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Soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 214th Aviation Regiment, embraced their families and friends before getting on the bus to deploy.
A detachment from the helicopter medical evacuation unit, led by Capt. Michael Chase, will spend the next few months in Kuwait, supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
During the April 28 departure ceremony, Preslee Kautzmann, a toddler, played with a plush bear dressed in gray Army camouflage like the uniform her father, Chief Warrant Officer Colter Kautzmann, wears when piloting a Black Hawk helicopter. Her mom, Sara Kautzmann, maintained a smile during the ceremony. It was afterward, in the parking lot where families waved to the busload of troops, that emotions surfaced.
“This is deployment No. 1 for us,” Sara Kautzmann said. “It didn’t hit us until we saw him get on the bus and drive away. That’s when it kind of hits you, ‘He’s leaving.’”
When the national anthem played, Justine Aubrey and her three daughters covered their hearts. Raised in an Army family, Aubrey first saw her husband, Sgt. Daniel Bateson, deploy to Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne Division. Now he’s leaving for a shorter tour in Kuwait.
“Going through it as a child is a completely different dynamic,” Aubrey said. “I have a new found appreciation for what my mom went through.”
Activities offered by U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz’s directorate of Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation help families of deployed Soldiers, Aubrey said. Her daughters recently took part in a spring break camp and are looking forward to summer camps.
“MWR always has amazing opportunities that we’re afforded. I think they are even more important overseas, because we are so far away from our loved ones,” Aubrey said. “It’s great when you are trying to cope with not having your other parent here. It’s a wonderful, healthy outlet for them.”
Single Soldiers, like Sgt. Charles Milazzo, 27, a crew chief from Denver, have other concerns. When he last deployed to Afghanistan, a friend fed beer to his cactus.
“The plant is still around. We’ve passed it around the barracks,” Milazzo said. “One of my friends is watching the cactus while I go back out there.”
This is likely Company C’s last deployment from Landstuhl, as the unit is slated to move to Grafenwöhr in the coming year, said the company commander, Maj. Jesse Delgado.
Army medical evacuation helicopters have flown from the hilltop behind Landstuhl since 1952, Delgado said.
Company C’s lineage dates back to 1968 in Vietnam. In 1989, the unit moved to Landstuhl as the 236th Medical Company (Air Ambulance), deploying to Southwest Asia for Operation Desert Storm and Bosnia for Operation Joint Endeavor. They also supported disaster relief operations in Europe. In 2004 and 2007, the unit served in Iraq.
The 236th furled its colors, and the unit became Company C, 1-214th Aviation Regiment. Two years ago the unit’s Soldiers deployed to Afghanistan.
“In the European theater and this side of the world, this unit has been in every major operation,” Delgado said. “This is the culminating event.”
