Business As Usual

A local soldier's mission to balance two homes

Story by Josh Schermerhorn

Photos courtesy of James Brown

The landing zone is almost secure when the ambush strikes.  Rocket-propelled-grenades and machine gun fire litter the area.  The enemy is arching the RPG’s, making them inaccurate but lethal.  One strikes near Lt. James Brown, and he dives into the nearest ditch.  Air support is coming to pick them up, and they never arrive without an escort.  Today, it’s an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter.  The pilot screams into Lt. Brown’s radio “I’ve got a positive ID and need authorization.”  Brown instantly gives the OK, and the Apache opens fire with a mechanism guided by wherever the pilot looks on his drop-down visor.  Brown and his group were saved that day, one more episode in the struggle to survive halfway around the globe, one more day in his mission to see his family again.

“Medals and awards are nice on paper, but making it home in one piece is all that really matters,” Brown says, displaying his various accolades earned in Afghanistan, with his wife, Rebecca, in their Plattsburgh home.

Brown enlisted in the military on St. Patrick’s Day, 1997, intent on obtaining a four-year degree to enter the military as an officer.  Unfortunately, financial circumstances made it difficult, so he ventured to Fort Hood, Texas for about a year.  He came back, looking for work to pay off bills and try to finish his degree.

“I finally said ‘forget it,’ I’m going to just go back on active duty.  I’m probably not going to become an officer,” he says.

It was at that point in 2005 that he met Rebecca.

“He was a very driven person, which was somewhat like me,” Rebecca says.  “He was a good influence for my boys who had lost their father a year before.  Because we were so much alike, our relationship moved along very quickly, and were married within six months.”

It was different going from a single guy to married and three kids,” James says.

“Medals and awards are nice on paper, but making it home in one piece is all that really matters.”

In 2006, Brown enlisted in officer-candidate school, a program allowing him to go to school to get his degree in history.

The family moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, for two years.  Stationed on a military base, the necessities of life were secure and easily accessible. 

However, when they found out he would be deploying for Afghanistan in 2008, they chose to move back to Plattsburgh.

“We decided that when he was gone for the 12-month deployment, we wanted to be closer to family and friends.  Therefore, we decided to start shopping for a home,” Rebecca says.  “I was a little nervous about moving back into the real world.  On the base, everyone’s husband was in the Army, whereas here I’m the exception of a husband overseas.  It was challenging to say the least.”

James was eager to deploy, feeling he had been cheated out of it twice.  The first time was with his reserve unit in 2003, where his group was set to enter northern Iraq in the initial invasion.  However, political complications with Turkey prevented the insurgency.  Second was in Fort Benning, where he enlisted in the third Division, also headed into Iraq.  Eleven days before deployment, Brown entered officer-candidate school and was, to his dismay, unable to go with his unit.

“I wanted to deploy,” he says.  “It’s like being a professional football player and never playing a game. You train so hard for it, and when you get the opportunity you want to do it.  I always said that if I could get a Star Trek teleporter to come home for a few hours, it would be perfect, because I love what I’m doing over there.  I like the feeling that I’m making a difference.”

He went to Fort Drum, New York, on weekdays for approximately two months before leaving on a12-month campaign to Afghanistan on Dec. 17, 2008.

“I was on the mindset that if he didn’t come home in time, I would postpone Christmas as long as he did come home,” says Rebecca.  “Of course, that is the life of the military; you don’t always get what you want.”

Deployment to the opposite side of the globe included a lot of preparation for Brown, but he was ready. 

“I was ready for all of the cultural differences, but I was not ready for the landscape,” he said.  “It was overwhelming to be surrounded by 15,000-foot peaks.”

"I always said that if I could get a Star Trek teleporter to come home for a few hours, it would be perfect, because I love what I’m doing over there.  I like the feeling that I’m making a difference.”

“I had my unit run every day once we landed.  The thing about the Army is, nobody is real fast, nobody is real strong, but they never stop.  If you have to run up a mountain 17 times in 17 days, you’re going to do it.”

Lt. Brown’s unit, dubbed “CSI: Logar” (the province they were stationed in), had a two-fold mission. 
“My unit was a joint-operation of Army, Navy, and Air Force,” he says.  “I had EOD teams, or explosive ordinance disposal units, dog-handlers of the explosive-detection and combat-tracking variety, mechanics, scouts, and even cooks that I had to teach how to fight.  Basically, our job was to remove IED’s, or improvised explosive devices from areas.  Once safely removed, we would collect forensics off of it and try to attack the network.  I don’t necessarily want to find out who put it in the road, but rather who paid for the bomb, or who trained the person to put it there.

“The guys who are paying for these bombs are also the ones slinging the anti-government rhetoric.  They are the ones who don’t want to see the government succeed.  Once we found out who they were, we would go get them.”

Even with a plan in place, it was a day-to-day struggle to survive for Brown and his squad, running 390 missions in the 365-day tour in Afghanistan.

“I would have to interact with other teams and ask ‘what’s going on today?’  They would say ‘just a groundhog day,’ or the same old stuff.  I can honestly say that there wasn’t a day that went by where I could say that.  For seven or eight months, I would be lucky to get four hours of sleep a night.  Sometimes, we would go three days without sleep, going from one call to the next.”

“Sometimes I had to make tough decisions.  Our mission was very clear, and if I had to choose between hurt Americans who needed help or Afghanis with a bomb for us to collect, I had to go to the bomb.”

The relationship between the local Afghani army and the Americans was relatively strong, Brown says.
“They liked us because we were there to help,” he says.  “However, we realized that we want them to eventually do it themselves.”

Meanwhile, Rebecca was having her own struggles at home.  “We thought it would be too tough to be home for Christmas without him,” she says.  “So we decided to go down to Maryland to spend the week with my sister.  We did things to try and keep us busy.

“I was due to start college at Clinton Community College in January 2009, which was probably a God-send for me.  Waiting around with nothing to do but have your husband to call from Afghanistan is enough to drive the sanest person insane, knowing his job is paper-pushing behind a desk.  So when I went back to school, it was a good distraction.”

In August 2009, James was set to come home for a 15-day leave.  The timing was ideal since Rebecca and the kids were not in school.  However, a tragic explosion in his unit prevented him from coming back until September.

“Instead of coming home when we could all do things together, I had to come back when the boys were starting school and two days and Rebecca was already back,” James says. 

“The Army is the only operation I know that can put 36 hours in a day."

Once the break was over, Rebecca sent him to Afghanistan.  “The only good thing about it was the final two months or so flew by for me,” Rebecca says.  James, however, disagreed about his own time, says his time overseas felt much longer, but satisfying nonetheless.

“I was looking forward to coming home, but I like making a difference over there,” James says.  “It’s nice to see towns that were nothing when we got there, and are doing well now.  It’s not perfect, but it’s something better.”

After exactly 365 days, Brown was scheduled to come home on Dec. 17, 2009. 

“The Army is the only operation I know that can put 36 hours in a day,” he says.  “We had delays and cancellations from snow and such, making the day awful.  We finally got back to Fort Drum around 12:15 a.m., and would turn in all our gear.  We went to a small ‘welcome home’ ceremony, and were supposed to be able to go after that.”

They were not scheduled for release until 6 a.m., making it very strenuous on both James and Rebecca. 

“When he called me to tell me it wasn’t until 6, I was in disbelief,” Rebecca says.  “I was thinking ‘it’s 1:30 in the morning and I’m wide awake, and you want me to go back to the hotel and sleep?’”
After pushing through the day that would never end, the Brown family settled at their home in Plattsburgh.  James was off-duty.  He was not required to put on a uniform for a year.  He could even grow a beard if he wanted to.

“My requirements now are to do well in school and to be a good husband.  Sometimes I can’t believe that I’m getting paid to go to school,” he says with a laugh.

To stay in shape for the Army, James expects to compete in the Ironman triathlon in Lake Placid this summer.

“Swimming is the worst because I can’t breathe when I want to,” he jokes.

The family is into food, and looks to open a restaurant sometime in the future.  James finds passion in the New York Yankees and Washington Redskins for sporting entertainment.  His hockey team happens to be the Buffalo Sabres, since his unit was called the Sabre Element, with his title being Sabre Six. 

But the future will not be in Plattsburgh forever.  James is expected to head back to Fort Benning in Georgia to become a captain.  His hopes are to be selected for Special Forces, and will be deploying in 2012 if selected, and as early as fall 2011 if he isn’t.  He will deploy to Afghanistan, and again leave behind his home and family to fight for his country once more.

Do you know a soldier overseas?

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