Moorhead

Fire Dept

111 12th St N

Moorhead MN  56560

(218) 299-5432

Guard soldiers relieved to be back on U.S. soil

Andrea Domaskin, The Forum
Published Monday, July 16, 2007

NOTE: Rich Eggert is a Lieutenant from Moorhead Fire, currently on Active Military Duty

VOLK FIELD AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, WIS. – Toting laptops, pillows and military rifles, the first large group of soldiers from Moorhead-area Minnesota National Guard units stepped off a plane here Sunday evening after 16 months of combat in Iraq. 

“It’s green and it’s beautiful,” said Sgt. Mitch Hellkamp, who lives with his wife and son in Coon Rapids, Minn., but is part of a Moorhead-based military company.

He paused, appearing to work to maintain his composure. “It’s kind of tough,” said Hellkamp. “It’s finally over.”
More than 2,600 Minnesota National Guard members – including several hundred from this area – left home nearly two years ago for training at Camp Shelby, Miss., and then Iraq. 

In all, the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 34th Infantry Division spent 16 months in combat. That’s the longest consecutively any military unit has spent in this war, National Guard officials say. 

Now the guard members are arriving by the planeload at Volk Field, near Tomah, Wis. They demobilize at nearby Fort McCoy before rejoining the civilian world. 

Moorhead-based B Company of the 34th Brigade Troops Battalion arrived last week. A handful of the soldiers who deployed with that company live in and near Fargo-Moorhead; they’re expected to arrive in Moorhead today.

Sunday afternoon’s planeload included members of the 2nd Combined Arms Battalion of the 136th Infantry. About 35 were from Moorhead- and Fergus Falls-based Headquarters and Headquarters Company, said Hellcamp, who is of that unit. 

Other members will arrive later.

Another 125 members of the battalion’s Detroit Lakes- and Bemidji-based A Company also were on the plane, said the company commander, Capt. Adam Gilbertson. Many are from the Fargo-Moorhead area, he said.

“It really hasn’t hit me yet,” said Sgt. Jamison Marshall, a Fargo man and member of Company A. “I’m still with everybody. It really hasn’t hit me that I’m here.”

Their flight was delayed for hours by mechanical problems in Kuwait. The soldiers got on and off the same plane three times, said Gilbertson of Moorhead. At one point, the Guard members were told their arrival would be bumped back 24 hours.

They arrived sooner, touching down in a white charter DC-10 at about 5:40 p.m. A line of Guard officials waited outside the airplane as they filed out of the plane. Later, Maj. Gen. Rick Erlandson, commander of the 34th Infantry Division, addressed the soldiers.

The soldiers carried laptop cases and neck pillows. Most carried a military rifle off the plane, which they turned in at a nearby hangar.

One soldier, Staff Sgt. Dane Ronning of Fargo carried his lucky blue camping chair. He had carried it for months and was now going to take it home, he explained while waiting in line to return his weapon. 

Ronning, a Fargo police officer, said he can’t wait to get home to his wife. “I don’t even have words,” he said.
The soldiers’ months in combat showed. Some showed visible reactions to loud booms in the distance.

“You expect peace and quiet. It makes you look around at what’s going on,” said Staff Sgt. Aeisso Schrage, of East Grand Forks, Minn., who served in A Company with his brother, Marten Schrage, also of East Grand Forks.

Spc. Jason Dodge, whose parents live in Fargo but who will return to Bowman, N.D., to be with his wife, Tressa, said he still can’t believe he’s in the U.S.

He and Tressa have a 3 1/2-year-old daughter, Cheyenne. When Cheyenne was born, he was in Germany, training to go to Bosnia with the Minnesota Guard. He didn’t see her until she was 8 months old.
Now he missed nearly two more years of his daughter’s life.

“She probably won’t know who I am,” Dodge said.

He said his time with the Guard is up. He wants to re-build his welding business and raise his family.
“I’ve got too much to do,” Dodge said.

Readers can reach Forum reporter Andrea Domaskin at 701-241-5556

Last modified: August 02, 2007