Maine 265th squadron helps Louisiana recover

LAKE CHARLES, La. – It was after 11 p.m. on a muggy Wednesday here when 17 soldiers from Maine finished erecting the unwieldy 48-foot-long tent most of them will call home for the next 30 days. Working by the light of a diesel-powered generator, they had toiled for hours in a soggy field on the edge of Chennault Air Field, a former military base on the eastern side of the hurricane-stricken city of Lake Charles.

By the time they had hooked up the powerful air-conditioning unit, arranged their cots and personal gear, and hung a privacy screen to separate the four women from the rest of the group, the members of the 265th Combat Communications Squadron of the Maine Air National Guard, based in South Portland, were ready to call it a night.

But bright and early Thursday morning, they were up and at it again – moving in their supplies, erecting a smaller, separate tent for the women and, most important, setting up their massive “Quick Reaction Satellite Antenna.”

The QRSA is the reason the 265th is here in Louisiana, and the antenna is central to its combat communications mission.

“It’s the heart and soul of our operations,” said 20-year-old Senior Airman Erik Skean, as he ate a hasty Southern breakfast of biscuits with white gravy.

Skean, who lives in Brunswick and works for a private cable television and Internet company, said he joined the Maine Air National Guard about three years ago, primarily for its college benefits. He’s studying electrical engineering technology at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland.

But he also appreciates an eight-month specialized training program that has allowed him to be part of the three-person team that sets up and operates the dish-shaped antenna.

Collapsed for transport, the Army-green satellite dish rests on two connected trailers and looks like an enormous robotic clamshell. Assembled, it aims the 20-foot-diameter dish at a military satellite orbiting 23,400 miles in space. By bouncing radio waves off the satellite, the antenna is capable of sending and receiving telephone and Internet signals – key communication tools in the Gulf Coast region, where many communities are likely to remain without power and phone service for weeks or even months.

Lt. Col. Mark Gauger of North Yarmouth, commanding officer of the 265th, said the satellite technology will support telephone, e-mail and Internet communications for military units and government agencies working in the area as communities recover from the damage inflicted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It will allow greater coordination and efficiency of recovery efforts – sorely and very evidently lacking even weeks into the recovery.

This is the group’s first deployment with its own equipment, Gauger said, although 30 members of the 100-member squadron were deployed in Kuwait in 2003 to use U.S. Army communications equipment already in place. His troops’ lack of real-condition experience seemed of little concern to Gauger.

“We train for deployment all the time,” he said Thursday morning. “We have an A-team here. Some of the gear hasn’t been put through all its paces yet, but these soldiers can handle anything.”

Also confident was Staff Sgt. Josh Hilton, 28, of Biddeford. “When we train, it’s just like doing it operationally,” he said.

A full-time Guard member and satellite specialist, Hilton said the 265th is due to get a newer satellite dish in 2007, one that’s a fraction the size of the 1970s-era behemoth they’re using now but twice as powerful. A smaller dish would make a big difference in the squadron’s portability, he noted. The 265th traveled to Louisiana from Brunswick Naval Air Station in a C-5 cargo plane along with their gear, supplies, equipment and even some vehicles.

Chennault Air Field is being used as a staging ground for post-hurricane recovery efforts by military groups, electrical repair crews, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and others with a big role to play in re-establishing normalcy here. Hurricane Rita dealt harshly with Lake Charles and surrounding communities last weekend – there is no electrical power anywhere except by individual generators, the drinking water is under a boil order, and some areas have a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew to discourage looting and other criminal activity.

Reports of the devastation motivated Maj. Jennifer Haggard to volunteer for the mission to Lake Charles, as did all 17 members of the communications team. Now a resident of Massachusetts, Haggard grew up in Monmouth, Maine, where her parents still live. Other family members reside in Portland and Calais.

She has trained with the 265th for 16 years, Haggard said, and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, she was deployed at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia for 18 months. Now she’s married to an Air Force officer and has two small children. Her husband changed his plans to allow her to commit to spending a month in Louisiana, she said.

An expert at splitting transmitted radio signals into individual circuits, Haggard said staying home wasn’t an option once she saw the wreckage and loss along the Gulf Coast.

“I just didn’t feel right, sitting at home nice and warm and safe, knowing that other people didn’t have a way to give their kids a bath,” she said.