LIVERMORE FALLS – Two Livermore Falls police officers are headed to the Middle East to do their part in the global war on terror. Officers Ken Bryant of Phillips and Brock Caton of Farmington will take on separate missions in separate countries.
Both have been told their deployment could be up to 18 months long.
A third police officer, John Furr, is already overseas. He left in March to serve in Afghanistan.
Caton, who will turn 25 on Jan. 2, is going to Iraq with members of the B Company, 3rd Battalion of the 172nd Mountain Infantry, to do convoy security. The unit, which is known as a quick-reaction force, will also perform special patrols prior to convoys going out.
Bryant, 37, leaves for training the first week of January before going to Afghanistan to be an embedded team trainer and mentor to soldiers in the Afghan National Army.
Caton said his unit’s main focus is convoy security.
Caton, who comes from a family of law enforcers, has belonged to the unit for seven years. His twin brother, Richard Caton IV, is an officer with the Jay Police Department and had formerly belonged to the military unit.
His unit received its deployment orders on Dec. 10 for Jan. 9, Brock Caton said Thursday.
“The reason I signed up is to serve the country,” Caton said. “It makes it hard leaving my family and girlfriend, I just recently bought a house in Farmington, but that’s what I signed up for, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
It’s the first time his unit has been deployed, though both Catons were ready to go early in the war but were not called. up.
“I’m not nervous. I’ll be nervous when I step foot in Iraq,” Brock Caton said.
He’ll train for a short period before heading overseas with deployment starting when he steps foot in Iraq.
The military sergeant, an assistant squad leader and truck commander will help watch over supplies as they’re shipped from base to base.
“I’m going to miss everybody, family, friends, girlfriend and my job,” Caton said.
Bryant, who graduated from the Maine Criminal Justice Academy as valedictorian of his law enforcement class a few years ago, volunteered for the mission and will work with the 53rd Brigade Combat Team while deployed.
“I wanted to be able to do something meaningful,” Bryant said Sunday.
You train year after year to prepare for a mission, he said, and he wants to put his training to work to help others.
“I want to do my part in the global fight against terrorism,” Bryant said.
He realizes, his wife, Lea, will certainly face some challenges to raise their two children, 2 and 4 years old, while he’s gone, he said. But the couple, who will have been married eight years on Jan. 3, have strong support from family and friends, he said.
“It’s sort of one of those bittersweet type of deals,” Bryant said of his leaving his family to serve the country overseas.
His wife is a professor of community health education at the University of Maine at Farmington.
Bryant bought some new equipment for his duty, including a laptop computer, global positioning system and a red dot scope for a sniper rifle.
While Caton faces an active war in Iraq, Bryant said there are some leftover pockets of Al Qaida operations in Afghanistan, and one of the biggest threats he’ll face in that country is land mines.
“Hopefully, Brock and I will go over there and do well performing our respective missions and come back no worse for wear,” Bryant said Sunday.
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