Published: March 19, 2008 12:12 pm         

A long way from home

Logansport lieutenant misses hometown, but enjoys challenge of going to Iraq

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait — Lt. Sean Moore is half a world away from his hometown of Logansport.

Today, he’ll log a 17-hour shift at Camp Buehring, Kuwait. Soon he’ll be in Iraq, doing more of the same, serving for more than nine months with Indiana’s 76th Brigade Combat Team.

Good thing Moore’s prone to going a “million miles an hour” in civilian life. He said his wife sometimes hates it, but his company, the 3rd Battalion of the 139th Infantry out of Crawfordsville, needs his energy.

The 30-year-old Moore is their executive officer, but he says he’s a “redleg,” or field artilleryman, by nature.

“I’m a platoon leader at heart,” Moore said. “It’s hard to get out of that mode and leave the guys in field artillery.”

He decided to become an officer after four years of non-commissioned service because, “I wanted to be the guy making decisions,” Moore said. “You’re still out there doing it, but you have more effect on troops.”

He appreciates the opportunities the military offers.

“On the civilian side I’m a paper pusher at the department of corrections,” he said. “But in the National Guard, I get to blow stuff up.”

Moore knew when he entered officer candidate school that deploying to the Middle East was a foregone conclusion. And he was eager to become a part of something bigger.

“It’s voluntary for most of these guys,” Moore said. “Your turn in the sand box. You do all this training back in the States, but it’s always preparation.”

Preparation time is just about over. Moore will be in charge of logistics for his company — making sure the vehicles are running, and that there’s food and water — necessities for a company running three or more missions a week in a war zone.

“We keep the company up on its feet,” he said. “It makes your head swim when you think about supporting a mission of this size.”

Back in Logansport are Moore’s wife, Christy; a 12-year-old son, Riley; and two-year-old daughter, Madison. He said his wife had taken his deployment “kind of hard.” It is the first time in their three-year marriage that he’s been away this long.

But “she’s very supportive of me,” Moore said. “She takes care of things at home, which allows me to focus over here.”

Of the top 10 things he misses, Moore lists:

1. His family.

2. Normalcy. Being able to wake up and and walk outside to mow the yard.

3. His friends. Stan Antonelli and Adam Morrow, guys he works out with at the Y.

4. Having a day off to do nothing.

5. Walking with his family through Sycamore, the local ice cream parlor.

6. Restoring houses, work he does on the side.

7. Being able to drive around town. “Being there all my life, it’s home.”

8. Going to work. The corrections atmosphere at Miami Correctional Facility.

9. The routines. “I guess that’s part of military coming out on the civilian side.”

10. “I miss some flexibility,” he said.

Moore misses all these things, but he wouldn’t alter his course if he could.

“The Guard changes the way you look at things,” he said. “When you go through training, you build that bond.”

This National Guard unit is special, he said, because it’s all Indiana guys. All the battalions that make up the 76th Indiana Brigade Combat Team are from Indiana.

“This is the first Guard brigade combat team from one state,” Moore said.

Other National Guard brigades have deployed, but they’ve been pulled together from several states, he said.

“Indiana has no problem raising the right hand,” Moore said, almost casually. “That’s why we have one of the largest National Guards in the nation.”

James Foley is a freelance journalist embedded with an Indiana National Guard unit deploying to Iraq. This is the second in a series of reports he’ll be filing.