Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Mary Junell | North Carolina Army National Guard Pfc. Alicia Howard, assigned to 2-130 Airfield...... read more read more
Subscribe
My two young boys were still asleep when I slipped out of the house Monday morning on my first day supporting the COVID-19 response in North Carolina. I had forgotten that my drive to the office would be quicker with fewer cars on the road.
I set my alarm a little later the next day and my sons, ages three and almost two, were awake before I got dressed.
When my oldest saw me lacing up my boots, he realized I was leaving.
The boys had gotten used to mommy working from home. Even if I was in the other room, I was still nearby, sitting with them for lunch, putting them down for naps, and kissing the many bumps and bruises that come with two brothers always wanting the same toy.
“Momma don’t go,” he said as he tried to pull my boot out of my hand. “Momma stay here with me.”
My younger son doesn’t have the full vocabulary to express himself yet, but he knew what was happening and began crying.
The term essential worker has been used a lot lately, and I guess that is technically what I am now. All across the country scenes like me leaving my boys are being played out in the homes of grocery store employees, nurses, food delivery workers, and many other people whose place of employment was deemed essential and able to stay open.
As my husband stands on our front stoop holding our boys as they wave and yell “bye-bye momma,” I start to worry about them, but I’m a Soldier. This is what I do. This is what all Soldiers do.
I am one of more than 900 Soldiers and Airmen in the North Carolina National Guard who have been activated to support North Carolina’s response to COVID-19; starting March 10th when N.C. Emergency Management stood up the emergency operations center, Guardsmen have been supporting them, Health and Human Services, and emergency and health officials across the state.
The largest portion of the Guardsmen are supporting the logistics side of the response efforts, working in warehouses, delivering masks and gloves, and recently, assisting with food distribution.
“We are helping with warehouses that are ordering and receiving personal protective equipment for hospitals and local health preparedness coalitions,” said Col. Wes Morrison, Chief of Staff, NCNG, and Joint Task Force Commander for the COVID-19 response.
He said there are engineers doing assessments for potential alternate care sites if they are needed, medical professionals who are assisting Health and Human Services, and program managers in working groups with N.C. Emergency Management.
Recently I saw some of the activated Guardsmen, a group with the 42nd Civil Support Team, supporting a drive-thru and walk-up COVID-19 testing site.
I will likely see all of them eventually, or at least visit their locations; it’s part of my job.
I’m part of a small team whose mission it is to document what the Soldiers and Airmen are doing and get that information out to the public. We have been traveling around North Carolina, anywhere Guardsmen are supporting the COVID-19 response.
Many N.C. Guardsmen have been on State Active Duty before, myself included, but this time feels different, it’s not like the hurricanes or winter storms we are typically activated for.
“It’s not typical in regards to the threat, which is an unseen, very little known virus, that we don’t have a lot of data on,” said Morrison. “A hurricane is usually a short-lived event except for the aftermath. This, we really don’t know how long this is going to last or the precautions we’ve got to take with the entire workforce, or the kind of force packages that we have to apply to the problem.”
A force package is how the N.C. Guard organizes its response to hurricanes and other events, but most of them are for things like food and water distribution, or search and rescue teams, but this pandemic has created a new set of problems.
“For COVID-19 we’re having to look at things like alternate care medical site that we’ve not talked about standing up before, so that’s a new force package that we might create for our units,” Morrison said.
Less than a week later, there was a team preparing an alternate care site.
As I walk into The North Carolina National Guard’s Joint Force Headquarters I am asked a series of questions by a woman wearing gloves, a mask, and holding a thermometer, the kind that doesn’t need to touch you to get a reading. Her shirt has a N.C. Emergency Management logo on it.
Security measures like these have been implemented all across N.C.
If you answer all the questions correctly and don’t have a fever, you get a colored dot placed on your ID badge. This started before I started working from home so I knew the drill before getting to the building to support the COVID-19 response, but it still makes me nervous.
I lean forward so the woman can take my temperature and it feels like forever before she says “you’re good” and gives me my dot. You would think I would already know if I had a fever, but I’m worried anyway.
I’m lucky that I don’t need to physically come in contact with the public to do my job, but I still worry about bringing the coronavirus to my boys and husband. At the end of the day I come home, take off my uniform, and wash my hands before hugging my boys, something many of the Guardsmen are not able to do.
There are North Carolina Guardsmen who are missing out time with newborn babies, missing their college graduations, and spending their evenings in a hotel room, far from their families. Although many of them admit it's hard, it’s also what they signed up for.
Pfc. Sean Sprague, assigned to the 1450th Transportation Company, was helping distribute medical supplies to long-term care facilities when he told me that the hardest part of being activated was being away from home and the people he cares about, but that it was also fulfilling to be able to help people.
“I’m the one whose supposed to be doing it,” said Sprague, who is on his first state mission with the N.C. Guard. “It’s my job. Someone has to do it, why not me. It just really makes me feel a sense of purpose to know I’m helping.”
Sprague is not alone. I ask every Soldier or Airmen I interview what it is that makes Guardsmen step up to answer the call when everyone else is staying home and their answers are almost always the same.
Their answers, in so many words: It’s what we signed up for, to help our communities in their times of need.
The future is still undetermined. In North Carolina, Phase 1 of reopening the state started on the evening of May 8th. No one is sure when things will go back to normal, or what is likely to be a new kind of normal.
But one thing is for certain. The Citizen-Soldiers of the North Carolina National Guard are not only willing but eager to answer the call.
| Date Taken: | 05.22.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 05.22.2020 12:28 |
| Story ID: | 370655 |
| Location: | RALEIGH, NC, US |
| Web Views: | 167 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Supporting the COVID-19 response in NC, by SFC Mary Junell, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
LEAVE A COMMENT