No need to complain about ‘another exercise’

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Nate Hier
  • 3rd Wing Public Affairs
ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska (AFPN) --  Exercises can undoubtedly be a colossal pain in the south end of a north-bound horse. When the kids are sick and can’t go to the child development center, Mom’s on days and Dad’s on nights, there are times when it’s hard to keep a positive outlook on why we have to train like we do.

Answering the phone to a recall at about 4 a.m. or so on a Wednesday, knowing immediately you won’t get a day off for quite awhile, can make it easy to lose sight of the reason that call came.

That is until you take a few minutes to pick up a paper or watch the news.

Our comrades-in-arms in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t worried about working through weekends -- they’re worried about accomplishing the mission and coming home in one piece. They’re not looking forward to a day off; they’re worried about when and where the next mortar attack might come from. You could get all that just from watching the news. And that might make you think twice before complaining about playing your part in an operational readiness exercise at home.

I’m ashamed to say I have even more reason to understand why we exercise, and I have no right to complain. Like many people, I’ve got friends over there right now and others who just returned. To say the least, it’s no trip to Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia.

I don’t mean it wasn’t a worthy accomplishment to have served in operations Northern Watch or Southern Watch. In this day and age of operations tempo, virtually any of us who have been in a couple of years have made at least one, if not multiple trips to Southwest Asia. Any time you spend away from family and friends to protect the freedoms we hold dear is an important and noble sacrifice; however, when I think about my last trip to the sandbox, it’s about a million miles away from what our brothers are going through right now as we do our part in the exercise and then go home to sleep in our own beds.

The only bunker run I made in three months in Saudi lasted about 15 minutes -- and it was just for an accountability exercise. In many places, they’re making multiple, real-world bunker runs every week. There’s a reason people are dying over there -- it’s no exercise, and it isn’t going to end in eight days.

I have a friend who would shoot me occasional e-mails to let me know how things were going on his recent deployment. My messages to him consisted of World Series updates and weekly accounts of NFL football. His replies were of very different subject matter. They were about mortar attacks; sleeping in bunkers; living in a helmet and flak vest; and most sadly, of people getting hurt and others dying.

Amazingly, I still had the audacity to get angry when my wife couldn’t take off from work to stay home with our young son when his fever topped 103 degrees. What an atrocity. All it amounted to was me getting off the nightshift, high-fiving my wife and daughter as they left for work and school, then having the chance to spend some time with my boy while waiting on a sitter, so I could get some sleep before my next shift.

How many deployed soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines would complain about coming off a shift and being able to spend time with their children? More accurately, how many of them wouldn’t give everything they have for the chance I was actually selfish enough to complain about?

Exercises aren’t fun -- they’re not supposed to be. It’s not a “company line” when we tell reporters we train year-round like this so we’re ready for deployments at a moment’s notice. It’s not a line at all. It’s who we are, it’s what we volunteered to do, and it’s the reason our nation enjoys more freedoms than any other country in the world.

As I walked upstairs to catch a couple hours of sleep, I could only laugh at myself for having been so foolish. It was quite a morning for the Hier clan. My son’s fever had broken, one sister gave birth to a healthy 5-pound, 11-ounce girl and another got out of jail, hopefully for the last time. And I’d been right here at home to take every call.