The most valuable person left behind

The most valuable person to a deployed soldier is the person left behind. Every deployed soldier has a person who he or she had to leave behind, whether it is a parent, a friend, or a significant other. These special people keep the deployed soldier's life running as smoothly as it can, and they do all of this with little or no recognition. Those people behind the scenes deserve all the recognition in the world for the long hours they commit to all of the deployed soldiers' loose ends.

I would like to say a very heartfelt thank you to the person that I left behind to pick up where I left off a year ago. Sarah Skrabacz made sure that my finances were in order, never missing a payment. I am one course from completing my Master's degree; my dog and cat were very well taken care of, and so were my fellow soldiers while we were in Iraq due to the continuous flow of packages.

This is only a small portion of everything that Sarah has done to keep my world running smoothly while gone so that I could come home and transition as smoothly as possible. No one else has put as much effort and thought into my deployment as my fiancé did. With that in mind, please remember to thank those people who are left behind and do everything they can to make deployments as smooth as they can be from the home front.

Sgt. Neal P. Fuchs

West Chicago