Jackson MPs head to Haiti for Guard relief mission

JACKSON, Mo. -- Nearly 90 members of the Missouri National Guard's 1137th Military Police Company have been to Haiti this summer as part of Operation New Horizons, a mission meant to help rebuild the Caribbean country devastated by an earthquake in January.

Sixty-eight Citizen Soldiers with the Kennett-based 1137th -- which also has detachments in Jackson and Doniphan -- returned from a 17-day rotation there last week and another 20 Soldiers left from the Jackson armory on Aug. 4. The Haiti mission is serving as the 1137th's annual training.

The 1137th was attached to the 1175th Military Police Company, based in St. Clair, and the military policemen were there to provide security for sites where schools were being rebuilt by engineers, medical sites and to help guard the Forward Operating Base, said Sgt. 1st Class Bill Hoxworth, the 1137th's readiness noncommissioned officer.

"The country is just devastated," said Hoxworth, who went to Haiti on the previous rotation. "But it was devastated even before the earthquake. It was hit pretty hard by the tsunami in 2008, too."

Members of several military branches and several states are providing support and services to the Haiti relief effort this summer. Rotations started in June and run through September and Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen are performing other missions, such as setting up and guarding the Medical Retention, which is a place where doctors are working with Haitian doctors to provide basic medical care.

Helping getting the education system back up and running was a big part of the overall mission, too.

"It was our job to provide security for the engineers building schools," Hoxworth said. "There was one hospital being rebuilt, but mainly schools."

Members of the 1137th who have already gone said they found the Haitian mission to be gratifying and challenging as they worked to overcome language and cultural barriers.

The Haiti trip was the first-ever annual training for new National Guardsman Pfc. Jordan Minton of Doniphan, who serves in the 1137th's Detachment 2. He went to Haiti July 8-24.

"I didn't realize how bad it was, how bad their living conditions were," he said. "You could see there was some real suffering. It was hard to watch sometimes."

Minton tried to stay focused on the mission and learn as much as he could from the real-world annual training.

"We had to make sure people weren't trespassing and keep the lumber and other construction equipment safe," said Minton, who is 20. "It was 24-hour-operations, so that made for some pretty long days."

Spc. Anita Mathies of Malden serves with the 1137th in Kennett. Mathies had been deployed before to Kosovo, but she said she found the Haiti mission very gratifying in its own unique way.

"We got to go out to the site and visit with some of the nationals," she said. "They were pretty excited to see the military there and seemed grateful we were trying to help. I feel like we were making a difference. It was a good experience; it was something different instead of ATs where it was just training. It was really hands-on."

It was also heart-warming when Haitian children would run up to passing military vehicles and smile and give the "thumbs up" to the Guard Soldiers, she said.

"They were excited to see us, you could tell," she added.

Staff Sgt. Mitchell Sorrell, the 1137th's Detachment 2 readiness noncommissioned officer, said this annual training was more meaningful to him than in previous years.

"It was a real-world mission," he said. "It was another culture, another language. Most of the people there were very glad we were there. It was a big joint effort. I think it went off well. I was proud to go there and the Missouri National Guard represented itself well."

For more information about the Missouri National Guard, please call 1-800-GoGuard or visit www.moguard.com.

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For more information about this release, please contact Scott Moyers at (573) 339-6264 or e-mail him at scott.moyers1@us.army.mil.