Where are they going, Mommy?' and she said 'far, far away' and that's about as good as you can get now," he said.

Though the destination is kept under wraps, once the soldiers arrive they will be able to communicate with their families via phone, letter and e-mail.

"We have a unit from Erie in Uzbekistan, and they communicate daily via e-mail, and by phone when they can," he said.

Gordon said that call-ups are probably tougher for reservists than for those who live on bases and are accustomed to the sudden moves of military life. The 99th tries to help with that by forming "family readiness" groups, loose associations that bind the geographically dispersed families of reservists together.

Another challenge is that reservists have limited time to train and aren't physically together 24 hours a day, seven days a week like a base unit, he said.

"This particular unit and soldiers in it participated in humanitarian efforts in Central America after Hurricane Mitch, and last year were in El Salvador after the earthquake that led to a mudslide," he said, "so they've had experience working in the field together."

But no matter what the preparation, he said, "when reality is right in your face, that's when it comes to bear."

Gordon said he has watched 40 call-ups since September and it's always tough.

"I watched a young man crying while his equally young girlfriend was going off to duty today. It's all there -- every aspect of humanity. Regardless of time, a soldier going off to duty, to war, is the same as it's always been," he said. "There's apprehension and there's fear and there's also pride."

When the time came to board the buses, the soldiers filed outside. They lined up along one side of the concrete barriers set up to prevent attacks on the headquarters, while the families lined up on the other side and said their goodbyes.