6,000 miles from home, cousins reunite

Family members don’t usually plan reunions 6,000 miles from home.

But for two members of the military stationed at Camp Doha in Kuwait, distance wasn’t an issue.

Roughly two weeks ago, 23-year-old Army Spc. Brad Davis was standing in a chow line when he spotted an officer with a name patch that read “Caldwell.”

Davis knew his second cousin, John Caldwell, also had been deployed to the camp, but he couldn’t be sure it was him just by looking. A 1997 graduate of Bangor High School, Davis hadn’t been face to face with his cousin since he moved to Orrington from Memphis, Tenn., nearly a decade ago.

On a hunch that proved to be correct, Davis walked up to the man and asked, “Are you John?”

Caldwell, a lieutenant colonel and a 22-year Marine veteran, served in an artillery regiment during the first Gulf War and understood what he might encounter while in the Middle East.

But as Caldwell’s mother described it, the meeting still was a surprise.

“They were thrilled,” Elizabeth Caldwell said on the phone Wednesday from her home in Memphis. “John hadn’t seen Brad since he was about to start high school and it was just really exciting.”

Equally excited about the chance meeting were family members in the states. Brad’s father, Ray Davis of Orrington, was encouraged by news of the reunion.

“It was comforting to know he had family over there,” Ray Davis said Wednesday. “It’s distressing to have children deployed at war.”

Stationed in Wiesbaden, Germany, since October, Brad Davis was called over to Kuwait roughly a month ago to serve as a Black Hawk mechanic with the 159th Medevac Company.

Caldwell was in the reserves in Nesbit, Miss., and serving as a local county supervisor when he was called up about three weeks ago.

With different qualifications from different armed services branches, their eventual meeting took some effort.

With a rank that allowed him more mobility within the camp, Caldwell walked around camp looking for his younger relative shortly after arriving, Ray Davis said. Caldwell had no luck when he asked around, but word got back to Brad.

“Someone told Brad there was a lieutenant colonel looking for him and he was totally clueless as to who it could be,” Davis said, referring to an incident described by Brad in a phone call. “And then I reminded him that John was a lieutenant colonel and he said, ‘OK, that’s who that was.'”

Since the reunion, Brad Davis’ assignment has changed and his unit recently was sent into Iraq. He told his parents he didn’t expect to call home because the destination didn’t have electricity or running water.

“They were going to move into a fairly remote area,” Davis said.

Caldwell remains at Camp Doha where he recently spent time surveying damage at missile-impact sites in northern Kuwait.

And while Brad Davis and Caldwell were only able to see each other over a two-week period, the meeting was invaluable, Caldwell’s mother said.

“When you’re that far from home, it’s good to see someone you know,” she said. “It really gives them a boost.”