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CNN Live Today

Talk with Member of National Guard in Missouri

Aired May 07, 2003 - 10:26   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: A lot of the progress that's being made today is the result of work of volunteers. Part of those volunteers are coming from the local National Guard.
Captain Gerald Green is with us. This is your home for the National Guard, the armory, right at ground zero, for the tornado that came through.

Were any of your men inside at the time?

CAPT. GERALD GREEN, NATIONAL GUARD: Not at all. We are actually mobilized in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. We'll be leaving out here in the next few weeks to go over to Iraq.

MATTINGLY: That's right. You have orders that you're going to Iraq right now. But your men all decided to take leave time right now to act as volunteers to help the community?

GREEN: Yes, sir. When we found out that there was a tornado that came through Pierce City, and literally annihilated downtown here, we asked to volunteer to go, take our own leave time, would everyone like to do that? And I didn't have a single person that said, let's go.

MATTINGLY: We're looking at video right now. There's a picture of the sign of the battalion that on the armory here. That was found about a block away. You're taking that with you to Iraq now?

GREEN: Taking it with us.

MATTINGLY: There was someone in your group whose wife was killed, one of the five people killed in this county. How did that affect your unit?

GREEN: It just shows us how much of a family we are. We all bounded around that soldier. It was a very unfortunate incident, but it brought us closer together because of it.

MATTINGLY: When you have this kind of devastation at home, it's hard to be deployed overseas at any time. But the fact that you have something like this happening at home, does it make that much harder for you to leave home and family right now?

GREEN: Twice as much. We have what they call a family support group, ladies, wives, mothers that have all bonded together during this process. They have chipped in just as much as have during this ordeal. MATTINGLY: On last question, something I noticed, some of your men were actually collecting pieces of the rock from the armory to take home with them as souvenirs. Why the emotional attachment to this building?

GREEN: Not really souvenirs. We're taking a lot of the brick, a lot of the rock, help pass them off to whoever's going to rebuild our armory for us while we're gone. We're also going to take those bricks and build a castle out of it, a symbol of an engineer to the castle.

Well, a piece of history and part of the future for this town. Thank you very much for being with us.

As you can see, Daryn, right now, the bulldozers are in full mode right here, ready to load onto about 50 dump trucks, 50 vehicles, that they have acquired to haul this stuff away. Here's one of the first ones coming in to finally clean up the town.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired May 7, 2003 - 10:26   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: A lot of the progress that's being made today is the result of work of volunteers. Part of those volunteers are coming from the local National Guard.
Captain Gerald Green is with us. This is your home for the National Guard, the armory, right at ground zero, for the tornado that came through.

Were any of your men inside at the time?

CAPT. GERALD GREEN, NATIONAL GUARD: Not at all. We are actually mobilized in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. We'll be leaving out here in the next few weeks to go over to Iraq.

MATTINGLY: That's right. You have orders that you're going to Iraq right now. But your men all decided to take leave time right now to act as volunteers to help the community?

GREEN: Yes, sir. When we found out that there was a tornado that came through Pierce City, and literally annihilated downtown here, we asked to volunteer to go, take our own leave time, would everyone like to do that? And I didn't have a single person that said, let's go.

MATTINGLY: We're looking at video right now. There's a picture of the sign of the battalion that on the armory here. That was found about a block away. You're taking that with you to Iraq now?

GREEN: Taking it with us.

MATTINGLY: There was someone in your group whose wife was killed, one of the five people killed in this county. How did that affect your unit?

GREEN: It just shows us how much of a family we are. We all bounded around that soldier. It was a very unfortunate incident, but it brought us closer together because of it.

MATTINGLY: When you have this kind of devastation at home, it's hard to be deployed overseas at any time. But the fact that you have something like this happening at home, does it make that much harder for you to leave home and family right now?

GREEN: Twice as much. We have what they call a family support group, ladies, wives, mothers that have all bonded together during this process. They have chipped in just as much as have during this ordeal. MATTINGLY: On last question, something I noticed, some of your men were actually collecting pieces of the rock from the armory to take home with them as souvenirs. Why the emotional attachment to this building?

GREEN: Not really souvenirs. We're taking a lot of the brick, a lot of the rock, help pass them off to whoever's going to rebuild our armory for us while we're gone. We're also going to take those bricks and build a castle out of it, a symbol of an engineer to the castle.

Well, a piece of history and part of the future for this town. Thank you very much for being with us.

As you can see, Daryn, right now, the bulldozers are in full mode right here, ready to load onto about 50 dump trucks, 50 vehicles, that they have acquired to haul this stuff away. Here's one of the first ones coming in to finally clean up the town.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com