More NC soldiers head to war-torn country

FORT BRAGG About 450 members of the 28th Combat Support Hospital at Fort Bragg said goodbye to family and friends Monday morning.

"Well we're there to take care of soldiers and keep them healthy and keep them from, you know if they are injured take care of them, get them back to health and bring them back safe," soldier Kerrie Golden said.

The team of men and women soldiers are doctors, nurses and medical technicians.

"It's exciting, it's bitter-sweet," Sgt. Ameerah Williams said. "It's always hard to leave your family behind, but we know we have a mission and that's what we're going to do."

Williams' family came from Tennessee and South Carolina to say goodbye.

"She's very professional mission oriented and most of all she's focus and she has great faith," soldier's mother Deborah Samuels said. "And I know that she's going to be able to carry out her assignment and God's going to protect her and keep her in her absence from us."

Saying goodbye was a little tougher for Bill Holland. He's already counting some of the upcoming holidays his daughter, Captain Brooke Schrum, is going to miss.

"Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's … we're just going to miss her," Holland said.

When the soldiers deploy, some of them are leaving a little part of them behind, like a little doll that's given to the children from the Family Support Unit.

"They take a picture of the soldier and put it on the doll so that all the kids got one actually, so that they can take their family member with them," First Lt. Christopher Shear said.

It is the third time the unit has deployed in support of the global war on terrorism.

The soldiers will deploy during the next two days and will be gone for about a year.

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