The first face of the war in Afghanistan belongs to a 2-year-old beauty from the York County town of Clover, named Dakota Seaford. It is a face of new teeth and a smile that shines.
“Daddy,” she said Saturday, as she snuggled next to her father during a departure ceremony at the American Legion post in Rock Hill. She smiled and ate.
Spc. Scott Seaford wore an Army uniform. He is a National Guardsman from the Fort Mill unit, and he is going to Afghanistan. Again. Seaford tried to smile, but he succeeded it seemed only when his daughter and wife were next to him. His face is the second face of the war in Afghanistan.
When Dakota was born in June 2007, her father was not at the hospital. He was standing on the back of a Humvee, strapped in with an assault rifle and machine gun, in Afghanistan.
And now he is going back.
“First time he saw her was home on leave at Christmas,” said Anita Seaford, the wife of Scott Seaford. Her face is the third face of Afghanistan, a war that has faces of soldiers, children and spouses.
Anita Seaford tried to smile Saturday, too. The ceremony honored the 105 men and women of the 1222nd Engineer Company, who will leave this week for training before they head to Afghanistan in early 2010.
The Family Readiness Group — the spouses and mothers and children of soldiers — held a hamburger and hot dog lunch Saturday. They heard a few words from dignitaries during a brief ceremony with the soldiers standing in formation.
At the tables around the soldiers were the most worried faces of war. Solemn. Downcast. The children and wives and mommas and daddies ate their hot dogs with slaw and mustard and looked down at hands clasped in prayer that these soldiers would come home again.
The war in Afghanistan is not like in 2007-2008, when many of these men were deployed there the last time. It is not like Iraq, where in 2003-2004 the unit served so capably and well. The worst casualties of these wars have come in the past few months, right where these 105 soldiers are going soon.
The soldiers are combat engineers. They specialize in getting rid of bombs. Plenty of bombs in Afghanistan.
“This time is harder, the situation is worse over there,” said Kelly Stewart White, whose husband, Mark, is deploying for the second time in less than three years. “It seems like they just got home.”
In this unit are some soldiers with two previous deployments, one, or none. For all, it is brutal.
But still, they go. That is what soldiers do. They get their orders and they leave their jobs, college, wives, children and everything else, and they hope to come home alive.
“They say go, I go,” said a sergeant named Russell Kirkland who has already been in Iraq and now heads to Afghanistan. His 1-year-old son, Walker, played on the table as his father stood at attention.
Russell Kirkland is 22 years old.
At a big table was a big bunch of people gathered for Justin Outlaw. Mom and stepdad, dad and stepmom. Spc. Justin Outlaw already is a combat veteran from Afghanistan in the 2007-2008 deployment. He left that time when he was all of 18 years old.
He came back and met a pretty girl named Corissa. They are a couple. She is 18 now herself. Justin Outlaw, combat veteran off to round two in Afghanistan, where the worst violence of the war continues, is just 21.
His proud family sat around that table in assorted states of nervousness. Every sad face said without words, “War.”
At another table was Sgt. Blake Klinefelter of Fort Mill. A bunch of his family was there. He is 26 and has been married to Mary Beth for all of three weeks. He, too, will be making his second trip to Afghanistan after being home just 18 months from the last time he left Mary Beth.
Spc. Travis McCoy is heading to his first war. He is 23 and leaves behind 9-month-old Travis Jr.
“Yes, I am nervous,” McCoy said of going to war.
Some in the unit are already at training and couldn't attend on Saturday. Spc. Michael Semko, 22, of Rock Hill, is one of them. But his mother, Eve Hawthorne, was there Saturday in his place. Soon, Semko will head to Afghanistan for the second time.
“With what is going on over there in Afghanistan, this time is definitely harder,” Hawthorne said. “I am strong in my faith, though.”
Then Hawthorne said something that doubtless every wife, every child, every parent, will say a million times: “I pray to God he will come back home from that war to me.”
During that ceremony, in the middle of one of the brief speeches, a sound pierced the air. It was not gunfire in Afghanistan. It was not bombs.
The sound was a baby crying. It wasn't a cry of hunger. It wasn't the cry of a wet diaper.
It sounded like a cry from inside ever person in the American Legion hall Saturday. A family and community cry of worry, desperation and fear.
Andrew Dys 803-329-4065
adys@heraldonline.com
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