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Maplewood resident helps troops in Iraq stay connected
(by Kara Krekeler - July 22, 2009)
Like many other young Americans, Maplewood resident Andrew Chapelle was recently deployed to Iraq.
But Chapelle isn’t in the military. Instead, the 25-year-old St. Louis University graduate went to the war-torn country as a civilian working for the American Red Cross. While there, he is providing communications support to the troops, helping them keep in contact with family and friends in the states.
“We provide a link to keep them accessible at all times,” Chapelle said from Fort Benning, Ga., just hours before boarding the flight that would take him to Baghdad. “The Red Cross has tools for emergency messages to be passed along — things like deaths, illnesses, births.”
In the days leading up to his deployment, Chapelle said that he and the rest of the Red Cross workers felt a degree of “reserved excitement” about their upcoming duties. “It’s not anything that’s appropriate to be excited about, but we’re excited about the services we’ll provide.”
To prepare for the deployment, Chapelle participated in a month-long training camp in Washington, D.C., learning combat first aid and how to detect an IED, among other things. He was also given inoculations for a handful of diseases — including anthrax and smallpox — and was handed nearly $5,000 worth of gear, including body armor, that Chapelle said he really hopes he doesn’t have to use.
“I’m fully aware of the security situation,” he said, adding that he’s “not really worried. I’m a news junkie, so it’s not that I’m unaware of what’s going on over there.”
Chapelle credited his relative comfort with the mission to a trip he took last year to Israel and the West Bank, which he said gave him a good experience in traveling to daunting destinations. While everything he’d heard before that trip indicated constant danger on the streets, when he arrived in the Middle East he found that it wasn’t nearly as scary as he’d anticipated.
“When I told people last year that I was going to the Middle East, they were ranting and raving,” he said. This time, his family and friends approached his journey with more acceptance. “They know that I may go places where it might not be the safest, but if I feel like I’m helping and serving people, that’s where I need to be.”
While this is his first deployment with the Red Cross, it isn’t Chapelle’s first foray into organized public service. As someone who said he has long dreamed of working with an international aid organization, Chapelle began searching just after his graduation from SLU in 2006 for a job on www.idealist.org, an online public service database. There, he found a job in Louisiana, working with volunteers and helping rebuild homes in a parish that was still recovering from 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.
He’s also spent a year teaching in China, during which his mother died. He was able to leave his teaching post to return to the states for her funeral, but said that being able to talk with his dad over the phone and his supervisor in China helped him cope with the loss. Chapelle said he hopes he’s able to serve a similar role for the soldiers in Iraq.
“I know what it was like to be really far away during a family emergency, and I think I’ll be a better caseworker because of it,” he said. “It’s what drew me to the position. I’ll be the calm, often-smiling face that can be there for them.”
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