Cantrell prepares for 2nd deployment to Middle East
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“I didn’t figure they’d need the 278th and all those tanks,” Cantrell said.
He was wrong.
“Like everyone else, I don’t want to go, but we can’t just pull out of Iraq. We have to see this through,” he said. “When you sign on that dotted line, it’s always a possibility you’ll go.”
Cantrell, a McMinnville resident, is a section sergeant with the Monteagle-based 190th Engineering Company, Detachment 1. He and his detachment will depart June 29 for Camp Shelby, Miss., where they will join the rest of the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment for training before deployment to Iraq later this year. McMinnville’s National Guard unit is also part of the 278th.
Unlike many of his comrades, this will not be Cantrell’s first trip to the Mideast. A 25-year veteran of the Monteagle unit, he participated in Operation Desert Storm. During that operation he helped build and maintain supply routes, but he said he has no idea what he might be doing this time around.
Asked if his prior experience in Iraq has helped prepare him for what to expect, he said no.
“I might be more adjusted to the weather, but that’s about it,” he said. “It’s going to be completely different. Last time we didn’t have suicide bombers and terrorist attacks. We had control then. Now, we have a lot more to worry about.”
His family will be worrying too, though having experienced his deployment before, they know a little bit more of what to expect. Cantrell said it will be easiest on his two older children, Nathan, 20, and Nicholas, 16, who both remember his absence in the early ’90s. It will be hardest, he expects, on his daughter Erica, 7, who has no experience with such events.
“It will still be rough on all of them, but Cyndi (his wife) has a good head on her shoulders and knows how to take care of things,” he said.
He added he will especially miss being a part of his family members’ lives for up to two years, missing the formative years of his daughter, particularly, and his younger son’s final years in high school, as well as seeing him play football for the Pioneers.
An employee of McMinnville Work Holding, Cantrell said he won’t have any problems adjusting to active duty given the serious nature of what he and his fellow soldiers will soon be up against.
“We’re going to take this training at Camp Shelby very seriously because it’s life or death over there. Our usual annual training we don’t take as seriously as we will what we receive over the next few months,” he said.