Quick Decision to Deploy

So it came on pretty sudden. Most workup training for deployment could be from about a year to a year and a half long before they would actually get the opportunity to land on the ground overseas. Myself I was actually in the Arctic training up there. There was a directive came down from the Prime Minister’s office saying we will deploy this piece of kit by September 1, 2008. So in a matter of like six months I went from the Arctic down to New Mexico training and deployed and hit the ground running so what I was doing we took what we called the Scan Eagle, a small UAV. And I was an operator/mission commander so we provided anything and everything you could think of to the commander over there for situation awareness, for Intel. We focused on providing over watch for troops on the ground. We cleared routes. We would track the bad guys. I would work with several different countries. I worked with the Brits, the Americans, obviously the Canadians and a few others. Very rewarding as a soldier’s point of view from that job over there. Luckily I never lost anybody. We were only a small troop. There was only fourteen of us on the ground. But, you know, being that eye in the sky it came with seeing a lot of mayhem and, you know, a lot of things you think you supress over a period of time but then as time goes by every once in a while there’s something that maybe jogs that memory.