Columbia Falls veteran's unit helped clear IEDs in Iraq

Kellie Barker remembers lying awake at night in the Iraqi desert and trying to remember the favorite smells of her home in North Dakota as she finally drifted off.

“All of a sudden you’re 3 years old again. Then you wake up and it’s 112 degrees and you gotta get through another day.”

Not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, an Army National Guard recruiter came calling to Barker’s small hometown of Bowman, North Dakota, pitching the Guard as an opportunity not to be missed.

“On paper it looked like a good deal,” she recalled. “It’s something I never expected to fall into.”

Barker was just 17 years old that fall of 2002.

Because her parents were divorced she needed the signature of only one parent to enlist, so she got her father to sign.

“Guess what I did? I joined the Guard,” Barker recalled telling her mother, pausing to confide, “she was not happy with that decision.

“It was imminent we were going to war ... I looked at it as a personal challenge, almost daring myself to do it,” said Barker, now 31. “I was shy and quiet then ... the military teases that out of you.”

She graduated from Bowman High School in 2003, and by the spring of 2004 was in Kuwait, a staging ground for the Iraq War. Thirty days later Barker headed to Tikrit.

Barker’s National Guard unit in Dickinson, North Dakota, was attached to the 141st Engineer Combat Battalion. She worked as a mechanic in the motor pool — one of only three women in that pool — providing recovery support for convoy resupply missions.

Her mechanical ability had been shaped on the ranch where she was adept at fixing things. Sitting behind a desk didn’t appeal to her, so of her three choices as a female with a combat battalion — office work, medic or mechanic, she chose mechanic.

“I always like tinkering,” she said.

After nine months in Tikrit her battalion moved to Taji, a rural district north of Baghdad, where it was “boots on the ground” for 12 months.

“Our unit’s mission was to clear routes,” Barker said. “We were literally looking for IEDs (improvised explosive devices). Our guys were in the thick of it.”

Barker participated in a number of missions. Three soldiers in her battalion were killed. She said she was fortunate that she “never had to see much engagement.”

Coming from rural North Dakota, Barker knew many of her fellow soldiers very well.

“You end up barbecuing with these people,” she added.

Looking back to when she was 18, Barker said the sense of how long a year was didn’t really resonate. She’d never spent time away from home.

“At that age you’re not emotionally prepared to go to war,” she reflected. “People with 20 years in the Guard had never been deployed ... You get thrown into a situation where you’re expected to have some political stance or some deep, moving sense of patriotism when you’re really trying to get through each day without focusing on how much you miss your family.

“There are times when I wish I would have been a little more emotionally ready, just to absorb the experience,” she said.

Barker spent six and a half years total in the Army National Guard, achieving the rank of sergeant.

After returning from Iraq there was a slot for a flight medic on board a Black Hawk medivac helicopter, so she switched gears, trained to be a flight medic and headed out on a second deployment to Kosovo in 2008-09. Barker was part of a peace-keeping mission in Sarajevo.

“Aside from my new job as a medic, which I loved, the mission was a lot more benign. Emotionally it was a lot easier to deal with,” Barker recalled.

By that time soldiers were able to use Skype videoconferencing to keep in touch with loved ones.

Barker’s goal after completing her military service was to go to medical school and return to active duty. She completed her undergraduate degree in environmental biology with a minor in chemistry, and was midway through the admissions process for med school when she met her husband-to-be, Nick Barker. He owned his own company and worked in the oilfield. They dated through the remainder of her senior year and plans veered down another path for Barker.

They married and moved to Whitefish and now have two daughters, Harper Grace, 2 1/2, and Tipper Jo, 4 months. Nick is now an oilfield consultant and Barker is a stay-at-home mom.

“Hands down being a mom is way harder than any day in the desert,” she said with a smile.

Barker has kept in touch with many of the veterans she served alongside. Social media makes it easy to stay in contact. She’s noticed a particular bond among those who have deployed during war time, even if they’re from a different generation.

The military shaped Barker in many ways, and she’s grateful for that.

“My time in the military was priceless in the development of who I am,” she reflected.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.