When the soldiers of the 504th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade sit down at the Thanksgiving dinner table this year, it will be with weapons by their side and without loved ones and the traditions they’ve grown to know and love. Deployed to a tiny forward operating base just north of Pakistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, the Fort Hood-based soldiers will eat dinner when the Thanksgiving sun has barely risen over the Texas horizon.
Spin Boldak is 10.5 hours and more than 8,000 miles away from home, and some soldiers will for the first time share Thanksgiving with the family they chose, their extended Army family, instead of the one they were born into. Despite this, Thanksgiving 2011 will forever be etched in some of their minds, the events surrounding it told and retold again at future Thanksgiving dinners. This is in part because of the effort the Army puts into making Thanksgiving as extravagant as it can for soldiers, and also because of the dedicated leaders who remember their first Thanksgiving in the Army when they, like the young soldiers, were barely 18 or 19 years old and away from home for the first time.
“This is the only meal out of the year that we pretty much go all out,” said 1st Sgt. Steven Chow of the 509th Forward Support Company. “There’s a lot of planning that goes into it, but you don’t realize the impact of it until you see their smiling faces as they walk through the food line.”
A food service representative, Chow remembers his first Thanksgiving as a private. They’d tirelessly worked that day to decorate the dining hall and serve the soldiers, something Chow said he didn’t mind because of the meaning of Thanksgiving and because, as a food service representative, his job was to feed the soldiers.
“All we do that day is serve – it’s not about us, it’s about the soldiers,” said Chow, of San Juan, Puerto Rico. “It’s about selfless-service.”
1st Sgt. Joseph Frescatore of B Troop, 2nd Squadron, 38th Cavalry Regiment, also remembers his first Thanksgiving. Fresh out of college and away from his native Schenectady, N.Y., for the first time, he spent that Thanksgiving in 1993 quietly having a meal at the dining facility with a few close friends. Despite being impressed by the meal the Army provided, Frescatore said he also longed for home and the traditions he’d grown accustomed to.
“My parents were divorced,” he said. “I missed traveling to my father’s side, the Italian side – the side that ate very well, and then visiting my mother and eating some more before watching football.”
Along with missing his family, Frescatore also missed the meals they’d often shared during Thanksgiving. Of Italian descent, his father’s family celebrated Thanksgiving with the traditional turkey and fixings, but also included the pastas, breads and sausages Frescatore could not find at the dining facility. Despite this, Frescatore said he was most impressed to see Army leaders standing in line to serve and eat with their soldiers.
“It goes pretty far,” he said. “It said that they cared enough to do that because being away for the first time, you miss those traditions.”
As he rose in ranks, Frescatore took those actions to heart. Now as a senior leader, Frescatore ensures young soldiers under him get the same care and service on important holidays as he once did. When some of his soldiers pull duty at the Afghan-Pakistan border during this year’s Thanksgiving meal, Frescatore will bring the Thanksgiving dinners out to them, as he had done in the past when special meals were offered.
“We need to be together, and that’s going to happen,” he said. “Soldiers want people they can relate with and talk to and not be by themselves. They’re 18 and 19, being away from home for the first time and thinking about home … looking at the Army data, a lot of suicides happen during the holiday season. It’s going to go pretty far for these guys.”
It isn’t just ensuring soldiers are emotionally taken care of and preventing suicides, however, that motivates leaders to reach out during the holiday season. For Chow, whose soldiers busied themselves all day during Thanksgiving, being there with soldiers is also a way to say thank you. As a staff sergeant, Chow often had soldiers come home with him for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner a few days after the official meal was served at the dining facility.
“I knew they weren’t able to enjoy themselves during Thanksgiving because they were busy serving others,” he said. “So I invited my key players home to have a meal with my family – it was my way of thanking them.”
Though showing soldiers appreciation and being there for them is important, equally important is recreating the experiences of Thanksgivings past with the familiar food they’d grown accustomed to. Here at FOB Spin Boldak, that job falls in the hands of Staff Sgt. Dedrick Minniefield. The base’s food service non-commissioned officer in charge, Minniefield said the meal is especially important because it serves as a morale booster and provides soldiers the same tastes and scent they had back home, despite being thousands of miles away.
To recreate the memories of home, this year’s Thanksgiving menu includes the traditional turkey, along with steamship rounds and prime rib. Serving lines include smoked ham, sweet potatoes, dirty rice, sweet corn, dressing and gravy, as well as chilled shrimp cocktail and non-alcoholic eggnog.
Though the majority of the food was determined by a board to ensure consistency on all bases, dining facilities also have the ability to add onto the menu to enhance the soldiers’ dining experience.
“In the military, we can’t take away from but we can add to,” said Barbara Wilson, the dining facility manager here. “We’re taking the prime rib and steamship rounds and stuffing them with garlic and doing a lot of the stuff you’d do at home.
“We’ve already prepared a lot of the stuff and that morning, everything is going to kick off,” Wilson, of Houston, added. “I told them we’re going to make the cornbread dressing from scratch and adding celery to it like we do at home.”
No matter how extravagant the feast, Minniefield admits Thanksgiving just won’t be the same because of the lack of the most important part of Thanksgiving – the family members and traditions almost every soldier will long for.
“Everybody has that special item they enjoy – the item that’s cooked by that special person,” he said. “We can’t give them that, but we’re going to come pretty close.
“Being here in Afghanistan, we are each other’s family,” Minniefield, of Wedowee, Ala., said. “This is your family away from home and the only thing you can do is celebrate with them – it builds morale.
It’s important to note, Minniefield emphasized, that while turkey dinners eaten next to a warfighting comrade with weapons next to them won’t be the same as Thanksgivings of previous years, his goal is to, even if just for one night, take soldiers out of the war and transport them back to their families through the scents and tastes.
“The scent is the same you would smell walking into your grandparents’ or cousin’s house,” he said. “When they open that door, the scent of Thanksgiving is going to hit them into the face and take them into another zone far away from Afghanistan. For that time, they’re going to be home.”
In all, Chow said he hopes the dinner and care the leaders afforded to soldiers won’t go unnoticed – not because leaders expect anything in return, but because he hopes that like the leaders of today, soldiers will remember the qualities of good leadership as they move up the ranks.
“I truly hope they do remember,” Chow said. “You don’t get [feedback] until years later when they come back and say something, but I really hope they remember. I hope they remember all these deeds and do the same for their soldiers because that’s the true meaning of paying it forward.”
Photo and story by Sgt. Marc Loi.
