Troy Brown serviced Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters while on duty in Iraq. (Courtesy photo)

    By Carolyn Lee
    The Imperial Republican
     Troy Brown was busy "outprocessing" Monday, finishing up paperwork after serving the Army National Guard in Iraq for a year. The son of Jim and Vicky Brown of Champion is a sergeant with Delta Company 2nd of the 135th General Support Aviator Battalion out of Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado.
     Then he was headed to the Imperial, area, to work, to renew acquaintances, and to spend time in a less hostile environment.
     Brown, 40, was activated March 17, 2006. After spending five months at Fort Hood, Texas, he deployed to Camp Anaconda near Balod in Iraq.
     His specialty is avionics, or working with the electrical components of Chinook and UH60 Blackhawk helicopters. He was a technical supervisor, insuring that the work was done properly, the parts-such as radios, radar and survival gear-were good, training mechanics and taking the occasional test flight.
     About once a month Brown would crew a flight mission "outside the wire," or camp. "We never took a direct hit, but there was always something, bullets, flying around," he explained.
     One of the aircraft he serviced was shot down and two others were hit, but made it back to base. The helicopters were delivering cargo and troops for major assaults and hauling captives back to base.
     Many soldiers are returning from Iraq with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS). Brown said, "In our jobs we weren't really directly face to face with it. In my opinion, 99.9 percent of my batalliion are not going to be sufferers."
     However, his base experienced seven to 11 mortar attacks per week, and sometimes several per day. Some of his friends, still in Iraq, are facing IEDs, or Incendiary Explosive Devises. Those range anywhere from dynamite to bombs made out of about anything, littering the roads.
     "I'm thankful that's not part of our job," the soldier remarked.
     This wasn't Brown's first deployment. He joined the National Guard Dec. 28, 1988, "as a patriotic deal. I liked the lifestyle." Brown also said he wanted to serve his country.
     He has taken "vacations," as he puts it, to Bosnia, Egypt and Germany, to name a few countries.
     Brown has been in the National Guard for just over 18 years. He's thinking of transferring to a unit in Minnesota that is returning to Iraq this spring.
     Why would anyone want to go back? Brown said he would like to stay in the Guard until he's served 25 years. "Hopefully, by then Congress will allow us to retire like active duty people" with benefits, he stated.
     Until his future becomes more defined, though, he'll return to help his parents farm. He has also worked at Artistic Woodworking in the past, and was a civilian technician working on helicopters for the Nebraska National Guard in Lincoln for eight years.