Virginia National Guardsman passes 35 years of military service

Photo By Master Sgt. Brock Jones | 1st Sgt. Robert Smolar, Headquarters Support Company, 29th Infantry Division, cleans his weapon following a qualification range his company held at Udairi Range, Kuwait, December 2022.  

VA, UNITED STATES

03.03.2022

Courtesy Story

Task Force Spartan

During the current deployment of Maryland and Virginia National Guardsmen to the Central Command area of responsibility for Operation Spartan Shield, a unique individual milestone occurred for one of the 29th Infantry Division’s most seasoned Soldiers: 1st Sgt. Robert B. Smolar, Headquarters Support Company, 29th Inf. Div., turned 60 years old and reached 35 years of military service.

Smolar was born in 1962 in Deming, New Mexico. His military career began as a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute, class of 1984. He served in two U.S. Army Reserve training divisions as a drill sergeant. His service then took him to the National Guard where he served in infantry units of four different states: Virginia, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania. In December 2021, during his most recent deployment to Kuwait, he passed 35 years of total military service, including seven deployments, five of which have been with the National Guard and two with the Corps of Engineers.

According to Smolar, he’s been part of many firsts in his career: He was a member of the first National Guard infantry company called up since Vietnam with Charlie Company, 3-116th Infantry, 29th (Light) Division, Virginia Army National Guard, deployed to Bosnia in 1997 to 1998. He was a member of the first National Guard Infantry battalion called up since Korea with Charlie Co., 1-293rd Inf. Bn., 76th Enhanced Bridge, Indiana National Guard, deployed to Iraq. He was part of the largest Illinois National Guard call up since World War II with 1-178th Inf. Bn., 33rd Inf. Brigade Combat Team, when they deployed to Afghanistan.

“1st Sgt. Smolar is a dedicated Soldier,” said Staff Sgt.Marc Heston, 29th Inf. Div. public affairs operations noncommissioned officer. “He demonstrates what a senior NCO should be.”

During his military career, Smolar said he has witnessed firsthand the “gradual shift” of the Army Reserves from a “strategic to an operational reserve, heralded as one the greatest changes to the Army at large in the twenty-first century.”

His civilian career has been equally extensive. In October 2021 he achieved 35 years of civilian federal service as a civil engineer, currently with Army Installation Command’s Directorate of Public Works (DPW) at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in the Chief Engineering and Construction Division. Over his three decades in civil service, Smolar has worked with seven separate federal agencies, the Federal Highway Administration being his favorite where he worked as a construction operations supervisor, he said.

One key event of personal and historical significance for him came when he was able to attend the 50th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, France, and toured WWII battlefields with 29th Inf. Div. veterans through the 29th ID Association, of which he’s been a member for over 18 years.

As a young boy, Smolar said he was interested in military history and counts himself fortunate that he's had many brushes with people who have lived that history through the years. He had the opportunity to meet veterans from various U.S. wars and from other countries through his grandparents, including the last surviving member of Pershing’s Expedition in 1916 to Mexico. He lived next to a Lithuanian family in East Chicago, Indiana, who served in the Imperial Russian Cavalry under the last tsar of Russia. Smolar said he personally knew an Austro-Hungarian World War I veteran who spent four years in the trenches. He had the opportunity to meet one of the last surviving veterans of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, three survivors of Auschwitz, and was personal friends of Polish veterans who survived the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, as well as with a Marine Korean War veteran who fought in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.

These encounters with military history had an impact on Smolar, he said, creating in him an interest in the military since he was a young boy when his mother first pointed out to him a veteran from the Spanish American War, and being raised around WWI, WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam veterans by his grandparents, who were part of the first generation of Americans from Slovakia. During his military training, Smolar said he was privileged to receive experienced guidance and mentorship from veterans of multiple wars.

Smolar is proud of his family military heritage, which runs on his father’s side back to the Austro-Hungarian Army, and on his mother’s side to relatives who served in a Virginia Regiment in the Continental Army during the American Revolution and Civil War. As a small boy, Smolar’s uncle, a first sergeant in the Texas National Guard who served as a combat engineer in Patton’s Third Army during WWII, gave him a German battle flag that he’d personally captured in France in 1944. Smolar said he’s currently making arrangements to donate the flag to the Texas National Guard Museum along with his uncle’s service records.

Presently, Smolar is at work writing a book about leadership, pulling from secular and Christian historical sources, as well as his own experiences and those of his extended family. He’s also researching a relative for his family who was in a Slovak unit in the Austrian Hungarian Army in WWI who was captured in 1916 during the Brusilov Offensive in Eastern Ukraine and then sent to Siberia as a prisoner of war. He managed to successfully walk back home to Slovakia sometime after Russia had withdrawn from the war, and then immigrated to the U.S. 

• Date Taken: 03.03.2022
• Date Posted: 03.03.2022 04:25
• Story ID: 415670
• Location: VA, US