A little connection to home
Keepsakes laden with sentiment loom large among servicemembers
Caitlin O'Callaghan handed something to her fiancé the day before he left for Fort Dix and Iraq in August 2005.
The Black Hawk helicopter pilot glanced doubtfully at the aqua Tiffany box with the white bow. But Brian Gannon was left speechless by what he found inside: A sterling silver compass with his initials engraved on the outside and inside the tiny lid, the inscription: "SAFE HOME" and underneath, "I LOVE YOU."
His fiancée told him, "This is so you can always find your way home."
A chief warrant officer with the Third Battalion of the 126th Aviation Regiment of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, Gannon carried his compass in a pocket of his flight suit for each of some 300 missions shuttling VIPs between Kuwait and southern Iraq.
He returned from his 15-month deployment, the couple married and now the compass, slightly tarnished and dented, sits on a bookshelf overlooking the computer in their Concord home.
For servicemembers overseas, a little piece of home can make a big difference.
"It was a connection to Cait, a connection to home," said Gannon, 30, a Watertown police officer, as he and his wife had dinner one night last week at The Kinsale Irish Pub & Restaurant in Government Center, a tavern named after the town in Ireland where he proposed to her on a beach at sunset in July 2005. "It was a constant reminder of my love for Cait and her love for me, and a desire to get home safely."
Caitlin, 26, a cardiology nurse practitioner at Massachusetts General Hospital, said, "I wanted to give him something that he could take with him that had some meaning and would be easy to carry."
It's not always possible or practical to hold on to things.
"I don't carry much with me on a mission," Lieutenant James Guimond, 32, a Westborough native and Navy pilot wrote in an e-mail to the Globe last week from Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va. "There really isn't much room in the cockpit. What I do carry are the thoughts and support of my family and friends at home, as well as those of the American people."
And decorated Army veteran Aurio Pierro, 91, of Lexington, a tank commander in World War II who landed at Omaha Beach and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, said soldiers wanted to avoid giving away too much information in the event of capture. "As far as personal stuff was concerned we were told that we shouldn't have anything on us or in the tank," he said.
But the trend now is toward carrying more things, in part because it's easier, said Michael McAfee, curator of history at the West Point Museum. "They don't march the great distances that they used to," he said.
Along with less marching there is also more room these days.
Jennifer W. Farrelly, 44, of Dalton, a lieutenant colonel with the 439th Airlift Wing's 337th Airlift Squadron assigned to Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee, pilots C-5 Galaxy transport planes. She flies about two missions a month, each about a week long, and packs her husband's Special Forces ring and photos of him, her two stepchildren, and the family's poodle and cat.
"It is a comfort," Farrelly said while sitting in "the corner office" of one of the huge planes a couple of weeks ago. "I can't say that I pull them out all the time, but I know they're there."
When Sean Munger of Natick took part in the US-led invasion of Iraq with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit in March 2003, he brought along the Notre Dame hat that he had worn since high school. Through five years of active duty with the Marines from 2000 to 2005, which included two deployments, Munger, now 27 and a police officer in Natick, never went anywhere without his tan hat. "It was the first thing that went into my pack," he said.
He still wears the tattered cap, which is coming apart at the seams. "I have to wash it by hand now," Munger said.
Soldiers of the 151st Regional Support Group, Army National Guard, provided a sampler of items ranging from serious to silly when they arrived at a barracks in Wellesley this month after a year of duty at Victory Base Complex in Iraq.
Jerry Pintal, 42, a chief warrant officer from Milford, N.H., kept photographs of his wife, Elaine Dawicki, and daughters, Alexandra, 16, Sonya, 7, and Jennifer, 3, and a pillowcase Sonya had made.
But Pintal also wrapped himself in a SpongeBob SquarePants blanket and wore a pair of matching pajamas his children had sent. He absorbed some good-natured ribbing from his buddies and added to the entertainment with a bit of acting. "I do the SpongeBob voice," Pintal explained.
Captain Daniel McNeill, 37, of Wakefield, was comforted by little notes and drawings sent by his young children and by St. Michael prayer cards. "When you have those bad days, you can always pull out those things and be all right," he said.
McNeill wore a Red Sox hat during his deployment and found homes for some Sox bumper stickers. "Red Sox Nation is represented in the Baghdad area," he said.
Sergeant First Class Sean Connor, 33, of Springfield, carried a St. Christopher medal handed down from his father-in-law, who had it while serving in the Navy in the 1970s. "He wore it in the Mediterranean," Connor said. "When I got deployed he pulled me aside and gave it to me."
Added Connor's wife, Elaine: "He wanted Sean to wear it because it had kept him safe while he was overseas."
The medal is inscribed, "Saint Christopher protect us, land-sea-air."
While her husband was away Elaine used his camouflaged Patriots T-shirt as a pillow case and carried copies of his dog tags everywhere she went.
Captain Tonia Costa, 34, of Peabody, had a cross and rosary beads, and a photo of her four dogs - a beagle, a three-legged Shiba Inu adopted from a shelter, a miniature pinscher, and a Rottweiler-Doberman pinscher mix.
Costa also has four cats, and her husband, Bob, took care of the eight animals while she was away. "When I have to go away he gets stuck with them," said Costa, who has done two Iraq tours. When she returns home, she said, "It's not a reunion; it's a change of command."
