Military newlyweds talk about service separation
While many newlyweds experience the hardships of starting out as a married couple, a Smock native and her husband are taking it to extremes. Shannon Hager-Martin and her husband, Derrick, serve in the U.S. Army’s 59th Chemical Company out of Fort Drum, N.Y. And, just a few weeks after exchanging their vows, they parted company and headed to the Middle East.
Hager-Martin grew up in Smock and graduated from Uniontown Area High School in 1999. She then decided to enlist in the Army to take advantage of the GI Bill for college. While stationed at her first duty post, Fort Drum, she met Derrick.
The pair managed to stay together until their different fields separated them during overseas service.
On leave, Hager-Martin said Thursday that she and her husband are glad to be home and even happier just to be together.
“We’ve been married 10 months, but the last six of those months were spent apart,” she said.
Because of her job as a chemical operations specialist, Hager-Martin was unable to offer details on where she was stationed in the Middle East – that information remains classified – or what her division experienced.
“Basically, what we deal with are NBCs: nuclear, biological or chemical agents. If a unit is hit with a chemical agent, they call us in. We work decon, decontamination, which means we go in and decon the vehicles and the personnel. But we also serve a dual purpose: decon and smoke,” Hager-Martin said. Units equipped with smoke generators are used to lay a cover of fog to conceal personnel movements in touchy areas like river crossings, she said.
Derrick Martin noted that the heat and the barren landscape were enough to make him not want to return to Pakistan, where he is stationed near the Afghanistan border. But, he said the added detachment from his wife and concern for her made it “total hell.”
“It was hot, more clay than sand, and no trees. Felt like we were stuck in the middle of nowhere…but worse than the heat was not being able to be with (Shannon),” Martin said. “Oh yeah, I was worried about her. As time went on, the worry pretty much went down, but not gone.”
Martin is a mechanic for the 59th. While he may help work on the decontamination equipment, he was assigned to Pakistan to work on generators, Humvees and 5-ton trucks while pulling guard duty for the infantry divisions moving through the country.
Martin noted that the couple’s overseas assignment is over, and he expressed hope that they won’t have to repeat it before they leave the Army in the next year.
As for his wife, she is looking forward to enrolling in college in her husband’s home state, Utah.
“I’m not sure what I want to study yet, but I am looking forward to going to the University of Utah,” she said.