Lyndonville Unsung Hero
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- Created on Friday, 01 May 2015 14:34
- Written by Vincent Boccanfuso
LYNDON – Sometimes there is a lot more to a person than most people see, and that is exactly what Charlie Forrest is. The Lyndon State Public Saftey Officer has had ties to the Northeast Kingdom all of his life.
Forrest never flew far from the nest, being born in St. Johsnbury, and growing up in Lyndonville. Other than traveling out west, building cell towers, the longest periods of time that he would leave the North East Kingdom would be to serve four years and in U.S army, and another 21 years in the National Guard.
"Dessert storm broke out, and I wanted to go over and help, so I signed up with the Army." Said Forrest.
Although he signed up and wanted to help with Dessert Storm, he never got to serve there because it ended two weeks before he finished his basic training. Instead, he was deployed for his first tour to Korea, a deployment lasting from 1991-'92.
Charlie Forrest came back to Vermont and worked at the St. Johnsbury Corrections facility until his next deployment from 2005-2006 to Ramadi, Iraq. With the task of securing the area and making sure incursions weren't disturbing the population unnecessarily, Forrest found himself in the middle of 33 firefights.
Charlie got a three-year break between his deployment to Iraq, and his next deployment in 2009-2010 to Afghanistan.
"Problem was we were isolated, no air support, which meant he was to be self sufficient," Forrest said. "We could be fighting for hours before we got any kind of help and at that point, we were all beat" He faced 183 firefights while serving in Afghanistan.
"They [Taliban] had us completely surrounded twice, I don't even know how we got out alive." He was deployed to be the outlining securing for an Airforce base, which was still another two and a half hours from his base, and his platoon raided villages to secure them from the Taliban.
"The Taliban would shoot at us with 6 foot rockets from the mountains, then charge the base with AK 47s, and RPGs, it wasn't pretty." According to Forrest.
Miraculously in all of the firefights, not a single member of his platoon got injured in a single fight, which could have been accredited to the fact that most of his platoon consisted of Iraq Veterans.
"The ones in our platoon that weren't vets learned quickly from us I guess, otherwise, they would be dead." Forrest stated.
"Being engaged, I say your training takes over and everything kind of slows down. It kind of hard to believe but your senses open up and your just looking to see whose shooting at you, and you engage back." Forrest recalled.
"The first time you get shot at is a little different, it's interesting but you don't know what it's like until it actually happens to you."
"Then the funny thing happens, when it happens enough it becomes a normality, it seems like another day in the office."