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FORT DRUM, N.Y. - Third Battalion, 142nd Aviation Regiment is headquartered in upstate New York, with companies located throughout the state, as well as detachments in Maine and Connecticut. It isn’t often these units get the opportunity to train as a collective team, but this August they met for an annual training event that combined knowledge sharing, new experiences, and cohesive team building for all of the soldiers involved.
For two weeks in July, the Regiment came together at Fort Drum, New York. There, they worked with units in the 10th Mountain Division to move both personnel and equipment, by aircraft, to and from different training sites, as well as working with the military police and canine handlers to familiarize themselves with different types of passengers, and missions.
“The 142nd battalion is headquartered in New York,” explained Staff Sgt. Tom Thibodeau, who is stationed in Bangor, Maine. “All of A company and B company is in New York, with B Company divided between Albany and Long Island. The majority of D Company is based out of New York, with a small part in Maine, which is our aircraft maintenance piece. E Company which is responsible for refueling and vehicle maintenance, based out of New York. And then us, we are a detachment of C Company; the other half of our company is based out of New York. So, when you get all of us, together, we are the 142nd Battalion.”
Thibodeau, who works fulltime for the Maine Army National Guard as the standardization officer for C Company, 142nd Aviation Regiment, said that being so spread out, can be a challenge.
“It does make everything challenging, but the guys come together and integrate every year or every two years, and that is good because you get to see the faces of the people you are talking with and emailing about training,” he said. “But even then, we only get a slice of each company. The coordination is good when you can get together, and we have a fully functioning aviation team here, but there are still downfalls. One is that we only get a slice of the equipment too, it’s divided. As are the promotion slots.”
When they met in July, it was a chance for soldiers such as Sgt. Josh Duffy, a UH60 Maintainer with the Maine detachment of D Company, to work with other aircraft mechanics in the 142nd.
“I was able to see how they plan their workloads, and how they work together. It was nice to do inspections with them, and some major maintenance work while the aircraft was down. We were able to do downed aircraft recovery missions, with a scenario, a map and a location and we would have to fix an aircraft in the field.”
Duffy, who lives in Waterville, said that it was a good opportunity to learn from each other. “We discussed some of the issues they were having with their aircraft, and the issues we were having. It was a good chance to work with our counterparts. You work differently around different people, the guys back here; we work together 24 days a month.”
Sgt 1st Class Scott Chadbourne, a full time crew chief, and drill weekend platoon sergeant for D Company, agreed with the collaboration he saw between the different states and companies. There were times that the Maine soldiers were afforded the opportunity to get some high quality training in the field and other times where Maine soldiers were able to share some of the knowledge they have, because so many of them do it on a full time basis.
Thibodeau, who lives in Glenburn, said that not only did they sharpen critical skills that everyone needs to have, but he felt as though they validated their own worth. He said that the detachments in Maine spend so much time trying to understand the larger battalion’s standard operating procedures and be in accordance with those, that they were worried to integrate with everyone else.
“We are not in New York, or Connecticut, we are up here, to the far north, we are fully detached from everyone else. So, there was a fear of, like going to go see Mom and Dad, you want them to be proud of you, so we knew we needed to be on our best game, and our diligence and hard work paid off. We showed them that we aren’t guys just sitting off to the sides on drill weekends, we are full time, and fully capable of doing our job to standard.”
Duffy agreed, he said that some of the other soldiers he was working with didn’t even know that they had a detachment in Maine.
“I think we were really given a chance to shine. We were all nervous that we haven’t been doing it the best that we could be, but in this collective training, we realized that we were all able to shine, as Maine units typically do.”
Besides integrating with their counterparts from other states and getting qualified at the aerial gunnery range, the soldiers were able to strengthen their own teams. Chadbourne said that the aviation community in general is close knit because of all the time they spend flying and doing maintenance work together.
“We know each other; we know each other’s spouses and children. We know where they are in their lives, school, sports, and birthdays. We have closeness, when we are on that aircraft, we all just want to take off safely and land safely. So, yes, we have a close bond, and it carries over to the ground.”
Thibodeau said that those connections are often tested during annual trainings. When you don’t get the chance to go home and have dinner and unwind with your family. Long days on the flight line are one thing, but learning to count on one another as coworkers and people can test those bonds.
“We have to take direction or give direction as it’s appropriate during the day. But then we get back to our rooms, and you learn that you can count on them as people for their friendship; you learn who your friends are, who you can count on, and you is going to go the extra mile to help you out when you need it. I think that’s one of the things I learned with my crew chiefs. We all work together every day, but we all go home at night. When we were all together for these two weeks, we found that we are a much tighter group of people that I think we would have ever give ourselves credit for.”
| Date Taken: | 08.22.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 08.29.2014 14:11 |
| Story ID: | 140820 |
| Location: | FORT DRUM, NY, US |
| Web Views: | 65 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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