The flags are in — Ryan Redman is home. The Army National Guardsman returned from Iraq earlier this month — safe and sound, much to the delight of his parents, Clarksville-area residents Ken and Donna.
“He’s home for good,” his mother declared. “It’s wonderful.”
These proud parents have been flying their American flags ever since Redman mobilized, in early June 2004. For every month their son would be away, they planted one good-sized flag along the driveway. As Redman worked his way through his stint on active duty, every month they moved one flag closer to the house.
Approximately 18 months later, and just shy of 365 days since Redman deployed to Iraq, all the flags were back inside, and he was home.
Around this time last year, this 1998 Indian River High School grad was training in Kuwait, preparing to embark on a three-day drive, in convoy, through Baghdad and onward to Tikrit.
He recalled his training at Fort Dix, which took place prior to his climbing aboard a chartered passenger plane with his fellow 150th Army National Guardsmen, six months earlier. While Redman had already been through basic training (he served two years in the Army, right out of high school), he said they picked up some extras at Fort Dix.
“They focus on training based on information they’d collected from the units that’d already been to Iraq,” Redman pointed out. “Things they thought would be most useful, based on the different situations they’d seen.”
Things like first aid and land navigation. How to drive “on convoy,” and what to do if someone spotted something out of the ordinary — what hand signals to use if they were ever shot at, what signals to use if they spotted something that might be an improvised explosive device (IED).
Basically, “safety first,” just for situations considerably more dangerous than most Americans would ever encounter.
Redman said his convoy arrived at Forward Operation Base (FOB) Speicher without incident.
He would serve in aviation support, as a flight operations specialist. He described some of the nuts and bolts — assembling packets of standard maps, getting the night-vision gear together for the pilots about to head out on their missions.
He and colleagues worked to maintain radio contact, track the helicopters that were ferrying soldiers to doctors and generals to meetings, Redman explained.
For the most part, operations went smoothly — there was one helicopter crash, he said, but they were still investigating that incident when he left, so he said he’d never learned what caused it.
He pulled guard duty in the towers surrounding the base, but said he hadn’t gone wandering in the city. Having served in the regular Army prior to joining the National Guard, Redman said he’d gotten along with the soldiers, and heard reports from them occasionally.
They sometimes went out and gave toys to the children — Redman said they’d reported a mixed response, with some families very gracious and others preferring to keep their children away from the soldiers.
On base, he said morale was good. Like anywhere, some people were glum — particularly if they’d been pulled away from young children back at home. However, Redman said they’d established a good sense of teamwork prior to deployment, during training at Fort Dix, and that camaraderie tended to help keep spirits up.
Toward the end, they trained their replacements — guardsmen out of Fort Campbell (Kentucky). Not long afterward, they were cycling homeward again.
Redman said the transition back wasn’t all that tough, for him. He was used to moving from place to place, so this was just one more move — back to Delaware. Both parents served in the Army, as had his sister, his brother-in-law and both grandfathers.
Redman was born in Panama and raised everywhere from Colorado to Pennsylvania to Germany. He remembered his time overseas especially, playing on the “only American soccer team in Germany,” against the locals and teams from France and Holland.
His father retired after 22 years in military service and the family moved to their Frankford address in 1994 (just in time for high school).
Redman said his parents had never pressured him to join the military. He’d simply decided he wasn’t ready for college, and signed up for a tour in the Army on his own initiative.
“I definitely think it was good decision,” Redman said. “I was able to mature a lot, learn to be a little more responsible about the everyday things in life — how to manage work and all the additional things, too.”
He joined the National Guard after three years stationed in Hawaii as an ammunition specialist. He opted for the National Guard’s helicopter unit in Wilmington, closer to the University of Delaware, and was able to earn his bachelor’s degree in business administration on the Montgomery G.I. Bill.
Redman said his term of active duty with the Army would be up in another month or so — he didn’t expect they’d call him up. He’ll go back to his regular National Guard schedule now (one weekend a month, two weeks every summer), and said he was looking forward to his first forays into the world of private enterprise.