Kurry Hixson wants his 20-year-old daughter to remember his advice as she deploys with the Georgia National Guard to Afghanistan. He told her: Remember your training. Keep your head on a swivel. And avoid complacency because it can kill.
Hixson served with the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq before he retired from the Guard this year, so he knows what to expect. And that’s why he is worried about Brittany. This is the Winder-Barrow High School graduate’s first deployment.
Brittany Hixson is among nearly 150 soldiers from the Toccoa-based 876th Engineer Company who are heading to Afghanistan in July for a nine-month deployment. They are expected to be the last Georgia Army National Guard unit to deploy to — and to return from — Afghanistan as the U.S. military draws down its forces there.
In a Rose Garden speech this week, President Barack Obama announced he will pull all combat troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016 after more than a decade of fighting there. About 22,000 troops are expected to come home by the end of this year, leaving a much smaller force to train Afghan troops and fight terrorists. By the end of 2016, the U.S. military will shrink to a “normal embassy presence” in Kabul.
Hixson was feeling a mixture of nervousness and pride Thursday as she prepared to march into a send-off ceremony at the Georgia Baptist Conference Center in Toccoa. She is at least the fourth generation of her family to serve in the military. Her grandfather was killed in Vietnam. And her great-grandfather served during the Korean War.
“I always wanted to do this,” she said before joining fellow soldiers on a stage in front of their families. “It’s good to fulfill what my forefathers have done.”
Her unit is scheduled to depart Friday for training at Fort Bliss in Texas before heading to Afghanistan in July. Consisting of carpenters, electricians, masons and plumbers, the 876th will be based in the Kabul area and will train Afghanistan’s security forces on engineering skills.
Maj. Gen. Jim Butterworth, the Georgia National Guard’s adjutant general, was among the military leaders who addressed the troops Thursday before praying with them for their safety. He turned to the soldiers assembled on the stage and said: “Good morning.”
“Hooah!” they responded in unison.
“I believe they are ready,” Butterworth deadpanned, eliciting laughter from the audience.
More than 200 other troops with the Georgia National Guard are now in Afghanistan, including some with the 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team and others with a Georgia-based Chinook detachment. As of the end of fiscal 2013, 4,857 Georgia Army National Guard members have served in Afghanistan since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Eleven Georgia National Guard members have died there.
For good luck, Brittany’s father gave her the handmade desert camouflage rifle cover he carried with him on his deployments with the 48th Brigade. She had it tucked in her pocket at Thursday’s ceremony.
“Lord, yes, I worry about her every day,” Kurry Hixson said of his daughter. “But I try not to let on that I worry about her.”
As a child, Brittany Hixson was outspoken and driven, not letting anything get in the way of her goals, her father said. He proudly recalled how she participated with distinction in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps and on her high school basketball team. He sees a lot of him in her, including patriotism.
Kurry Hixson recently helped his daughter move out of her apartment in Athens and store her furniture and clothes. He also took in her cat, Simba.
She is serving as a plumber with her unit but has dreams of coming back from Afghanistan and studying criminal justice in college. She wants to become a police officer and eventually start a family.
Brittany Hixson asked her parents to stay away from Thursday’s ceremony in Toccoa. She didn’t want to see them and get emotional. Her father understood. He said he asked his mother to do the same thing when he deployed to Iraq for his first time.
“Her whole state was that she is going to make it,” he said of his daughter. “And she has made it. She has made it.”
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