Grandparents prepare to go to war
SALEM, Ore. – Jack and Jan Martin’s seven grandchildren will have to get used to not seeing Grandpa and Grandma for a while. Their grandparents are going off to war.
The children don’t understand why they won’t be able to see Grandpa for at least a year and why trips with Grandma to see a movie or play at the park will soon come to a halt.
“They know about war and that we’re in the Army,” Jan said. “but it isn’t reality to them.”
Staff Sgt. Jack Martin left Friday with the 41st Separate Infantry Brigade for at least a yearlong tour of duty. His 15-soldier unit will train in Indiana for 38 days and then be deployed to Afghanistan, where it will be working with the Afghanistan National Army.
His wife, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jan Martin, hasn’t received official orders yet but expects to leave for Iraq in October. She is the state property book officer who manages and authorizes all equipment for the Oregon National Guard.
Her assignment – in either Baghdad or Kabul, the capital cities of Iraq and Afghanistan – will be to manage the National Guard’s rotation of equipment. Both volunteered for duty.
“I believe in what we’re doing there,” Jack, 49, said. “I’m not going to pound the red, white and blue, but we’re going to make it safer for troops when they do go over there.”
Military is in the Martins’ blood. Their son, Jack Jr., is a specialist in the Guard. There is a chance he, too, could be deployed. He originally was added to the deployment list for the 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry, which has been mobilized, and then removed a week later.
“I can handle my husband and I going, but I can’t handle my kid going,” Jan, 49, said. “My husband and I volunteered so maybe somebody else’s child wouldn’t have to.
Jack and Jan have been in the military off and on most of their lives. They grew up in the Salem area and met in 1964, when they were in fifth grade. They never really dated, but got married when they turned 18.
Jack joined the Marine Corps soon afterward. He got out of the Marines in 1979 and didn’t return to the military until after Sept. 11, when he joined the National Guard.
Jan joined the Army when she was 29. She was told she could be either a cook or a truck driver, but she opted to pursue a position in logistics. For years now, she has juggled being a wife and mother.
Julie Pinkerton, the Martins’ daughter, said she is proud of her parents’ patriotism and one of their biggest supporters. Even so, she worries that her father has left and her mother is just months from leaving.
“I’m nervous about what could happen to them,” she said.