The combined United States (US) military forces conduct Innovative Readiness Training (IRT) exercises within the United States and in many of our partner countries, such as Belize. These are purple or combined services exercises and take Air Force, Army, Marine, and Navy Reservists into austere environments to provide construction, engineering, medical, and veterinary services to underserved communities. The exercises serve to strengthen the relationships between host nation governments and the US, strengthen the relationships between host nation governments and their own people, and prepare our uniform service personnel to operate far from the comfort, conveniences, and resources routinely available to them within the US. As is often said, we aren’t in Kansas, anymore. Furthermore, the planning and logistic steps necessary to execute a finite IRT mission, no more than one month in length in a partner country, are no different than those to plan and execute a mission a year or more in length in a deployed environment.
During the 2014 Operation members of our services worked in cooperation with members of the Belizean Defense Force (BDG) and US military civil engineers to construct five schools and one medical facility. In addition, multi-service dentists, nurses, optometrists, nurse practitioners, physicians, and physician assistants provided medical services at no charge to underserved communities. Finally, my veterinary team which included Army Reserve veterinary technicians, SGT David Arbiso and SPC Megan Ladesh, and I worked with Belizean Provincial Public Health officers, including Dr. Joe Myers, Belize Agricultural Health Authority veterinarian, to administer anti-parasite medications, vaccines, and vitamins to livestock and domestic dogs, including the administering rabies vaccines to dogs in an area where some dogs are rabid, and in the event of a human exposure, treatment may not be available. Other goals of our mission were to provide training for Belizean veterinary technicians and to boost meat production by decreasing the incidence of disease and parasitism in livestock. Our efforts were centered in northern Belize, adjacent to Mexico, through a corridor used by narco-terrorists as they move illegal narcotics northward. We were based in the small city of Corozal and operated farther south than Orange Walk. The general population greatly appreciated our contributions.
We worked on a lot of backyard pigs during this mission. If you haven’t been around pigs and have never done anything they objected to, the volume of their complaints is unimaginable. Regardless of age and size, if you do anything slightly painful or inconvenient to them, they squeal loud enough to raise the dead! After the first day, SPC Ladesh had enough pig squeals to last a lifetime. As SGT Arbiso, Dr. Meyers and his team continued on pig patrol, SPC Ladesh remained in the truck cab…. with the windows closed, although it was very hot and humid! Pigs also have big teeth and will eat anything and everything. You didn’t hear it from me, but if you ever need to dispose of a body, feed it to pigs. They also have rock, solid bodies that make The Rock look like a jellyfish. Pigs are forces to be reckoned with.
SGT Arbiso, Dr. Meyers, and me became the primary porkologists. The pigs were housed in rickety, shaded, wooden pens. The pen floors was composed of 12 to 18” of pig poop. Our feet sunk as if we were walking in shallow, odiferous quicksand.
The most exciting part of the exercise occurred while we were injecting vaccine and vitamins in a pen containing a few fifty-pound pigs. Mr. Butch, a very cranky 350-pound pig was their neighbor. It was unclear if they were related, but Mr. Butch objected to SGT Arbiso’s immunization of the smaller pigs. As SGT Arbiso quickly worked, Mr. Butch quickly dismantled the fence between the pens. It was a race that SGT Arbiso won. We do know how to have fun, no matter where we go.
I have two more SPC Ladesh stories and a comment. The first story occurred when we discovered Dr. Meyers was a Jedi Master. We were examining chickens that lived at one of the village households. Dr. Meyers picked a big rooster up, turned him on his back, and lulled him to sleep! The rooster stayed on the ground until Dr. Meyers woke him up. As we walked to our truck, one of the civil affairs soldiers that accompanied us yelled at us that a fer de lance, one of the most poisonous snakes in Central America was in the yard, slithering towards a hole. SPC Ladesh jumped up into the back of our truck. SGT Arbiso and I ran towards the snake. We wanted to see it up close! We heard SPC Ladesh shout, “You’re running towards the snake?”
The second SPC Ladesh story. Just so you don’t get the wrong idea, she was a tough trooper, a good soldier for which I have nothing but respect. SPC Ladesh had an ingrown big toenail and the Forward Surgical Team (FST) that accompanied us on the mission heard about it. I was with her when the FST surgeon had her remove her boot. He prepped her big toe, inserted an 18-gauge needle all the way to the bone and infused lidocaine, moving the needle around. She didn’t even flinch! After waiting a few minutes for the lidocaine to take effect, the surgeon cut off and removed half of her big toenail, all the way back to its base and from under the medial cuticle. He applied a bandage and as she limped off, the mission Commander told her to take the day off. A few minutes later as we walked through town to treat animals, SPC Ladesh showed up at our side. It was very hot, very humid, she was very painful, but she was on point and ready to go.
I have admiration for both of my soldiers. SPC Ladesh won a Purple Heart in Iraq during a mortar attack. She didn’t have to be in Iraq. She volunteered to be in the Army during a time of war. Just before SGT Arbiso and I boarded an aircraft for our final flight to Kotzebue, Alaska to participate in an IRT called Arctic Care 2013 he received a call that his wife was in labor in a Los Angeles hospital. She was having twins. I confided this to our Mission Commander, a Captain in the United States Navy. He asked me if SGT Arbiso wanted to return to Los Angeles. I asked SGT Arbiso if he would like to return home. He replied that he and his wife placed the mission first. She and the twins were in good hands. Both Soldiers illustrate the caliber of the Soldiers I had the pleasure to serve with for ten years. I would take any of my Soldiers anywhere on Earth they were needed. Of course, if the mission involved Porky Pig’s relatives, I would leave SPC Ladesh behind.
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