Face of Defense: Mother, Son Prepare to Deploy to Kosovo Together

Face of Defence ^ | Spc. Lindsey M. Frazier, USA

[SandRat]

CAMP ATTERBURY, Ind., May 15, 2008 – Many mothers sit at home and wonder what their deployed son or daughter is doing, hoping everything is all right and waiting for the next phone call. Some might see a mother deploying with her son as a great thing, but what onlookers might not think about is what is left back home.

Army National Guard Spc. Roschell Eaton and her son, Spc. Jason Hutchins, both from 3175th Military Police Company, train at Camp Atterbury, Ind., for their upcoming deployment as part of Kosovo Force 10, Multinational Task Force East. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Lindsey Frazier  
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available.

Army National Guard Spc. Roschell Eaton of 3175th Military Police Company from Warrenton, Mo., knows this scenario all too well.

Eaton’s younger son, Devlin, a high school senior, is staying with his grandmother while she deploys with her elder son, Spc. Jason Hutchins, also an MP in the 3175th.

The mother-son National Guard duo from Troy, Mo., is in mobilization training here for their upcoming deployment as part of Kosovo Force 10, Multinational Task Force East. KFOR 10 is the 16th rotation in an ongoing peacekeeping operation to provide a safe and secure environment for all of Kosovo.

Eaton and her sons have never been apart; it has always been the three of them. She has raised the boys on her own since Jason was a toddler.

“We’re best friends,” Eaton said with a sigh. “But sometimes you have to leave the ones you love to do what you love.”

Eaton served eight years in the Navy before joining the Missouri Army National Guard. She began missing the camaraderie that she had in the military when she would watch Jason come home in his uniform, and in 2006, after a 12-year break from the military, she decided it was her time to get back in.

“While I was in advanced individual training, my mom called me and told me she joined the Guard,” Hutchins said. “She talked about joining, but I didn’t think she really would.”

In addition to being military police in the same company, mother and son were in the same platoon before the deployment started. And they’re not the only military members of their close-knit family. Devlin, the younger brother, joined the Army National Guard last year and completed basic training the summer before his senior year. He will continue on to AIT for military intelligence as soon as he graduates from high school this month.

“It’s really cool having my mom in my unit; it made us even closer than we were before,” Hutchins said. “The part that is hard is leaving my brother behind.”

The hard part, Eaton said, is that she won’t be home to be Mom. She said she has always been a mother first, but being a mother has to come second, since the Army is now first, she acknowledged.

As she expressed her pride in being a mother, she paused, turned her head to the side and looked away. Taking deep breaths was all she could do to keep the tears from falling. The moment hit her as she thought of not being there for the special moments in her younger son’s life.

“He graduates high school this year, and there’s prom,” she said softly. “I want to be there for the big things and the little things. Devlin says he understands. He said that I was there for his basic training graduation, and that meant more to him than anything.”

Eaton smiled as she regained her composure. With a big grin, she said, “My boys and me are a tight trio.”

Knowing both of her sons are safe, and not sitting on the couch wondering about them, is the best thing she could ask for, she said.

(Army Spc. Lindsey Frazier serves in public affairs at Camp Atterbury, Ind.)

[joan]

Do you do any more than cut and paste and regurgitate old anti-Serb propaganda.

There are documented photos of destroyed Serbian Orthodox churches - which were looted, burned and/or blown up under watch of KFOR (NATO's ground forces). Those who blew up the churches showed high degree of knowledge of explosives and obviously had large quantities of it.

This was all done during supposed "peace time" and not in the thick of the war.

During war churches and mosques were sometimes collateral damage, sometimes targeted because soldiers used them or stored supplies in them, sometimes the enemy army was hiding behind them - the last from a man who served with the Muslim army in Bosnia. He said they were better at destroying things than building things. He was hired by SFOR (NATO forces in Bosnia) to help them locate buried land mines, but he couldn't orient himself because so much of the landscape had changed during wars. He did say that they, forces for the Bosnian Muslim army, did sometimes destroy churches or their own mosques "if the enemy was behind them".

The Catholic churches in Serbia are entirely undamaged. Not even graffiti on them. There are Muslims within Serbia who've lived there during the wars and to this day. They and all the other ethnicities have freedom of movement and access to their homes, they weren't fired from their jobs in Serbia they way Serbs were mass fired by Croats and written out of the constitution, etc.

[GAB-1955]

But you made a mistake. You assumed I said the Serbs would surrender Kosovo. What I said is that the Serbs are not going to get it back. Kosovo and Serbia are going to be another Cyprus.

[FormerLib]

What I said is that the Serbs are not going to get it back.

Yes, and that is where you admitted you don't know squat about it.

Some folks just don't surrender as easily as you would.

[FormerLib]

joan, you forget that facts and reality only confuse Bonly-boy!

[Diocletian]

The Catholic churches in Serbia are entirely undamaged.

Joan, what about the Catholic Churches in Republika Srpska and in what was known as Republika Srpska Krajina? Oh that's right: the Serbs blew up every one of them.

Your dishonesty is a disgrace to all decent Serbs everywhere.

[joan]

I said Serbia not Republika Srpska. You are the dishonest, sneaky one.

Now stop posting to me. I wish to never read any post of yours to me again. You always aggravate, annoy and depress me and the last shreds of my tolerance for you dissolved since a year ago. I can't stand you, your style, your personality, nor your posts anymore. You are not a good person.

[Diocletian]

I said Serbia not Republika Srpska. You are the dishonest, sneaky one.

Please Joan, I've caught you using this dishonest tactic before and I've caught you yet again. You're trying to portray the Serbs as innocent angels who've never touched a church by omitting the actual war zones of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. What you're doing is not giving the full picture but are engaging in the sin of omission in order to paint a false picture of what actually happened.

Now stop posting to me. I wish to never read any post of yours to me again. You always aggravate, annoy and depress me and the last shreds of my tolerance for you dissolved since a year ago. I can't stand you, your style, your personality, nor your posts anymore. You are not a good person.

Of course I'm not a good person to you, since I point out your lies, your denials, your attempts to colour the facts, your propaganda, etc. I will continue to do so in the name of the truth because you've suckered too many people on this website for far too long. And lastly, you are an embarassment to decent Serbs everywhere, particularly Christian ones who know full well that lying is a sin.

[John Leland 1789]

We are praying that these “models” DON’T become the expected norm in military planning nor that people at the top start looking at this as a justification for drafting females, should conscription be re-activated.

[joan]

Of course I knew you couldn't honor a simple request. You could argue against my comments without directly posting to me.

You can't speak for Serbs. If they don't like my posts they can tell me themselves. Most don't feel like you do but only the Otpor/puppet-type Serbs working against their country or entirely unsympathetic to all the Serb refugees, concentration camp survivors, relatives of kidnapped Serbs, and so on.

And of course you always ping and are friendly with the common Serb-haters on here like Hoplite, Tailgunner Joe, old-and-crappy, etc.

Frankly I am not interested in Croats except that they leave Serbs alone. Don't like them/your personalities, ways, disposition - I mean nothing particularly inspiring or interesting about Croats to me - I just don't care about them. Many Serbs have a special magic in my eyes that you other Balkanites don't.

[Diocletian]

Of course I knew you couldn't honor a simple request.

Sorry, but I'm not gonna let your incessant propagandizing and lying go without being corrected for truth :)

[old-and-old]

Dio, don't take it personally. The Serbian Orthodox Church has called evangelicals a "Satanic Cult" and still asks for their help (by misleading them) when "evangelicals in Kosovo have far more legal protection than our brothers in Serbia proper." . Their Christianity is good only when it serves the Greater Serbia and there is no difference between the state and church in Serbia. Look what Montenegrin and Serbian priests said about each other when Montenegro was about to leave Serbia just as everyone did. Serbs and Montenegrins were /are one.

From BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/861500.stm

The final battle of Yugoslavia

Metropolitan Mihailo wants the Montenegrin Church to part from the Serbian Orthodox Church

Exclusive report from Phil Rees in Montenegro

This story will be shown on Saturday 5 August on BBC2 at 19:00 (BST)

Alongside Serbia, Montenegro is the only nation to remain in President Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia after Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia parted amid war. Last year, Montenegro's pro-Western leader, Milo Djukanovic, threatened to call a referendum on its independence from Serbia unless Milosevic changed his policy toward the smaller republic. Milosevic has refused to budge.

More than a decade of Milosevic's rule has resurrected Montenegrin nationalism, turning it into potent political force.

The Church has become a central symbol of this dispute over nationhood.

Priests are on the frontline of a religious battleground. "One of them told us, 'We will cut your throats. Almost every day there is one more case of our priests beaten up on the streets.'" Father Jovan, a Serbian Orthodox priest, was speaking to me on the balcony of Montenegro's ancient monastery in Cetinje, the former capital of this tiny Adriatic country. Jovan and his colleagues have become caught up in the battle for Montenegro's independence.

The 15th Century monastery is built into the hillside and overlooks Cetinje, a town of former palaces and embassies. Cetinje was the capital of Montenegro when it was an independent nation - a status it lost afte World War I. Under pressure from Serbia, it became part of a federation of Balkan nations. The Montenegrin Orthodox Church was incorporated within its Serbian counterpart.

Now, for the first time since 1920, the self-anointed inheritors of the old Montenegrin Church have conducted the liturgy. Their church is a converted suburban house, less than a mile from the Monastery. The archbishop, known in the Orthodox faith as a Metropolitan, is a tall man, with a long flowing white beard and dressed in a robe of black silk.

"In Russia, there isn't a Serbian Orthodox Church, but the Russian Orthodox Church, in Bulgaria there is Bulgarian one, in Romania a Romanian one," Metropolitan Mihailo told me. "I believe that God has now turned to Montenegro. I believe that the salvation of Montenegro is close."

Father Jovan shows the skull of a Turk killed in the 18th century by Serbs

In Montenegro, the Serbian Orthodox Church is the official faith, often Baptising children born in Montenegro into the Serbian nation. The head of the Serbian Church in Montenegro is Metropolitan Amfilohije, a short man with a dauntingly severe expression. He describes the Montenegrin Church as being a cult of atheists and has invoked a curse against his rival Metropolitan.

Politics and religion are closely entwined here, and each side uses a parallel version of history to support its case. Metropolitan Amfilohije denies that Montenegro exists as a separate nation, arguing that it was Serbs who found refuge in Montenegro's barren hills during medieval times: "There's plenty of evidence that from the time of the Slavic immigration to the Balkans, Serbs have lived here," he says. "This was a Serbian state, and has been since the Middle Ages onwards."

The re-emergence of the Serbian Church after half a century of Communist control in the 1980s was accompanied by the revival of Serb nationalism. The two appeared linked, and when Serb nationalism took on its violent expression in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia, the Church was slow and hesitant in criticising the savagery committed in the name of Serbia.

The rights and identity of the (Serbian) church are endangered again. Nobody has the right to do that. It's clear to everyone who knows the mentality of Montenegrins, of us here, that that could be a challenge for civil war

Metropolitan Amfilohije

Metrolpolitan Mihailo distributes a book entitled "The Crimes of Amfilohije". It portrays Amfilohije as a hardened Serb nationalist and includes accounts of meetings with indicted war criminals. A picture records a visit to Cetinje Monastery by a notorious paramilitary leader known as Arkan, who was wanted for war crimes until his recent murder.

Mihailo's makes a dramatic accusation: "Mr Amfilohije should be called to account at the Hague Tribunal. I think it should happen and it will happen. These people should be warned, because Mr Amfilohije wants to provoke the same crises in Montenegro as in former Yugoslavia.

Metropolitan Mihailo

Metropolitan Amfilohije laughs off such accusations, claiming that people are paid to attack him for political reasons. Amongst this welter of abuse, Amfilohije goes on to assert that a priest in the Metropolitan Church is a thief on the run from the police in Serbia, that other clergy have broken their vows and that another has "problems with women".

As the verbal exchanges have become more menacing, the anger has spilt onto the streets. Serbian priests have been assaulted and there have been brawls involving rival church groups. As a reprisal, the windows in Metropolitan Mihailo's car were smashed and bricks thrown at his vehicle.

He says he fears for his life: "There are more arms in the Monastery in Cetinje than in the town's police station. All the priests are armed," he warns darkly.

One of Cetinje's most vocal nationalists and a devout member of the Montenegrin church is Bobo Bogdanovic. "Priests from the Serbian Church in Cetinje are an academy for war criminals.

There are more arms in the Monastery in Cetinje than in the town's police station. All the priests are armed

Metropolitan Mihailo

They have genocidal intentions and don't belong to any religion," he exclaims.

Bogdanovic with his barrel chest and upright gait is regularly seen in the street-side cafes of Cetinje. He is known locally as the "general" because of his involvement in a local militia committed to fight for Montenegrin independence. He hates priests such as Jovan: "They are devils in human shape", he growls. "They have been made into instruments of Serbian politics. Those people are evil."

Father Jovan, who learnt English from British pop music in the 1980s, is softly spoken but was shaking with anger. "They accuse us of being war criminals. Where is their proof? Did I ever ask anyone to kill for me? In a normal country, these people would have been in jail a long time ago."

Jovan accuses Bobo Bogdanovic and his supporters of stirring up the trouble in the town. "These people are in fact anti-God. Their interest is to destroy the church. They are anti-God and anti-Christ. And that's the most terrible thing that the Orthodox faith has experienced in 2000 years of Christianity."

The key battle in the months to come will be over the control of Montenegro's more than 600 churches. Most places of worship are now administered by the Serbian Church, including the main Monastery in Cetinje.

Phil Rees examines the religious landscape in Montenegro

The Montenegrin Church is slowly aiming to take over abandoned churches and those in areas where the faithful are in favour of independence. Metropolitan Mihailo predicts that he and his priests will soon replace Amfilohije at Cetinje's Monastery.

Metropolitan Amfilohije is indignant. "Who can hand-over the property of someone else? That would be illegal, a form of stealing." The Metropolitan went on to issue an unsettling warning. "The rights and identity of the (Serbian) church are endangered again. Nobody has the right to do that. It's clear to everyone who knows the mentality of Montenegrins, of us here, that that could be a challenge for civil war."

The Final Battle of Yugoslavia, shown on Saturday 5 August 2000 on BBC2 at 19:00 (BST)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/861500.stm Of course Joan et al will be upset when one calls them up in their, let's say, non-truths. That however can be remedied if they didn't try to mislead freepers for nationalistic reasons.

[getoffmylawn]

I LOVE it when people say the Serbs will never get Kosovo back! It doesn't piss us off when we hear that. It just makes us more focused and more determined. Please keep repeating that to every Serb you meet. It's the best fuel for inat that I've ever come across.

Kosovo is Serbia :-)

[GAB-1955]

I don't doubt the determination. I doubt the means. So far, it seems to be a desire for the Serbian army to sweep over the province and expel all the Albanians, whether they lived in the province before the 1999 war or not. This won't work because the Kosovars will have a regular army with more anti-armor and anti-air, instead of a guerrilla force, so it wouldn't be a walkover.

There is also the issue of the 1949 protocols to the Geneva Conventions forbidding the mass expulsions of population. This is the issue which triggered the 1999 war and the legal basis for the NATO attack on Serbia.

I do think that peaceful means will work, if both Serbs and Albanians can get over mutual animosity. Kosovo is too small to be a nation, and too big to be a province. An economic union with closer transportation and energy ties would be a good entry. The steps must be mutual. Serbian property in Kosovo, including the Orthodox church properties, must be respected, and those who burned churches punished. Kosovo must be fully integrated into the Serbian energy grid. Language rights in schooling and work must be honored (though the language of government should be monolingual).

Furthermore, citizenship must transcend nationality. One could be a loyal citizen of Serbia+Kosovo without being a Serbian ethnically. That's the issue that has plagued former Yugoslavia in a nutshell. Maybe the country should never have been formed in the first place, but I can't go back and redo the collapse of Austria-Hungary (another state that foundered on ethnic intransigence).

Kosovo isn't Serbia as long as most of the inhabitants don't want to be Serbians. But, if the Kosovars have buy in, the province is restored, and Serbia becomes the example to follow in the Balkans rather than the state everyone tries to split from.

[getoffmylawn]

When the Serbs take back control of Kosovo, it won't be peaceful, and it'll probably be just one part of a larger war in the region.

Milosevic gave strict orders to the 3rd Army NOT to harm any Albanians that weren't harming Serbs in 1999. The atrocities committed by Serb forces were committed by the paramilitary forces that Milosevic turned a blind eye (his biggest war crime in my opinion).

When the next war breaks out, I'll betcha the "nice" Albanians in Kosovo won't get the same consideration. I'm not saying this is going to happen tomorrow, or the next day, but that day will come. As for now, the Serbs are doing a great job of disrupting any possibilities that Kosovo is going to come even close to representing a proper "nation". They can keep this up for years. The Serbs are a very patient peoples.

I'm guessing the wrongs of Kosovo will be righted in the next 75 to 150 years. Just look at how much the maps of the Balkans have shifted over the last 150 years. You don't really expect the current status quo to be anything close to permanent, do you?

[GAB-1955]

Absolutely not. However, before I die, I suspect Kosovo will resemble Cyprus, with a slow process of reconciliation.

I hear the Austrians are taking over KFOR command this month. Maybe they can be a good faith partner with Serbia and Kosovo, though I doubt the two nations are in the mood to talk right now.

Serbia is Serbia. Kosovo is Kosovo. The twain shall meet but not before I die.

[hutchinsSR]

I WAS THERE SHE HAS BEEN MARRIED 4-5 TIMES WHAT DO YOU EXPECT.THEY ARE GREAT BOYS ...