WILTON – When Karen Corbin tucked her youngest son, Carl, into bed Monday, she told him she wouldn’t be there when he woke up.

But when she went back later to give him a final kiss, he woke up for the goodbye.

It was the last time they would see each other for maybe a year or longer.

Sgt. Corbin, mother of three and a member of the 133rd Combat Engineer Company 6, Detachment 1 of the Army National Guard, is scheduled to be activated to full-time military service Saturday.

The carpenter-mason said she believes she’ll be heading overseas to war-torn countries of Iraq or Afghanistan to rebuild schools, roads and bridges. She doesn’t know for sure, though. She won’t until it’s time to go.

Mother and son did have a chance to spend a whole day together Monday and celebrated Carl’s 10th birthday a few days early.

He is such a sweet kid, Corbin said, wiping her eyes.

At one point, Corbin said he told her, “Mom, I’m sorry for all the bad things I did when I was young.”

After the goodbyes at 3 a.m. Tuesday, Corbin left her sister’s home in Virginia, where her son will stay while she’s gone, and drove back home to Wilton.

On Wednesday morning, Corbin, 36, was at a Jay hair salon getting her long, brown hair cut so it will fit under her helmet.

Several long strands of hair sat wrapped in tinfoil on a table in her apartment that afternoon.

She planned to send a lock to Carl and give locks to her oldest sons, Chris Veilleux, 15, and Cory Veilleux, 13, who live in Jay with their dad.

She received the call to duty Nov. 10. She has served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps and 13 years in the Army National Guard.

As a single parent, she didn’t want the call to come.

“You’re hoping they don’t call, but if they need you, you go. It’s part of the job,” she said.

“I don’t mind going over. It doesn’t upset me to go over to work.” Her only concern is being transported.

“Flying over on a helicopter and traveling on land. That’s where you get ambushed,” she said.

“The hardest part is I’ll miss my kids,” Corbin said, wiping more tears from her eyes.

While she regrets the time she’ll miss with her sons, she felt lucky in one sense: Her sons are older. “There are soldiers in my unit who have newborns, and this year they’re going to miss out on the first year of their children’s growth. When they’re learning, their first step, their first words. They’re going to miss out on all those special things.”

Corbin still had much to do. She had to pack her “cammies,” enough personal things to go at least three months, and her tools.

“We’re told to expect the worst,” she said.

She thinks families of military personnel sacrifice the most.

“They didn’t sign up for this,” Corbin said. “They have to hold the fort while we’re gone, and they have to take care of the responsibilities that are ours.”

Hopefully, she said, everybody will leave and come back in the same health they left in. “Otherwise, if we don’t come back, that’s going to tear them apart.”

dperry@sunjournal.com

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