Reservists spent nearly 11 months serving in Africa
BUTLER TWP — Sgt. Paul Smith, of Clarion, was most looking forward to spending time with his family, he said, standing in the chilly air outside the U.S. Army Reserve site on Evans City Road.
He, along with the other members of the 377th Engineer Company, had just returned home Thursday after a roughly 11-month deployment to Djibouti, where, Capt.
Katerina Graf said, they completed 26 projects at seven sites in three countries.The company began its journey from home just after Christmas, and spent time training in Texas before its deployment to the Horn of Africa. Graf said they were engaged in work and volunteering while in Djibouti, but that doesn't mean the company or their families were anything but joyful upon return.“It's been hard. Real hard,” Smith's mother, Penny, said. “He's been in (the Reserves) for 30 years,” but it doesn't really get easier.
Unlike when the company left, COVID-19 restrictions didn't prohibit them from immediately meeting up with their family members. Parents, siblings and children milled around, meeting the other members of their loved one's troop and having photos taken with their recently returned family members.While the manner in which loved ones saw the company changed, the chilly air certainly felt like last year's late-December farewell.
But, said 1st Sgt. Jeremy Young, it was a change for the company, who'd been in the tropical desert of the Horn of Africa for months.While in and around Djibouti, Young said, members of the company had — in addition to the 26 projects completed — volunteered countless hours helping rebuild an orphanage. Young said some members amassed more than 300 hours of volunteer time there, spending a few hours on weekday nights or some time on the weekends.“Some of us couldn't help it,” he said.He added that while some people have a mental image of Africa as some homogenous continent of barren desert, it's “really beautiful,” with welcoming people.
Those volunteer projects — plus volunteering with the Reserves in the first place — was enough of a reason for the company members' parents, friends and family to celebrate them.“He's been gone since Christmas, been gone for 11 months,” said Phillip Shaffer of his son, Trevor. “It's hard not to be proud of these guys.”From the perspective of a company member, work kept them busy. The feeling of finishing those projects in the Horn was good, said Damien Nowicki, even if many missed home.“It wasn't too bad for me,” he said. “Some people had it a bit rougher, but overall morale was high.”And no matter how much volunteer effort Nowicki put in, or how proud of him his family is, one thing doesn't change: Brotherly love.“It was blissful,” Nowicki's brother, Darien, said while joking about their nearly 11 months apart.
