Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Sgt. 1st Class William “King” Keeney has put in 20 years in the Army, as of this year, and he has no plans to retire any time soon.
Keeney, 38, spent a week at home with his family, over the Fourth of July, before returning to his post at Ft. Polk, La., where he helps prepare soldiers for deployment in Iraq.
He joined the Army on July 30, 1987 after graduating from Sweet Home High School in June.
Throughout most of his Army career, he has been a mechanic on AH-64d Longbow Apache attack helicopters.
In his 20 years, he has been stationed at New Jersey for basic training, Virginia for additional training and then Germany for two years. He was stationed in Texas for a year before serving in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm.
He returned to Texas at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio and stayed for a year before returning to Germany for another two years. He returned to the states and spent five years in Savannah, Ga., and then spent a year in Korea. He went on to Ft. Campbell, Ky., where he stayed for six years, serving in Iraq twice.
He is now an “observer-controller” at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Ft. Polk, about 45 miles west of Alexandria, La. The base is near Leesville, a town that makes Sweet Home look big.
His job is essentially to coach, teach and mentor soldiers prior to deployment to Iraq, he said. Entire units attend the training. While there, unit commanders instruct their soldiers. The observer-controllers observe and provide reports to unit commanders.
In the training, the military simulates the environment, the Arab villages and people, he said. They go through scenarios from “command and control” to building projects in the host nation.
They work on how to deal with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and ambushes, he said.
The base doesn’t have the desert of Iraq, but it does have the heat, Keeney said. During the summer months it can be 90 degrees or higher with 95 percent humidity and a heat index of 105 degrees.
The soldiers spend their time there in full uniform and body armor with 40 pounds of equipment, Keeney said, so it’s warm.
The soldiers spend “seven to 10 days of actual play time in the box,” he said. The training lasts a total of 21 to 24 days.
During the “time in the box,” soldiers are in force-on-force situations with simulated Iraqis and insurgents.
“We play for seven to 10 days,” he said. It matches up to the experience the soldiers will have in Iraq for 12 to 15 months.
“This is what they call a schoolhouse assignment,” Keeney said. All of his other assignments have been what are called “unit assignments.”
Keeney grew up in the Holley area, attending grade school there and then graduating from Sweet Home High School in 1987. He played basketball and golf while in high school.
He entered the Army through the delayed entry program.
“I was tired of school,” he said. “I wanted to travel really.”
The Army also provides education opportunities, he said. It offers a college fund and the G.I. Bill. If Keeney wanted to come back to Sweet Home, he would still be able to attend college.
He also can work on a degree online, and has completed 60 credits that way, he said.
Keeney didn’t decide to go into the military until after his junior year in high school, he said.
“When I first started, I wanted to travel and see places I’d never been.”
Before graduation, he had been out of Oregon three times that he could remember.
After joining the Army, he saw all kinds of places, from New Jersey to Illesheim, Germany.
The traveling and the camaraderie, the teamwork and the purpose, helping people, convinced him to re-enlist, he said.
The work the military does actually helping people is one of the things that keeps him going, he said.
Media reports from Iraq focus on shock. Unfortunately, they don’t show the schools soldiers have rebuilt, the school supplies they provide, the medical missions to vaccinate villages and more.
Soldiers show locals how to purify their water and proper sanitation techniques and more, he said.
Keeney had two years between his tours in Iraq during the current conflict.
In those two years, things had changed by “leaps and bounds,” he said.
“Organized civilization was starting to take effect again,” Keeney said. “People weren’t afraid to go outside into the street again. The kids were starting to go back to school.”
The difference was “like night and day,” he said. The United States is making headway there. “There’s so many places that have changed for the better.”
The media focus on the “bad” there, he said. IEDs are taking a toll, and it’s difficult to focus on the positives.
“It’s slow,” he said. “It’s hard to distinguish between an insurgent and a regular citizen.”
“When insurgents come into the community, they come in to intimidate families. They operate on intimidation and try to destabilize the government.”
“We’ll probably never stop it. Just stabilize it.”
But there’s no martial law, and Iraqis have the freedom to carry guns to protect themselves, he said, and there’s plenty off good to focus on.
Keeney expects he’ll spend another four to six years in the Army, but he is not sure what he’ll do when he leaves, he said. For him, it’s a career for retirement purposes now.
Besides, “why quit something you enjoy?” he asked. “I’ll stay with it till they tell me ‘you’ve got to go.'”
Keeney enjoys racing in the super late-model class on dirt tracks, he said and Ft. Campbell, Ky., is dirt track central. He also enjoys sight-seeing and water skiing.
In 20 years, Sweet Home has changed, but “a lot of it’s the same,” he said. Sweet Home has had a lot of construction, and it’s much bigger.
Still, “I love the place,” he said. “It’s a nice little piece of the world to live in.”
Having been all around the world and seen so much, “this is the place I’ll always call home,” he said. He has been in almost every country in Europe except Russia.
“There’s a lot of beautiful places in the world but not like this.”