Truth Be Told – Holidazed Edition Bill Yingst: Christmas a world away from home

By LeAnn R. Ralph

COLFAX —  Colfax resident William C. Yingst Jr. is the district administrator for the Colfax school district.

During the “Truth Be Told — Holidazed Edition” event at the Colfax Municipal Building auditorium December 3, Yingst told the following story about serving in the United States Army in Afghanistan and being away from home for 15 months.

The Truth Be Told event drew nearly 150 people to the Colfax Municipal Building auditorium.

Steve Russell and Kobi Shaw were hosts for the event, which was sponsored by the Colfax Municipal Building Restoration Group.

All together, four people told stories. In addition to Yingst, Pam Arntson, Missy Prince and Gene Gibson also told stories about Christmas.

Yingst is originally from Arkansas, Wisconsin, and is in his 26th year in the Colfax school district. He became district administrator in 2011. Yingst and his wife, Sarah, have three daughters.

Here is Bill Yingst’s story:

I was in the U.S. Army as an Army Reservist. The backdrop begins in the spring of 2003. I received a call from the U.S. Government. I thought I had won the lottery because they said, “Congratulations, you have won an all-expense paid trip to Afghanistan!” Well, that’s not exactly how that went.

Anyway, I got the call that we were going to be deployed and that in the months to come, we would have a mobilization briefing. My unit is headquartered in St. Cloud, Minnesota, but I had units in Mankato, St. Cloud, Brainerd and Duluth. We had slots for 545 soldiers. But the war had gone on for a couple of years prior to that, so we had some slots we had to fill. They have a term called “cross leveling.” The units that went before us weren’t full, so they took some of our soldiers. By the time we got the call, a bunch of our people had been taken, so we had to get more soldiers.

We had a lot of soldiers from Minnesota, and a lot of soldiers from Wisconsin went with us. I was in units in both Wisconsin and Minnesota, so I knew a lot of these soldiers. I was a Battalion Sergeant Major so I had a hand in selecting a lot of those soldiers and sergeants who were going to help make our mission successful in Afghanistan.

February ‘04

As the time went on from the spring of 2003, we were finally deployed in February of 2004. At that point, I was deployed to Fort McCoy. At that time, my daughters, Allison, Hannah and McKenna were ages 3, 5 and 8. I try to look at the silver lining in everything, and I thought, well, at least my kids are little and they won’t fully understand what’s going on with this whole thing.

Some people who were deployed had older kids and had a pretty tough time with it. I don’t know what my girls fully remember. I know they remember a little bit of it. Sarah came up with the M&M idea. She had a jar she filled with M&Ms with an M&M for each day I would be gone. So each day, one of the girls got to take an M&M out and eat it.

I have a sneaking suspicion the jar had to be refilled a few times throughout that deployment because they dipped into it once in a while. I don’t know how many days I was deployed according to M&Ms but it was 15 months total.

Afghanistan

In early April, we flew out for Afghanistan. It was myself, Colonel Anderson, my lieutenant commander, and my operations officer, and we were trying to get over to Afghanistan before the other 542 soldiers showed up and try to make sure housing and everything was in order.

We made it as far as Frankfurt, Germany, and got to Rhein-Main Air Base right next to Frankfurt International. Frankfurt is not the worst place to be stuck. We were stuck there for five days. You wouldn’t think it would be that hard to get to the war, but there weren’t flights going out at your beck and call whenever you wanted to go.

One thing I learned in the Army, the Air Force runs the show. If the planes are not flying, you are not really going anywhere.

We’d get up every day and check with the airport to see if we could get a flight, and there was this funny gal from the Air Force, and we said, are there any flights to Bagram, Afghanistan? And she’d say,  “Yup there’s one to Balad.” I looked at her and said, “Ma’am, Balad is in Iraq.” “Yup, there’s one going there.” This happened three days in a row. I was getting a little nervous about where I was actually going to end up.

We did get to Afghanistan, the battalion commander and I. We were the first to get into our area. And we were the last two to leave when we left.

The way the story went, once we got to Afghanistan, and getting to the topic tonight of being deployed and the holidays, a lot of things ring true. I was digging through my footlocker the other day, and I was going through some books and notes, and I kept a diary and journal. I don’t think my memory is getting any better, so I’m glad I did that. And looking through a few days, dates started to jump out at me. One was Thanksgiving. That’s when our holiday season began. Once we were in Afghanistan, the first few months, it’s pretty new and everyone is trying to figure out what’s going on, but by the time the holidays roll around, it gets to be a lot tougher time.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was the first real taste we had of that where people are starting to think about home and family and being there. We try to make it as normal as possible. One thing the military is pretty good at is getting you the traditional meal, the turkey and the dressing and all the fixings. As senior leadership, we served the meal, and all the soldiers there at the base, when they came through, I think they appreciate it. We try to make it as much as possible like a normal Thanksgiving dinner.

One thing you have to remember when soldiers are deployed and we have a holiday back here in the states, there’s always someone on duty. All  around this globe, around the world, in the military, soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, there is always someone on duty 24 hours/7 around this globe. You might not always think about that, but I challenge you to think about it when Christmas rolls around. There’s always someone away from their families.

USO tour

We got into the holiday season, and as things were moving along, you could tell people, all of a sudden you could sense an edgy feeling, people were a little less tolerant and were thinking about home.

I remember we got to December 23, 2004, and the USO tour was coming around. Have you ever heard of Darryl Worley, the country music singer, and Mark Wills? Well, they were on the USO tour. The backdrop is, we’re in Bagram, Afghanistan, and Bagram is at about 5,000 feet of elevation. The Hindu Kush mountains surround Bagram. It’s a huge valley. These mountains are like the Rocky Mountains with the snow-capped peaks. They surround the entire valley. Bagram, Afghanistan, was an old Russian air base. The Russians were there from 1979 to 1989. It was one of their bases where they had a lot of battles.

The old Russian aircraft hangar had no doors on one side. They made a makeshift stage. It was rainy and cold that day. And Darryl Worley is singing the song, “Have You Forgotten.” This is part of the Sergeant Major of the Army’s Hope and Freedom Tour. Darryl Worley is singing, “Have You Forgotten” and it was an emotional moment. The song is about 911 and the Twin Towers coming down. Here we are, and the exact reason we are in Afghanistan is because that happened. And he is singing the song. It was emotional. I don’t think there was a soldier there who didn’t have tears in their eyes that day.

To take it a step forward with the USO tour. They were away from their families. This is the 23rd of December, and you aren’t just going to jump on a plane and be home in a couple of hours. Afghanistan is 9 ½ time zones away. There’s actually a half time zone in Afghanistan. These people think enough of us to go on tour during the holidays when they could be sitting at home, safe and sound, with their families. There are no guarantees when you are flying around Afghanistan and in that part of the world. Planes crash. They are shot down. There are a lot of things that can happen.

Christmas Eve

The next day, December 24, this was a big relief — the Packers played the Vikings. It was a great distraction for my soldiers.

Having a lot of soldiers from Wisconsin and Minnesota, there was a lot of banter back and forth. Some had dug out Packer jerseys and Viking jerseys. There were a lot of Viking fans in that group. The Packers luckily won that day. It was a great distractor. It was Christmas Eve. Good timing.

Because of the time zone difference, the game went on well into the night. There were about 70 soldiers, including myself, who stayed up and watched the game. Everyone else went to bed. But as I said earlier, someone is on duty all of the time. So in my company there were buildings around the base, there were young soldiers sitting there, manning the phones and the radios, just in case something happened. You have to remember we were in a combat zone, and the enemy knows what our holidays are as well, and attacks can happen at any given time.

I really didn’t feel like sleeping much at that point, so I think to myself, I’m going to go around and talk to these young soldiers on duty. I went from office to office for a couple of hours and sat down and visited. How are things at home? Some about where they were from. How are they doing? Did they need anything? It was kind of interesting. They said they’d never seen anybody of my rank come around in the middle of the night before.

I stayed up that night. I got some breakfast. I remember going to a church service. I came home and slept. Then the senior leadership all served the dinner to the soldiers that night for Christmas dinner.

I could go on and on, but my wife told me to be quiet after a few minutes. I do want to leave you with this.

December 7

I have to rewind back to December 7. It was the 63rd anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Vice President Cheney was visiting Bagram, Afghanistan, that day. We were there when they had the first free presidential election in their history, and Hamid Karzai was elected. Vice President Cheney was the most senior U.S. Official to ever travel to Afghanistan, and he was there for the inauguration.

He flew into Bagram and had dinner with a lot of my soldiers. We sent about 12 soldiers to the meal. One of my soldiers received a purple heart from Vice President Cheney for combat action where he was injured.

On the same day, with these historical events taking place, I talked to the battalion commander, and I said we need go around and meet with our companies, all four companies on the base, and have a holiday message for them. So we did. We met with each company. They had a formation. The colonel, myself and the chaplain. We met with every company and said a few words.

And I remember what my message was. The first thing I always talked about was safety. The second thing I talked about was keeping our combat focus. Complacency is always one of our biggest enemies in a combat zone, especially around the holidays, and when complacency sets in, that’s when things start to go wrong. And thirdly, and maybe most important, I said to the soldiers that day, we can all sit around and feel sorry for ourselves and have a rough day and sulk, or we can embrace this. It is what it is.

And this is the message I gave to my soldiers.

“It’s our turn to be on duty this year. Every year in our lives when we’re at home, safe and sound with our families at Christmas, Thanksgiving and all the holidays, there’s been other soldiers and sailors, airmen and marines on duty, all around this world, every single year, for the last 200 plus years this country has been in existence.”

And with that, I went on to say, “it is our turn to be on duty this year. We are the ones who will provide the security for our families, for our friends, so that everyone back in the United States can have a safe and happy Christmas, a happy holiday season, and enjoy the freedoms that are provided.”

I got a lot of comments afterwards, and I wasn’t really expecting that. But the soldiers bought into it. They really felt this is what we had to do. And it seemed to make the holiday season go a little bit smoother.

And I will leave you with this. It was a quote I had gotten that was on one of the care packages we were sent, and it said, back in the day, it was written on a box of C Rations in the Vietnam War.

“Those that choose to fight for it, life has a special flavor the protected will never know.”

“Those that choose to fight for it, life has a special flavor the protected will never know.”

So with that, I wish you a happy holiday season. And remember, we have soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines on duty around this globe for this country, 24/7, 365.

Happy Holidays.