New York native Staff Sgt. Vanessa Parrish, assistant supply chief for 2nd Marine Division (Forward), holds a photo of her with her husband and son. Parrish’s husband, Staff Sgt. Timothy Parrish, is also a deployed Marine, and their son stays with her sister. Parrish said communication with her son is the key to keeping their relationship strong. Photo by Cpl. Jeff Drew

Her family arrived in the United States from San Cristobal in the Dominican Republic more than 28 years ago. She grew up as the second youngest in a family of eight children. Her mother, with four children, married her step-father, also with four children, and they lived as a modern-day Brady Bunch. They loved having large Dominican meals and dancing. It was never a dull moment in their three-bedroom New York City apartment.

“It was loud; it was fun; there were always a lot of people around – you could never be bored,” said Staff Sgt. Vanessa Parrish, the assistant supply chief for 2nd Marine Division (Forward). “Every holiday is always a lot of fun; any excuse to have a party — birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever – we’re always trying to have fun.”

The resilient bond Parrish built with her family at a young age endures, providing strength to her as a Marine currently deployed to Afghanistan. Parrish, the mother of a four-year-old, knows well the sacrifice of giving up priceless time with loved ones to serve her country.

“The hardest part of deployment is being away from your family,” said Parrish. “Not being able to be with my son is very hard. As a mother you want to spend every second with your child, but I had to leave him with one of my sisters.”

Being a deployed mother and having to leave her son is difficult, but another challenge she faces daily is the fact her husband, Staff Sgt. Timothy Parrish, is also deployed to Afghanistan as a supply chief with 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment. Parrish explained that in the case of a dual-military household such as hers, communication is the key when keeping in touch with family back in the United States.

“You have to send constant e-mails – because of the time difference you can’t just always pick up the phone, and sometimes the lines don’t work,” said Parrish, a 2000 A. Philip Randolph High School graduate. “My husband is with (an infantry unit) and out in the battle space, so whenever he gets a chance to communicate, he sends an e-mail to let the family know everything is alright. It can be just a one-liner, just to let them know. It doesn’t seem like much, but it means a lot.”

Parrish said she knows being absent for those big moments in a child’s life, like the first day of school, is important, but may be difficult for deployed service members to be a part of. For the moments she can’t be there, Parrish has her sister e-mail pictures.

Parrish said, “It doesn’t matter (what it is); it can be pictures of him playing in the park or going to the carnival. I’d like to see him every day, but I can’t so I ask for a picture every week, and it doesn’t seem like I’m missing as much.”

She displays the photos near her desk and in her room as a way of keeping her family near.

Parrish’ situation as a dual-military household is not unique among military members, but it is also not overly common in the Marine Corps. The Marines she works with said they appreciate the challenges Parrish faces and are very supportive.

“I’ve never had a Marine work under me (who was part of) a dual-military family,” said Baltimore native Gunnery Sgt. Bryan J. Alberts, the supply chief for 2nd Marine Division (Forward). “Being a parent myself, it’s hard (being away) from my civilian wife, but being dual military must be really hard, especially with both of them deployed. I think she deals with it very well. She’s very patient; I see pictures and they communicate all the time.”

Parrish is nearly two-thirds of the way through a year-long deployment, and although she must be away from her son, she is thankful for all the opportunities and benefits the Marine Corps has provided her family.

“I’d like to stay in the Marine Corps,” said Parrish. “I’ve met a lot of wonderful people, and I’m hoping to make a career out of it and retire at 20 or 30 years.”

Story by Cpl. Jeff Drew
DVIDS

The Devil Dog Derby Dames roller derby league played its quarterly bout at the gymnasium here Sept. 24 to keep their competitive edge.

The league, which was created a year ago, is made up of status of forces agreement personnel and service members, and boasts two teams, the Machine Gun Mollies and the Blitzkrieg Betties.

The league has a month-long training evolution, called the “dog pound,” where participants learn proper sportsmanship and the safety rules of roller derby.

“The dog pound lasts about a month and trains the girls in roller derby,” said Alisa Helin, a skater for the Blitzkrieg Betties. “It starts with the basics of how to roller skate and teaches players the rules of the sport.”

Roller derby is a contact sport, so the rules must be followed or players can easily be hurt.

“We wear protective gear from head to toe,” said Erica Kelcinski, the assistant captain of the Blitzkrieg Betties. “We wear a helmet, mouth piece, elbow pads, gloves and knee pads to help prevent injuries.”

In addition to the protective gear, there are strict rules regarding good sportsmanship that keep the competitors playing fair.

“It’s a very aggressive sport,” said Nikki Hacker, the main pivot for the Machine Gun Mollies. “You can’t push opponents with your hands; you can only use your hips and shoulders, and it must come from the front.”

There are three different types of skaters, and all are identified by their helmets.

There is a jammer, who is identified by a star on her helmet. This player scores points by completing laps around the track. There are three blockers who form a wall, so the opposing team is unable to pass through. The pivot, identified by a stripe down the center of her helmet, clears the path for the jammer to get through the pack of blockers.

Even though the sport is naturally aggressive, the members of the league still operate as a family-oriented team.

“What happens on the rink stays on the rink,” said Hacker. “We are all very aggressive and competitive, but after the jams, we all hang out. It’s almost like a sisterhood.”

A “jam” is the term roller derby uses instead of game.

The newly established league plays every three months, using the off months in between to recover.

“(The derby) is a new concept on island,” said Kelcinski. “We are always looking for more girls to come out and join the team.”

For more information on the Devil Dog Derby Dames, visit devildogderbydames.com or look for the team on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Devil-Dog-Derby-Dames/158946617476048

Story by Lance Cpl. Alyssa Hoffacker
DVIDS

“She’s aggressive and compassionate, she doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and if she runs into a roadblock she finds a way around it,” said Herndon, Va., native Petty Officer 1st Class Richard Martinez, the leading petty officer with 2nd Marine Division (Forward) surgeon’s office. “She takes very good care of her subordinates [and] tries to keep us laughing.”

Lima, Ohio, native Petty Officer 2nd Class Jesse Waterfield, a corpsman with 2nd Marine Division (Forward), knows the seriousness and importance of her job. She is responsible not only for the welfare of the junior sailors within her care, but also for tracking all Marines and sailors in Southwest Afghanistan who are involved in blasts and those who have sustained concussions throughout her year-long deployment.

“If you suffer a concussion, then your brain needs to take a time-out in order to heal itself,” said 33-year-old Martinez. “If we catch a Marine who’s had a concussion early enough and we prevent him from getting further concussions, then we can help him get back to the fight. If we don’t, then that minor traumatic brain injury could turn into a full TBI, and that’s when you see the memory loss, amnesia and anger issues.”

During the summer months, an increase in insurgent activity and improvised explosive device placement leads to a higher rate of concussions. Waterfield tracked several hundred service members involved in blasts in June alone, of which a relatively small percentage had concussions. She is the lone corpsman in charge of tracking concussions within her section and has only 72 hours from the time of the blast to coordinate with the Marine’s or sailor’s unit and report the information to Marine Corps Forces Central Command. Waterfield said it isn’t the short timelines or the busy workdays, however, that are most challenging, rather it can often be difficult to watch the events unfold through reports on a computer.

“It’s tough to let go of things,” said Waterfield. “I can watch the events happen [through the reports] and there’s not really anything I can do while the Marines are out there. We do our work here so they can go back, but watching and not being able to physically do much is the hardest part.”

The 28-year-old woman has a personal connection to the Marines in the fight as well, as her husband is also a Navy corpsman who returned from a deployment with 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, October 2010.

“Seeing the events take place day-in and day-out and seeing the things my husband went through when he was here with [an infantry battalion] makes me realize just how precious life is,” she explained.

Waterfield’s desire to ensure service members get the care they need begins with the units providing information for her to track the members’ status. The injured count on her to make sure she gets the information she needs to track their cases and she doesn’t disappoint, overcoming all challenges in her way.

This tenacity has followed her outside the office and into the martial arts tent as well. There she spends some afternoons increasing her knowledge in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program and taking a break from the stressors of the day. She’s taken the initiative to attain four out of the five belts and continues to work hard to achieve the coveted black belt.

“She has the dedication, motivation and willingness to learn,” said Chicago native Sgt. Quinton King, a MCMAP instructor with 2nd Marine Division (Forward). “It’s [great] to have a corpsman go from very little martial arts training and stick with it the way she has.”

Waterfield’s dedication in and out of the office makes her a tremendous asset to her section.

“She’s an outstanding sailor and professional,” said Martinez. “She jumps on every task, stays late if she needs to, and is all about mission accomplishment and taking care of the Marines.”

Photos and story by Cpl. Jeff Drew
DVIDS

Lt. Col. Alison Thompson stands beside a CH-53E Super Stallion just before a mission in the early morning hours of Sept. 10, 2011. Thompson, the commanding officer of Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 464, served as a CH-53E pilot with Task Force 58 during the initial invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Now Thompson is back in the region as the first woman to command a Marine squadron in Afghanistan. Photo by Cpl. Brian Adam Jones

It’s Sept. 12, 2001. The wreckage from the attacks the day before still smolders. An aircraft carrier with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit lies off the eastern shore of the United States.

Several CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters with engines running rest on the deck. The flight lead is a young Marine captain, Alison Thompson. Her freckles and biting blue eyes are veiled by her visor and flight helmet.

She wants to take off.

“We had six 53s turning on the line. I kept calling to get clearance,” Thompson said. “The plan was we’d load supplies, embark the MEU, go up to New York City, provide any support they needed with our helicopters and go straight over [to the Middle East] from there. I kept calling for clearance to take off and at that point all aviation was grounded, civilian and military.”

The mission was ultimately called off. According to Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, then mayor of New York, thought a visible military presence might instill panic among the people.

The day before, Thompson was at home in Jacksonville, N.C., asleep when the phone rang. It was her dad. She sprinted downstairs and turned on the T.V. just in time to see the second tower get hit.

A few short months later, 9,000 miles away, the 53s are once again on the deck of the ship, turning on the line and Thompson is once again in the pilot’s seat.

This time they’re cleared for take-off. This time they will push into Afghanistan.

The Marines entered Afghanistan, some riding in Thompson’s helicopter. They took Camp Rhino and Kandahar Airfield, then pushed north into the Tora Bora mountains, continuing to seek out the enemy.

Ten years later it’s September 2011 and Alison Thompson is back in Afghanistan. Now she’s a lieutenant colonel at the helm of a new mission – commanding Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 464. As the first woman to command a squadron in combat, she leads the only CH-53E squadron in the region.

Thompson’s experiences over the course of her career have prepared her for command. She spent time as a military legislative assistant for former North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, served as an aide for the Deputy Marine Corps Commandant for Aviation and returned to HMH-464 as the operations officer.

But she said her most cherished experiences came in 2001.

“I felt very fortunate to be where I was when I was,” Thompson said. “It was very expeditionary, a lot of tough terrain, a lot of unconventional things we were doing.”

“It was a strange period, kind of eerie. It was exciting too,” said Lt. Col. Pete Gadd, commanding officer of HMH-463, a CH-53D Sea Stallion squadron adjacent to HMH-464 on the Camp Bastion flightline. As a major, Gadd was part of the CH-53E detachment with Thompson in 2001 and accompanied her on many of the missions. “It was the Wild, Wild West back then. We operated out of a lot of mud huts and thatched rooms.”

“She was a great pilot back then, she’s a great pilot now.” said Maj. Dennis W. Sampson.

Sampson, a CH-53D pilot with HMH-463, and the squadron’s operations officer, also participated in the initial invasion, flying some of the first missions in Afghanistan a decade ago.

“We did a lot of raids and take-downs. She was our tactics officer and it was vital for us to be able to follow her lead back then,” Sampson said.

Now Thompson leads several hundred Marines and sailors – pilots, crew chiefs and aircraft maintainers, among others.

“She’s going to do great things in Afghanistan,” Gadd said. “HMH-464 is in great hands.”

“I just want the opportunity to make a difference,” Thompson said, “whether it be tactically or with the individual Marines. From a unit standpoint I take care of them so they’re not fighting internal friction so they can focus on their job.”

Thompson grew up in Michigan, Nebraska and Kansas wanting to be a pilot but never imagining being a Marine. When she attended the Naval Academy women were not allowed to serve in combat in aviation.

“It just so happened that three weeks before I had to service select at the Naval Academy and I had to decide what I was going to do, congress lifted the combat exclusion,” Thompson said.

As one of the first women to pilot a Marine aircraft, and now as the first woman to command a squadron in combat, she said the feeling is the same – don’t mess it up.

“She’s a great leader,” Sampson said. “She’s got great strategic and tactical experience but more importantly, she cares passionately about her Marines and providing support for the Marines on the battlefield.”

Story by Cpl. Brian Adam Jones
DVIDS

Female Engagement Team 13 member Lance Cpl. Jacqueline Veres smiles as she gives a backpack full of school supplies to an Afghan girl at the closing of the Sangin Youth Outreach Shura at Forward Operating Base Jackson, Aug 17. With a literacy rate of seven percent in Sangin, District Governor Mohammad Sherrif has recognized the need for education here. Through his outreach shuras to the community he impresses on the people the need for the children of Sangin to become educated so one day they will be able to assume leadership roles within the up and coming Sangin government. Sherrif realizes and tells the people “children are the future of Sangin.” Veres is from Canton, Ga.

More than 85 children from around Sangin attended the Sangin Youth Outreach Shura held by Female Engagement Teams assigned to 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, at Forward Operating Base Jackson, Aug. 17.

“It is important to work with the youth of Sangin because just like the kids in the U.S., they want to grow up to be something,” said Sgt. Juanita Towns, the FET 13 team leader. “So it is just best that we try to start them off on the right path at a young age vice letting them join the (insurgency) now.”

When on patrol with the battalion’s infantry squads the team members spread the word about the youth shuras and have recently had Afghan Uniformed Police officers help them in their endeavor to reach out to the children of Sangin.

The children, ages 1-14, were split into three groups in which they participated in age-appropriate informative stations and activities. This enabled the FETs to reach out to each age group more effectively, and is modeled after the cultural breakdown the children often gravitate towards on their own.

“It’s the first activity in Sangin for the kids, focused on the kids,” said FET member Lance Cpl. Jacqueline Veres. “So we are just trying to get them to see that we are here to help them, they can come to us and they can trust us.”

“The first one we had was a hygiene shura. The shura that we just had was a healthcare, education and activities shura,” said Towns, a Richmond, Va., native. “They played soccer, they did their time tables and the smaller kids just played with educational toys.”

With a literacy rate of seven percent in Sangin, District Governor Mohammad Sherrif has recognized the need for education here. Through his outreach shuras to the community he impresses on the people the need for the children of Sangin to become educated so one day they will be able to assume leadership roles within the up and coming Sangin government. Sherrif realizes and tells the people “children are the future of Sangin.”

“Children are the innocent ones in most cases,” said Towns, a parent herself. “If they are not educated there is just a repetitive cycle of insurgency and drugs. If you educate them when they are small there is an opportunity for them to be better than that and do positive things.”

Until last year, these children had not been afforded opportunities to break the trend and reach new levels. However teaching children how to do this is a challenging task since they lack the focus levels of adults. So the team had to mix things up to captivate their young audience and keep them interested in the shura.

“We know that they have a short attention span and if we talk to them for an hour like we do with the women then we are not going to get anything accomplished,” explained Towns. “If we have different activities and different things for them to do, they are going to participate, we are going to hold their attention longer and they are going to come back.”

Sometimes when the children do come back to the gates of the base they are looking for free hand outs and naturally are not interested in discussion of long term solutions. Other times the children show up wanting just to spend time with the teams. This requires the engagement teams to improvise and make the best of each situation.

“Even in between shuras we go to the gate and have 20 to 30 kids wanting to just come and talk to us,” said Veres a Canton, Ga., native. “We don’t really have anything planned sometimes, but we will just sit down and hold a mini-shura.”

The youth shuras in Sangin will continue to further expand their horizons to a new way of life that breaks the trend that plagues the region. In short, the activities give the youth something better, which is important to developing and educating the next generation of citizens and leaders in Sangin.

Youth shuras take place in several locations across Helmand province including the districts of Musa Qal’eh, Now Zad, Garmsir and Marjah.

“I think as soon as we stop having youth shuras we will see more insurgent activity, because we have actually given them something to look forward to every two weeks,” said Towns. “If they didn’t have that outreach on life then they would just do something bad that we are not ready to take the fall for.”

First Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, is currently assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division (Forward), which heads Task Force Leatherneck. The task force serves as the ground combat element of Regional Command (Southwest) and works in partnership with the Afghan National Security Forces and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to conduct counterinsurgency operations. The unit is dedicated to securing the Afghan people, defeating insurgent forces, and enabling ANSF assumption of security responsibilities within its area of operations in order to support the expansion of stability, development and legitimate governance.

Story by Cpl. Benjamin Crilly
DVIDS