Read more: Local, State
COLUMBIA -- Family and friends packed the Hearnes Center in Columbia Saturday afternoon to bid farewell to one thousand soldiers headed overseas.
The Missouri National Guard soldiers are headed to Kosovo for a year -long peacekeeping mission in the newly independent state.
The road to peace in Kosovo will be paved by their bootstraps.
"I'm ready for it. This is what we train for. It's always the unknown that you kind of worry about, but that's what we train for, so I'm ready to go." Said Spc. Gerard Wilson, MO National Guard.
One thousand Missouri citizen soldiers will train for a couple more months and then will head off to Kosovo by June.
For Sgt. Vera Howard, who is a grandmother of two, the call of duty was a loud one.
"It just feels good when you do something that you feel proud of doing. It's a feel good thing." Said Sgt. Vera Howard, MO National Guard.
The soldiers say it's the little things they'll miss the most.
"Going out for breakfast on a Saturday morning, or watching that Monday night football game with the family. Those kinds of things." Said Brig. Gen. Larry Kay, MO National Guard.
"A year without mom’s cooking. You get the same thing everyday or every week, just in a different order." Said Sgt. Patrick Sykes, MO National Guard.
But they try to remember that home is only as far away as the nearest homepage.
"I think we'll have a lot of support as far as the Internet goes. I think I'll be able to keep in contact very well, so that will definitely be the hardest part of it, but I know we'll get through it." Said Ssg. Crystal Jensen, MO National Guard.
This is the Missouri National Guard's largest single unit deployment of soldiers since World War One.
The Missouri soldiers will be joining sixteen thousand other troops deployed in Kosovo.
