Across the country Veterans Day is a day to honor the brave men and women of America for their service in the armed forces.
Hartwell economic and community development director Jason Ford is one of those brave individuals who has served and on Nov. 11, he wants people who have not served to “engage” with veterans on a personal level.
“It’s certainly important to remember. That’s a big part of it,” Ford said. “But I would like to see us — to be honest with you — I would like to see us getting away from saying ‘thank you for your service.’
“I mean, that’s important, and it’s an important recognition, but I think it’s important to sit down with folks and ask them questions.”
Ford believes real interpersonal engagement could be what a veteran needs more than anything.
“There’s veterans and there’s certainly folks that won’t talk about their experiences, but just having a conversation with them, even if it’s not necessarily about that, that’s a big opportunity that we have to just engage veterans and just talk to them about their experience,” he said. “They have a lot to offer communities and I think it’s important to hear those voices.”
Ford joined the Georgia Army National Guard in 2004 and was trained as a medic for the 48th infantry brigade where he experienced aiding the injured during Hurricane Katrina and the battle zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I was in Iraq from October 2005 into the following year, the middle of the year of 2006,” Ford said. “And then after that I came home and did the normal National Guard things but then we went to Afghanistan in 2009. So in 2009 and 2010, I was in Afghanistan.”
Ford recounted his first combat experience when an improvised explosive device went off near his convoy and destroyed two 18-wheelers and severely wounded two soldiers.
“I got to participate in lots of combat action,” Ford said. “So I was in an infantry unit, and in Iraq we did convoy security, and my first mission, I had been in the country for four days. January 4, 2006, there was an IED and casualties and there was some fire that was kind of associated with that.”
During a firefight that ensued from the explosion, Ford treated and stabilized the two soldiers who had “life-threatening wounds” until they were evacuated for further treatment.
“I have a combat medic badge; that’s kind of the equivalent to the combat infantry badge. It’s the award that recognizes treating patients while under fire,” Ford said. “I’ve seen gunshot wounds, amputations, shrapnel wounds. I’ve kind of seen all of the things that you would think about in combat.”
There’s plenty of care a medic provides outside of combat. Routine medical care has its place as well.
“H1-N1 broke out in Afghanistan, and we had to quarantine people and give vaccines, and we kind of had to deal with that, and it came out to our remote post that we were on,” he said. “That was kind of an interesting aspect to something that you didn’t necessarily think that you would do while deployed.”
Ford was not limited to treating solely American troops in the field.
“The mission of the American military is to treat everyone the same regardless of who they are,” Ford said. “I treated third country nationals, I’ve treated Afghan soldiers, Afghan police, and in Iraq, I actually didn’t have to treat any U.S. soldiers but I treated a lot of third country nationals, so Iraq was a little interesting because the U.S. government hired contractors, so it wasn’t necessarily just folks who were from Iraq.”
Ford, now an influential member of the Hartwell community, still feels like he’s an adjustment period at times.
“It’s almost been around a decade now. You feel like you’re still in transition, there’s never really — it never completely leaves you,” Ford said. “The thing I care about the most as a veteran are the folks I served with. You never forget those folks.
“It’s the most important piece of it. The camaraderie that exists, you certainly miss that, and that has been the biggest challenge, as far as transitioning back to the civilian world, because you’re still missing your friends.”