By Denise Blaz
The Abilene Reporter-News
ABILENE, Texas — An Abilene firefighter is now home and back to his daily grind after a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan with the National Guard.
Bryan Proctor, 38, landed at Fort Hood on Independence Day weekend, and after wrapping up his duties within a week, the first thing on his mind was a 10-day trip to Disney World - a promise he made to his two children upon his return home.
On Thursday, though, Proctor, an 11year veteran firefighter and paramedic with the Abilene Fire Department’s training division, was back on the job. “We’re so happy to have him back,” said Division Chief Weldon Wilkerson, Proctor’s supervisor.
“We kept in contact with him mostly though email, but when we first found out, we were kind of scared,” he said. “He does a good job. We sure did miss him. He’s very knowledgeable about his work. He’s a good instructor.”
Assigned to the Army National Guard Headquarter Brigade 176, Proctor was charged with traveling throughout eastern, central and northern Afghanistan, often working long hours as an engineer operations planner.
Supporting him on the home front were Michelle, his wife of 14 years, and his 12-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter.
“He not only did a service for our nation, but his family went through a sacrifice,” Wilkerson said. Living so far from home, Proctor said that apart from his family and friends, he also missed a Texas staple: barbecue.
Proctor said his deployment was the first time he had ever been activated to serve in his 21 years with the National Guard.
“I suspected that they might call me out,” Proctor said. “I had been called out to a previous deployment, but I couldn’t go. It was just my time to go.”
He said his schedule was so different from his regular one in Abilene that when he chatted with his wife as soon as he woke up, she was getting ready for bed.
“I did a lot of traveling, but when I wasn’t, I got to Skype with my family,” Proctor said.
The real shock, he said, was when he first landed in Afghanistan in a C-130 amid a sandstorm.
“We did a combat landing and then they dropped back the back gate,” he recalled. “It reminded me of ‘Star Wars.’ To me, that’s exactly what it looked like when I got off the plane.”
But when he got home, he had a list of honey-do’s he had to attend to, Proctor said jokingly.
“My experience was a positive one, but over there you got to see a lot of fallen hero ceremonies, so that gave me a lot of perspective,” he said. “The good thing was everything worked out. I’m happy to be back home.”
Copyright 2011 The E.W. Scripps Company
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