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CNN Live At Daybreak

America Strikes Back: Soldiers from Fort Drum, New York Taking Part in U.S. Military Action in Afghanistan

Aired October 09, 2001 - 08:54   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Also taking part in the U.S. military Action in Afghanistan, soldiers from Fort Drum, New York. One- thousand members of the 10th Mountain Division have been deployed to Uzbekistan.

And CNN's Bill Delaney traveled to Fort Drum, where he found people more concerned now than they have been for quite a long time.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Army's Fort Drum near Watertown, New York, 30 miles from the Canadian border, under a veil of silence, secrecy and security, more intense than in memory, where just about everyone is in the military or knows someone who is. Local people, even usually well informed local newspapers unclear about this deployment, in what promises to be a stealthy war. A thousand soldiers from Fort Drum's 10th Mountain Division deployed to Uzbekistan near the Afghan border over the weekend. Few locally seem to know just when the troops left, or even if they left from the division's home post of Fort Drum, making for a unusual degree of uncertainty at communities of military housing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am proud of it, but it is just very scary, you know. I am afraid for my husband, I am afraid and for my friends, you know, and just pray a lot, that's all.

DELANEY: Locals close to 10th division military families say many more wives and parents than usual right now have no idea where they're husbands, sons and daughters are.

(on camera): Even here in Watertown, where military comings and goings are so almost routine, with the 10th Mountain Division deploying repeatedly throughout the 1990s, to the Persian Gulf, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo. Many here say this time, this conflict just feels different.

(voice-over): Amid secrecy, a new sense of vulnerability, too.

HANK MCCARTY: We're nervous about this war because this is something new. This terrorism stuff is something we've never experienced before, so I think everybody has the same anxiety.

DELANEY: Ad Ed Krupkin Apex Army and Navy store, for 44 years, he's seen the 10th Mountain Division come and go.

ED KRUPKIN, STORE OWNER: This one really seems to have touched home since we have had the attack on our own country, in our own country.

DELANEY: A thousand soldiers from the 10th now in Uzbekistan, in a war far from a little upstate New York town and never so close to home.

Bill Delaney, CNN, Watertown, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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