COVID-19 means special challenges for overseas troops. And those in Bradenton trying to help

Armed services members long ago coined the phrase, “Hurry up and wait,” for the way the military will hustle and bustle troops to a designated location only to make them wait for hours on end for the next set of orders.

The coronavirus pandemic has taken that phrase to necessary extremes for local soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who have deployed or who are getting ready to head overseas.

Marine Sgt. Justin Miesner, a Bradenton native and Manatee High School grad, serves as a foreign security advisor in the reserves. Miesner signed up out of high school in 2011 and has been serving ever since.

“I joined right out of high school became I have family who were prior Marines,” Miesner said. “I knew the Marines could create a foundation to build my life on.”

Miesner was in the Arctic Circle, staged out of Norway, for a NATO cold-weather military exercise in March when the pandemic began spreading across the globe in earnest. Norway health officials stepped in and that’s when Miesner got his first taste of serving amid a global pandemic.

“I just came home from a deployment in January and then deployed to Norway for the exercises,” Miesner said. “Everything started to close down and back home had just begun restricting tourists and foreigners. The exercise hadn’t even started yet when one country pulled out and two weeks in, Norway health advisors asked us to cease and desist and quarantine.”

Not just quarantine, but quarantine in place.

In the Arctic Circle.

But Miesner said the troops were adequately supplied with the necessary equipment to stay warm, “So we did that for two weeks. The biggest thing was the uncertainty of if and if we were going to be able to get back home, but luckily we had on our own flight. The second biggest thing was worrying about if anyone was sick because there was about 100 of us in this big tent and if one person was sick, we were all screwed.”

Luckily, that didn’t happen so Miesner’s unit was able to get back to the states, but had to immediately quarantine for another two weeks upon arriving to Camp Lejeune, N.C. Essentially he spent the first month and a half of the pandemic in quarantine.

Miesner is getting ready to deploy again later this year to the Republic of Georgia, where he spent the majority of last year. There will be more quarantines and getting used to new procedures as the pandemic continues.

“There’s a lot of we don’t know and we don’t know whens,” Miesner said. “We are getting tested routinely for COVID-19 beforehand and there will be more quarantines, which means many weeks of doing nothing essentially before we can perform our regular duties. I guess that’s the new protocol for now.”

Miesner’s new, and hopefully temporary, normal life in the military amid a pandemic isn’t unique. Troops being deployed anywhere and everywhere are going through the same thing.

Military moms to the rescue

About two weeks ago, a group of Marines who just arrived on the Japanese island of Okinawa were undergoing quarantine and were supplied with moldy prepackaged sandwiches with a 2018 packaging date.

The official U.S. Marines response was that the issue was quickly identified and resolved, but acknowledged the incident as a mistake.

What wasn’t in most of the media stories about the incident is that the Marines who were quarantined turned to the only folks who would ensure they got some food: their mothers.

One of the Marines is from Sarasota and when his mother got the call from her son saying he was hungry, she turned to those who make sure deployed military members have a little piece of home.

“Those Marines started calling their mothers asking for food because they were starving,” said Linda Craig, director of Manasota Operation Troop Support. “Those moms called us and the Marines said they didn’t want anything else but food so we sent them some hearty things to eat.”

MOTS is a nonprofit organization based in Bradenton that not only sends monthly care packages to area troops serving overseas, but ensures that their families at home are taken care of in the process.

MOTS, too, is suffering amid the pandemic and thanks only to some quick-thinking adaptations, has enough funding in place for a few more months.

“But we almost didn’t make it,” Craig said. “We really felt the impact and I’ve been working double time because we can’t bring in our volunteers for packing parties and we’ve had to cancel a lot of our major fundraising events. We get a lot of our food donated from restaurants and churches and they had to close for awhile.”

Facing a severe food donation shortage, Craig said her 25-year-old granddaughter came up with the idea to start a food gift registry on Amazon.com. All of the food purchased is shipped to MOTS where it is packed and sent to local troops serving overseas.

“And it worked,” Craig said. “That’s how we are fulfilling that particular need right now.”

But it’s a temporary save and there are plenty of other needs, which take dollars. It costs almost $20 a package to send out to local troops serving overseas and those are just the typical food, toiletry and fun activity packages. MOTS tries to fulfill every need.

One solider in Saudi Arabia dealing with temperatures around 110 degrees wanted a fan. She got three and a personal air conditioner from MOTS.

Other items have been sent overseas like a guitar and even a mattress topper. MOTS also takes care of dependents at home with Christmas presents abdschool supplies and is currently trying to find a refrigerator for a military family without a working one.

They help with gas, bills and even vehicle mechanical issues if the money is there, which it currently isn’t.

“We took out a small business loan and got a PPE loan, so we have some funding until the end of the year, but a lot of charities are hurting right now and money is really an issue.,” Craig said. “We think we have a temporary fix for our food problem and in the meantime to offset the loss of our fundraisers, we are doing a Facebook raffle.”

There are certain restrictions doing a Facebook raffle, but if anyone would like to participate, friend request Craig on her own Facebook page and she can send you an invitation to participate, as Facebook requires them to be private. To learn more about MOTS and how you can help, visit the MOTSFL Facebook page.

“We can’t forget them,” Craig said. “That’s the one thing. We never want our veterans to be forgotten.”