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Through 8 tours, soldier sticks with 2-14

YUSUFIYAH, Iraq — David Schumacher was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry, as an E-2 back in 1991.

Fast forward 16 years and eight deployments to five countries, Schumacher is now the first sergeant for the battalion’s Alpha Company, halfway through his third tour in Iraq — and he still belongs to the same Fort Drum, N.Y.-based infantry battalion.

“I really don’t know of anybody else that has been in the same battalion for so long,” he said. “With eight deployments, it got to the point where you get back from one deployment and you’re already stop-lossed for the next deployment.”

Some have asked whether he should move to a different battalion and experience more of the Army, Schumacher said.

“I don’t know of anybody else that can have my life lessons learned by moving from place to place,” he said. “I think the benefits [of staying with 2-14] are you get to know everybody and everybody gets to know you. You’re stable in your own spot, things are predictable. I’m guaranteed to have a family with the 2-14.”

Schumacher, 37, is a native of Easton, Pa. He graduated from Notre Dame High School in 1988 and took a couple of semesters at North Hampton Community College with the intent of pursuing culinary arts.

“I had no desire to join the military,” he said. “The military was the furthest thing from my mind.”

But when college life didn’t suit him, Schumacher dropped out and started working odd jobs. He stacked packages for UPS and later worked at a grocery store.

One day, a friend who was going to talk to an Army recruiter asked Schumacher to tag along for moral support.

Naturally, the recruiter tried to sell the Army to Schumacher, who said he was interested but tried not to show it.

On April 23, 1991, after six to eight months of indecision and discussing his options with his father, who is a Navy veteran, and recruiters from the other services, Schumacher joined the Army at age 21.

The friend who took him to the recruiter’s office? He didn’t join.

Basic at Benning

Schumacher went to Fort Benning, Ga., for basic training and advanced individual training. In August 1991, the new infantryman moved to Fort Drum, to the 2-14, where he was assigned to the scout platoon.

While in the scout platoon, Schumacher deployed to provide relief after Hurricane Andrew. They were in Florida for less than two months.

In spring 1993, by then an E-4, Schumaker was assigned to Bravo Company and had to ask for time off almost right away so he could attend his wedding. On April 17, 1993, Schumacher, then 23, married a woman named Robin, whom he had met a year earlier in one of his platoon’s favorite hangouts. Today, the couple has two sons, Michael, 21, and David, 13.

Four months after he got married, Schumacher deployed to Somalia for four months. His battalion was involved in the fighting made famous by the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.”

It was Oct. 3, 1993. Schumacher and the other soldiers of Bravo Company had just finished a day of live-fire training when they saw tracer rounds in the distance. Red tracers flew in one direction, countered by green tracers flying in the other direction. They also saw helicopters swoop in to perform strafing runs.

almost immediately, they got a call from battalion to load up and prepare to fight, because two Black Hawks had been shot down.

The soldiers waited by the landing zone for hours, all the time watching helicopters that would fly in carrying soldiers in body bags.

By the time Bravo Company was called in, the fiercest fighting had stopped, and commanders needed volunteers to drive 2.5-ton trucks to pull U.S. forces out of the area.

Schumacher volunteered.

“I don’t know why,” he said. “We were waiting there all night. You could see the fire all night, Black Hawks coming in with body bags, you could hear it the whole time on the radio. It gets your heart going. You want to go in there and do your thing.”

He was deployed to Haiti with Charlie Company for four months in 1994, straight from Somalia. In 1997, he deployed to Bosnia as an E-5 and spent five months there. He went to Ranger school two years later.

in 2001, Schumacher returned to the scout platoon, this time as the platoon sergeant, and almost immediately deployed to Kosovo for a year.

In March 2003, he deployed with his unit to Iraq. It would be the first of his three deployments there, including the current one.

Schumacher said he’s been deployed every year since Kosovo in 2001. His family is strong, but the multiple deployments have started to take their toll.

“The kids are getting older, deployments are getting longer,” he said. “This one was tough because before we left, [my wife’s] mom had a stroke, her dad has Alzheimer’s. It’s tough. There have been plenty of times when I call home and the wife will unload because she’s had a bad day. It’s tough because there’s nothing I can do.”

But his wife is tough, Schumacher said.

“She’s been through it all,” he said. “It just seems every time I’m gone, the worst happens. She’s tougher than I’ll ever be.”

‘Same old knucklehead’

Despite his impressive record, Schumacher said he hasn’t changed much.

“I think I’m still the same old knucklehead I was 10 years ago,” he said. “But I respect everything more. Somebody that has not seen third-world countries does not or will not respect the little things they have, like running water or [being able to use] a toilet.”

Schumacher credits his laid-back personality for his being able to cope with his Army career.

“I don’t get all excited or fired up if something doesn’t go my way,” he said. “There’s no sense in adding stress to a situation that’s already stressful.”

He enjoys being the first sergeant, but Schumacher said he hates that he can’t go on patrol with his soldiers as often as he’d like.

“It kills me a lot of the time that I can’t go out with those guys all the time,” he said. “I feel guilty a lot of the time that those guys are going out and I’m sitting here.”

He said that after this deployment he would like to leave the 2-14 and maybe get a ROTC job somewhere near Fort Drum before retiring after 20 years of service.

“If retiring at 20 means declining my look at command sergeant major, so be it,” he said. “It’d be nice to retire at the top of my game, but I’ve already exceeded my expectations when I joined the military. If I were to retire as an E-8 today, I have no regrets.”

He does wonder, though, how he will adjust to civilian life.

“I will miss the camaraderie” of the military, he said. “Nothing I do after this will ever compare.”