Specialist Jason Hart’s family had a merrier Christmas this year than they thought they’d have.
Hart, 20, was scheduled to leave Fort Hood, Tex., on Dec. 15 for a second tour in Iraq. A recent surgery, however, pushed back his deployment until Jan. 3, 2009, and allowed him to apply for and receive a two-week leave.
“He called me one day when I got home from work,” said his mother, Diana Hart, of Emporia. “He said, ‘Mom, I got your Christmas present.’”
She responded like a typical mother.
“‘Jason, I told you not to buy me anything,’” she remembered telling him.
“Well, this I can’t take back,” he told her. “I don’t have to leave until Jan. 3.”
“And I just bawled,” Diana Hart said. “... I just couldn’t talk.”
The surgery, which had not been serious but had been needed, had been a blessing in disguise.
“There’s an official piece of paper that says you can’t do these physical activities ‘til this date,” he explained. “It just kind of worked out that I’d get some leave time around Christmas. Everything just kind of fell into place.”
Hart learned about the change in deployment on Dec. 12, just three days before he was to leave, when the sergeant brought the soldiers together to tell them where they’d be on the flights out, which began Saturday, Dec. 13, and ran into Tuesday, Dec. 16.
“When he was rattling off the names of who was flying and everything, he told me I wasn’t flying until the third,” Hart said.
The change couldn’t have pleased his family more.
“I wish he didn’t have to go at all, but now that we’ve got a couple more weeks with him, it’s the best Christmas present I could have ever hoped for,” his mother said.
Hart and his wife, Jennifer, had been moving boxes of their household goods as opportunities allowed from their home in Harker Heights, Tex., to Emporia. They brought up the remainder this week to the house they’ve rented for Jennifer, their Yorkshire terrier Chewy, and, after approximately Feb. 1, for their first child, too.
Both of the couple’s parents — Steve and Diana Hart and Rick and Ruth Vilander — live in Emporia and will be able to help Jennifer with the baby, already determined to be a boy who will be named David Matthew.
Diana Hart is eager to see that day. She and Jennifer spent a lot of evenings together when Jennifer stayed in Emporia two months while her husband completed training this year in California.
“It was comforting for her and for me,” Diana Hart said. “I absolutely adore that girl. There’s just no words to tell her how much I love her.”
David Matthew Hart’s arrival will be the bonus package.
“It breaks my heart this time more than anything because they are expecting a baby and I don’t want him to miss out on all those firsts,” Diana said. “I know many military families have to go through that. ... (Jason) is just like, ‘It’s my job. It’s something I have to do and I’m going to be okay.’”
The young Harts are prepared for the half-a-world separation, and they have a plan, for the next year and beyond.
Jennifer will enroll in online classes part-time from Emporia State University and take care of the baby while Jason spends approximately one year at a forward operations base near Mosul in northern Iraq.
When he get back, the family will return to Texas until he re-enlists. At that point, he will request transfer to Fort Riley. Because the Army is staffed by volunteers, rather than draftees, it tends to cooperate more in helping soldiers reach their goals.
“You can pretty much re-enlist for anything you want,” Jason said. “When it comes down to re-enlistment, the Army wants you more than you want them. ... You have to know exactly where and what you want to do and don’t sign anything until you get it on paper.”
Meanwhile, he will take classes through the Army’s own college program to complete a degree in a medically related field, and work his way to the rank of lieutenant. Ultimately, he said, he wants to be attached to a hospital, which will almost guarantee his being stationed in the United States.
“It would be very, very unlikely that I would deploy,” he said. The attachment would more resemble the structure and time constraints of a regular civilian job.
“I’m going to make it at least a partial career,” Jason said of the Army. “And if I do stay the full 20 years, half of it’s probably going to be in the Guard.”
First, though, he will need to complete the new assignment, which he expects should be less hazardous than his previous attachment with the infantry.
“They’re the ones that get into the firefights,” Jason said, speaking almost nonchalantly about his past assignment and the one coming up.
In his new assignment in an area of military intelligence, he will use the security clearance given him when he enlisted almost two years ago.
“It’s never really mattered up until this point,” he said.