A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Anthony Fruge shook his head when asked about the imminent birth of his son Brett.

“Just thinking about it leaves me speechless,” Fruge said.

His son is due the first week of January — the same time Fruge, a 21-year-old National Guard specialist from Addis, is scheduled to head off for training before deploying to Iraq for a year.

He is one of 3,000 soldiers preparing to deploy with the Louisiana Army National Guard’s 256th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. It is the single largest National Guard deployment in the state and the second time the brigade has gone to Iraq.

The 256th, based in Lafayette, first went to Iraq in 2004. Twenty-two of the brigade’s soldiers were killed during that tour of duty, said Staff Sgt. Denis Ricou, a Guard spokesman.

The unit returned in September 2005 during the turmoil of Hurricane Katrina’s immediate aftermath.
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Fruge’s wife, Sandi, is scheduled to deliver the couple’s baby by Caesarean section Jan. 8 — which is when the unit is scheduled to leave for Camp Shelby.

“I would really like to be there when he’s born,” Anthony Fruge said. “Whether I’m there or not, it’s going to be really hard knowing I have a baby at home.”

What weighs most on the soldier’s mind is whether the baby will know his father in January 2011, when the deployment ends.

“It’s kind of hard thinking that my baby is probably not going to know who I am when I come home,” said Fruge, a combat engineer who helps keep routes clear, including looking for roadside bombs.

The deployment to Iraq comes less than a year after Fruge returned from a stint in Afghanistan with another Guard unit.

Col. Jonathan Ball, commander of the 256th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, said it’s rarely easy for a National Guard soldier — a citizen soldier — to deploy to war.

Indeed, it's not easy for a citizen soldier to deploy to war, and Anthony has not even been home for a year. He's going to Iraq which never planned or launched an attack, terrorist or otherwise, on the US.

No matter how many pictures of Daddy that Sandi shows the boy, when the soldier returns home, his year-old son may take a while to warm up to his dad.

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Story from the Advocate.