   
A world away from home on Mother's Day
By Rick Fahr
Log Cabin Staff Writer
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 1st Squadron 151st Cavalry Regiment CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE ADDER-TALLIL, Iraq Like some moms, Tammy Treat will spend this Mother's Day at work. Unlike most, she'll report for duty at a tactical operations center in a desert thousands of miles from her sons.
Treat, a sergeant first class in the Arkansas Army National Guard, is a member of 1st Squadron, 151st Cavalry Regiment. Attached to the 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, the former Mayflower resident oversees C Troop's daytime operations. She and the Troops, whose home is now at Wilkesboro, N.C., she supervises track convoy escort teams (CETs) on various supply routes and prepare groups for upcoming missions.
For her sons, Sheldon, 16, and Mason, 12, both of Maumelle, this deployment is a source of mixed emotions.
"We're very proud," they said in an e-mail. "But also sad that our Mom is across the ocean participating in it."
E-mail is their primary mode of communication mainly because of the eight-hour difference in time though phone calls are important, too.
The boys said the distance hampers communication but that even electronic talking is helpful.
Day-to-day life deployed in a war-torn country isn't easy, but leaving children behind is more difficult, Treat said.
"There are so many goodbyes we go through when deploying, but that very last one before flying out is the hardest," she explained. "We try to constrain the tears, but once they drove off out of sight, the tears just flowed. The pain of knowing that I am missing my son's 16th birthday and the guilt of missing my younger son's football games it is just all the small things that a mom knows she will miss that make me cry."
A 17-year veteran of the Guard, Treat also deployed in 2003 for a stateside mission. She said that the time away can strengthen family ties.
"I have been in the military the whole of my children's lives. Our bond is a stronger one than most. I try to make them feel proud of their sacrifice."
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