This Memorial Day will have special meaning to me and my family due to what our country has been through this last year. We have come through the other side of the worst global pandemic in history and are still fighting to try to keep the virus at bay in many regards. We witnessed an insurrection against our government sparked by extreme discourse and fueled by years of growing anger and vitriol towards disparate ideals that were leveraged against us by the media, opportunistic politicians, and the sort. As well, we saw some of the most blatant cybersecurity intrusions that have eroded our trust in our supply chains, our providers or our core services and have raised widespread threats to our critical infrastructure, the like we have never seen.
It is an interesting time to be an American veteran. I don’t pretend to speak for all vets so my words and thoughts are my own, so from my perspective, I am thankful of my choices to have served my country and protect the Constitution as well as our system of government that I fully believe in and I give thanks to our bravest service members who have given the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that we are afforded the privilege of our continued freedom as a Constitutional Republic.
I come from a long line of veterans. My Grandparents are first generation Americans and proudly served in World War II. My Grandfather on my mother’s side, Charles Itte’ was an enlisted man who joined the Navy in 1939 as a 
Quartermaster aboard the U.S.S Constellation, one of the oldest and still commissioned ships in the 
fleet. In 1941, he was serving on the U.S.S. Long Island where he learned that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and brought the US into the great war. As a result, My Grandfather was and his team were to take part in missions that directly supported the Doolittle raid that took place in 1943. Charles Made it all the way to E7 (Chief) then in 1944, he was selected to be commissioned as an officer; it was then that he was assigned to the Shangri-la (CV-38) where, under the command of Admiral McCain, he took part in the most critical missions that turned the tide of the war. He and his team successfully tested the deployment of the Atom Bomb in the Bikini Islands and had a direct role in the launch of the attack over Hiroshima that led to the Japanese surrender and the end of the war. He retired as a Captain, commanding the Cabildo and passed away in 2012, the day I left for Airborne school.
My father, Dione Howard, Joined the Navy in the 60’s as an enlisted personnel petty officer, and served aboard the U.S.S. Ranger, a supercarrier that was the first US carrier built from the beginning as an angled-deck ship. He served in Viet Nam where in 1967, the Ranger commenced another period of sustained combat operations against North Vietnam. During the next five months, her planes hit a wide variety of targets, including ferries, bridges, airfields, and military installations. Truck parks, rail facilities, antiaircraft guns, and SAM sites were also treated to doses of Air Wing 2’s firepower. Bob Hope’s Christmas Show came to Ranger in the Gulf of Tonkin on 21 December.
Another welcome break in the intense pace of operations came with a call at Yokosuka during the first week of April. At the end of January 1968, Pueblo was seized by North Korea. Ranger turned north and proceeded at full speed from the tropical waters off Vietnam to the frigid waters off North Korea as part of Operation Formation Star. The ship had been on the combat line in Vietnam for one month and was due to for rest and recreation. At the conclusion of the North Korea deployment, the ship had been at sea for 65 days. My father retired from the Navy as a Senior Chief Petty Officer and lives in Lubbock, Texas
I served in Iraq as a SSgt from 2006-2007 and as a TSgt from 2009-2010. Both deployments were with the Army. The first deployment was with Civil Affairs and I was part of a new program called “In Lieu Of” or ILO, it was an experimental program to embed Airmen and Sailors into Army positions to help with the surge of operations in Iraq during Shock and Awe in 2006. Me and 18 other lucky Airmen from all over the Air Force were randomly selected to be part of the program; we were flown to Kirtland AFB, New Mexico where we met up with our Army Liaison; it was an odd deployment as our orders were open ended with no start or finish date and no itinerary except the rally point at Kirtland. Once we all got together, we got a quick briefing from the Army LNO and were put on a bus. We rode for a while up into the mountains of Sante Fe’ and onto a National Guard Base. TO our surprise, we were about to go to boot camp! We ended up going through Army boot camp as NCOs with a group of off the street newbies for 13 weeks. Santa Fe’ was freezing cold. My feet were covered in blisters and the training was pure misery, but effective. The Army NCOs absolutely hated us and made sure to let us know. During one room clearing exercise while using paint rounds, one of our Airmen got cornered by “oppfor” and was pinned to the ground; the bad guy then shot the Airmen point blank in the neck with a paint round which ruptured his neck and he had to be send to the ER. Of course, no-one owned up to the “accident”; that sort of stuff happens in the Army…
After Boot camp, we were shipped to Fort Gordon, GA to attend Tech School, where I received a 25B MOS (Comm) badge, that lasted for 3 months, then we were shipped to Fort Bragg NC, to attend Civil Affairs training, where we met up with our CA team. We trained with them for 5 months, then we finally deployed straight from Bragg to Iraq. I landed in Baghdad, got picked up by my Army unit, got shown my bunk and went to chow. The next morning, I was out on convoy to the IZ across route Irish, the deadliest stretch of road in Iraq. I immediately got numb to the fact that I could die at any moment. It just became a part of life. I did that for 6+ months performing random Army duties in a chaotic country and meeting very nice people along the way. One thing I learned about my time there is the Iraqi people are no different than anyone else, they simply want to live their lives, raise their kids in safety and live in relative peace and prosperity. Sadly, years of war, greed by strongmen and famine have made those simple tenets hard to achieve…
I went back to Iraq in 2009 to manage the RNOSC, a regional satellite facility that was the central 
communications hub for CENTCOM. We were still actively at war but things were much calmer than in 2006. My job was more routine and felt safer than the previous deployment. It was at that time that I was being queued to join JSOC. So, I took advantage of my time there and got into crazy good shape. I lived at the gym when I was on duty and all that I ate was protein and fruit; I lost 40 pounds on deployment and gained 19 pounds of muscle. My wife was not mad at me when I came home from deployment.
There is much more to tell but I’ll save it doe another time. My reflection is to show reverence to those that have sacrificed all to preserve our way of life and protect freedom for those all over the world.
On this Memorial Day, I say to those that gave it all: Thank you for your service!
