Service & Sacrifice: On the Ground
A snapshot of the burdens being shouldered by brave US troops and military families around the world.
Soldiers with the Arkansas National Guard deploy to Germany to train Ukrainian soldiers from Camp Joseph T. Robinson in North Little Rock, Arkansas, on April 4, 2023.
Europe
A “small” number of US military forces are on the ground in war-torn Ukraine.
The White House confirmed the consequential news after a series of intelligence leaks that The Washington Post reported likely came from someone working on a US military base. The New York Times subsequently reported that a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard had been arrested and charged in the case.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the American troops deployed to Ukraine — a detail not disclosed to the public before the aforementioned classified documents were leaked — are stationed at the US embassy in Kyiv in a non-combat role.
“I won’t talk to the specifics of numbers and that kind of thing,” Kirby told Fox News on Wednesday. “But to get to your exact question, there is a small US military presence at the embassy in conjunction with the Defense Attachés office to help us work on accountability of the material that is going in and out of Ukraine.”
Official confirmation of US military activity inside Ukraine comes as more than 100,000 brave American troops are stationed across Europe amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Just last week, 160 members of the Arkansas National Guard deployed to Germany to spend the next year training Ukrainian military forces. In neighboring Poland, the US military is busy training alongside allied NATO troops.
Please pray for all US military forces serving in Europe, as well as their families here at home.
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Middle East
Another rocket attack targeted American military personnel this week in Syria.
By the grace of God, nobody was injured in the Monday evening attack on Mission Support Site Conoco in the northeastern part of the country. A US military statement also said one rocket “struck in vicinity of the coalition outpost and an additional rocket was found at the attack’s point of origin.”
A rocket attack targeted coalition forces in northeast Syria. pic.twitter.com/bcfGjEy9Qn
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) April 10, 2023
ABC News reports that “the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said that Iran-backed fighters based in eastern Syria might have been behind the attack.” Iran was also believed to be behind the March drone attack that killed an American contractor and wounded 25 US troops, including an additional 11 that were identified as suffering from mild Traumatic Brain Injury on Friday, according to Al Arabiya English.
Please pray for the wounded, the 900 US military personnel stationed in Syria and an additional 2,500 troops serving in neighboring Iraq as they battle terrorists affiliated with ISIS and Iran.
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Coming Home
A group of US Air Force airmen recently returned home to American soil after serving a deployment to the Middle East.
A US Air Force airman embraces his wife upon returning to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida on April 6, 2023.
Welcome home, heroes! Thank you for defending our country from evil.
Tom Sileo is a contributing senior editor of The Stream. He is the author of the recently released Be Bold and co-author of Three Wise Men, Brothers Forever, 8 Seconds of Courage and Fire in My Eyes. Follow Tom on Twitter @TSileo and The Stream at @Streamdotorg.
