...The battalion commander, Lt. Colonel Christopher Riga, confirms the danger. Without emotion he explains “most of our deployments and most of the operations that we execute are very high risk. Everyday our soldiers are in harm’s way. They are at the tip of the spear and executing operations that are extremely dangerous and complex.” The battalion’s A teams typically travel out to remote locations and often live with the populace – in the villages – conducting possible combat missions and also trying to gather intelligence and information.
Twenty nine year old Captain Aaron Baty is an A-team leader whose dad was in a Special Forces unit for 22 years. Following in his father’s footsteps, Baty was commissioned as an officer in 2003 and was itching to get assigned to a unit that would deploy in the aftermath of September 11th. This husband and father of three is deploying for the third time. When asked about what he is giving up when he deploys, he does not explain that he might miss out his young daughter’s first steps or first words. “You could potentially be giving up everything when you deploy. You always make that plan for when I get back what will I do but in reality you don't know if you're coming back... You give up the possibility of seeing your kids graduate high school and walking your daughters down the aisle, waiting for my son to stop being a seven year old boy and start being a man that I can do things with”...
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