Payton Baggett Reporting
pbaggett@clarksvillenow.com
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. – Sgt. First Class Dennis Dash of the 626th Brigade Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team (Rakkasans), Bravo Company, with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell recently achieved twenty years of military service, and has many experiences to share.
Dash was raised near two Marine bases in his hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina, surrounded by family members who were in the military. Not surprisingly, these influences helped him decide at an early age to pursue a military job, though he would choose to break the family tradition and join the Army rather than the Marine Corps.
“I decided to just step out away from that and try something different, and I made the choice to go into the army,” Dash said. “It seemed pretty rough and rugged, you know, the training, and the discipline as well. I wanted to see what that side was because I had already learned and seen a lot growing up next to two marine bases, so I knew what they were about.”
Dash currently serves with Bravo Company, which is the maintenance portion of his battalion. They provide support to the brigade in the form of equipment such as night vision goggles, weapons systems, and vehicles. All six of his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have been with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, which is an unusual occurrence in the Army.
As a soldier who has served both before and after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Dash has seen his job change in various ways. He recalled that there was much demand for his brigade, known as the Rakkasans, “because we were capable of accomplishing any task that was put forth in front of us.”
The weapons used by the military have been much altered. “Our equipment that we use today, whether it be the vehicles, the weapons systems, or the gear that we are equipped with to go on these deployments to protect ourselves has changed drastically,” Dash said. “It’s a lot better equipment, it’s lighter, and the armor is more dense to stop penetration or whatever type of round or blast that we might take on.” Dash and others at Fort Campbell and the 3rd Brigade often get equipment before the rest of the Army does to test it out on the battle field, and then give feedback on it after their deployments.
After the War On Terrorism began, Dash came to Fort Campbell from a tour in Korea that he spent apart from his wife and infant daughter, and was almost immediately stationed in Pakistan for seven months. He then came home for seven months before being sent on a twelve month invasion of Iraq. All the tours following the second one were all twelve months long as well, with twelve month breaks between each, the exception being one deployment lasting fifteen months.
Though the amount of time that Sgt. Dash has been deployed is tough for his family, things are made easier by the bond that he has with his fellow Rakkasans. He describes the friendship as “something very unique that you can’t really explain in detail. It’s something special, and I can say that when you come to the unit, you hear a lot of stories, even at replacement before you sign in.” According to Dash, the history of the conflicts that the unit has been in motivates its soldiers to aspire to live up to the high standards of those that came before them, and “with that mindset, every day you start wanting to be as focused as much as possible. And we do go through a lot of tough training, and I would say that that’s one of the things that kind of keeps us close together.”