Senior Master Sergeant Hamp Lee was there with family and friends to welcome them back from Afghanistan. Lee was the First Sergeant of the 17th Security Police Squadron at Goodfellow AFB when these 11 security police, who just returned today at Mathis Field, were deployed.
“Supporting these guys and gals when they’re deployed is in many ways what my job’s all about,” Lee said.
“Our job on the home front is to make sure our deployed member’s family is taken care of so that the troop in the field can concentrate on doing their job,” he said. Help with childcare, making sure that the paychecks are paid on time, and a variety of basic services are built in to the U.S. Air Force system. First sergeants are the front line of that system to support all enlisted personnel, especially when they are deployed.
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Taking care of the home front can mean handling smaller things, too. For this deployment, Lee said that one of the wives had a broken lawnmower. Lee found someone to fix it.
Reuniting his new family was one airman who had not seen his newborn child ever. “His wife just separated from the military and spent time with her family to have the baby while he was away,” Lee explained.
Frequent deployments to the Afghanistan theater of operations are soon to be a thing of the past, Lee said. At least he hopes so. But, Lee reminds us, the U.S. Air Force is a global organization and anyone can be deployed on a moment’s notice.
The returning airmen had been deployed for six months.
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