Group’s mission: Bring cheer to platoon

The thought of members of her son’s Stryker Brigade platoon going without mail over the holiday season was just too much for Louise Keneally to bear.

It is bad enough that Lt. Sean Keneally’s soldiers have to endure the constant threat of attack in Mosul, one of Iraq’s most dangerous cities. There is nothing his mother could do about that.

But when Keneally told his mother there were soldiers in his platoon that never heard from anyone back home, Louise Keneally took action.

“We received an e-mail from him telling us there have been some members of his platoon who have not received any mail,” Keneally said.

So she and two other women from Spokane Valley’s Grace Harvest Fellowship church organized a support group to send the platoon a little something extra this Christmas.

“We advertised in the church bulletin and collected food items and monetary donations,” church member Janet Boyington said. “Everybody wanted to do something, and here is an outlet.”

The result was “Support Our Troops,” a church project to make sure all the soldiers can afford to call home.

The group is collecting food and personal items such as toothbrushes and shampoo and collecting donations to send AT&T phone cards to every member of the platoon and a few other soldiers serving in Iraq or Afghanistan whose families are contributing to the project.

So far, Support Our Troops has collected about $1,700, of which $700 will go toward postage for 70 care packages, said Boyington, who is a military wife herself. Amid the cookies and crackers, each care package will contain at least a 250-minute phone card and an inspirational letter from Grace Harvest Fellowship’s pastor, the Rev. Willard McCain.

Keneally’s husband, retired Lt. Col. Robert Keneally, is a former squadron commander at Fairchild Air Force Base and currently associate pastor at the church. On Friday, he described the conditions his son’s platoon faces each day in Iraq.

Lt. Keneally’s platoon – part of the 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of the 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis, Wash. – was deployed to Iraq on Oct. 10, his father said. He hears from his son once or twice a week.

“They are very busy in Mosul. There is a lot going on,” Robert Keneally said.

Keneally’s unit, one of the Stryker Brigades named for the light armored vehicle they use on patrol, is constantly at risk of enemy fire, he said. Sometimes they are out looking for a specific insurgent target or protecting military convoys. At other times they are assigned to protect the Iraqi police, a favorite target of the enemy. The Stryker is a good vehicle, he said. Once the tires on his son’s Stryker were blown out by snipers, and it was still functional.

“A lot of people don’t understand the level of conflict we are in,” Robert Keneally said. “This isn’t a little battle; it’s a full-blown war and the danger these troops are in will continue for a long while.”

The danger does not end when these soldiers return to base, he said. The platoon’s quarters have been mortared by insurgents who hit and run in pickup trucks. There has already been one soldier killed in the battalion.

Maj. Horst G. Moore, 38, of San Antonio, Texas, died Nov. 9 when enemy mortar rounds detonated in his living quarters, according to a Department of Defense news release.

“They are constantly on their guard,” Keneally said of the Stryker Brigades in Mosul.

Sean Keneally is concerned not only with getting his men home alive, but also with their emotional health. He told his father some of the enlisted men cannot afford even one phone call back home. A couple of them have been divorced by their wives.

Louise Keneally understands her son’s concern for his soldiers. It is not unlike her feelings for him. She said he is well-trained and capable of making the split-second decisions expected of a platoon commander.

Lt. Keneally, Medical Lake High School class of 1996, graduated in 2003 from West Point Military Academy. He is an Airborne Ranger and a member of Grace Harvest Fellowship.

“I’m trying not to live in fear,” Louise Keneally said. “But we are concerned for his emotional welfare.”

After completing his 12- or 15-month tour of duty in Iraq, she said, he will have the opportunity to return for another. In between tours he will have a short time back home to take the rest he cannot get now.

“I don’t think there is a safe place in Iraq,” she said.