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HILL AIR FORCE BASE — About 700 grade-schoolers donned gas masks and dog tags on Monday in an annual event designed to give kids a better understanding of the jobs their military parents do.
The entire student population of Hill Field Elementary School participated in the event.
"About 95 percent of the children in that school are military," said Master Sgt. Terri Davis, who runs the base's Airman and Family Readiness Center. "They get to be in mom and dad's combat boots for the day. They get to see what it is like to do a real-world processing for deployment."
They get to be in mom and dad's combat boots for the day. They get to see what it is like to do a real-world processing for deployment.
–Master Sgt. Terri Davis
She said military parents are encouraged to tell their kids as much as they can about what a deployment will be like. The Kids Deployment Day event helps add meaning to those conversations. "This way they actually get to see all the nuts and bolts behind the processing," Davis said.
The students climbed in and out of Humvees and other large trucks, had their hands on machine guns and even saw examples of scorpions and other large insects military personnel might encounter in current deployment areas like Afghanistan and Iraq.
Third-grade classmates Audrey Joyce, Cynthia Howard and Olivia Hodges took particular interest in a demonstration by trained security dogs — and the pest exhibit. "I like the creepy bugs, the spider and the bat," Audrey said.
Relieving apprehensions the kids may have about a parents' deployment is a major objective of the exercise. "We want to give them a good experience about what their parents go through," Davis said. "Even the bugs they might experience at the deployed location."
Sr. Airman Daniel West returned from a deployment in Iraq in August and was demonstrating the massive EOD 9 bomb suit he wears as a bomb disposal technician. He has participated in the Kid's Deployment Day for two years and said the kids are most interested in knowing how long it takes to put the suit on, and whether it is hot inside. The answers are "about a minute and a half" and "yes."
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Story written by Steve Fidel with contributions from Sam Penrod.
