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Suzanne Adkinson talks about a soldier called “Wild.” Wild was hit by “incoming round fragments” while in Iraq. There is kidney damage. He’s urinating blood. Adkinson sits with the 26-year-old soldier, who has spent three tours in Iraq, while he and his mom eat lunch. “I want to get back to my mission,” Adkinson remembers him saying. “They need me.” But he can’t – his injuries too severe. She tries to help him understand.
“I err on the side of the soldier,” says Adkinson. Turns out she is Wild’s superior officer. Her title: U.S. Army Colonel. Suzanne Adkinson is the first female commander of the Battlefield Surveillance Brigade of the Texas Army National Guard since it was activated in 1917 (it was previously called the 71st Infantry Brigade). Adkinson was promoted to her current rank last spring. But to Wild and others she’s also a guardian angel.
As we talk, Adkinson is on a layover in the Charlotte airport. Despite impressive military credentials, even she gets stuck while traveling. “My existence is based on the needs and desires of the soldiers to get the mission done,” explains Adkinson. Whether it’s getting a family to San Antonio to see their child as he or she arrives wounded at Brooke Army Medical Center or sitting bedside as counselor and chief encourager, Adkinson speaks humbly. “It’s not about me. I’m the figurehead.” This observer is doubtful, for as we talk, Adkinson mentions the reason she’s traveling through Charlotte is to attend a graduation ceremony. Two soldiers under her command are graduating from Special Forces School, which she laughs, “is no little camp.” The message her presence will send is as powerful as any words. “We are here in force to see you graduate” – or – the Army’s got your back.
The solidarity soldiers feel is “like no other relationship you can describe,” says
Adkinson, trying to explain the drive of a young man like Wild. The men and women of the Army are, “outside the wire, in harm’s way, you could be killed … there is a bond like no other.” Yet, “they are there voluntarily.” Adkinson is a liaison, a guardian, for soldiers between the front and home. She’ll make sure Wild’s mother has a place to stay when visiting her son at Brooke Army Medical Center. Adkinson oversees 1,600 soldiers in her Texas Army National Guard Brigade. Her command offers support and logistics.
Colonel Suzanne Adkinson radiates self-assuredness. “Something drastic has to change in my life every three years,” she says, “otherwise it feels complacent.” Yet before the picture of a type-A Army officer fully forms in your mind, she laughs, “Because you don’t want to think, the ‘Good Idea Fairies’ have left.” There is quite a bit bubbling under that Army veneer. Adkinson and her husband Jeff, also a Texas Army National Guard Colonel, live between Austin and San Antonio where they keep two longhorns, a couple of horses, a bevy of feral felines and four children. Two youngsters and her two older stepchildren.
About seven years ago, around the time Adkinson turned 40, she signed up for a three-week anti-terrorism course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. During off-hours she’d run. As her path led her around the base something caught her eye, and apparently her heart. “The family area. I called Jeff that night,” she remembers, “and said ‘I’m ready to have a baby.’” Ever efficient, or as Adkinson says, “anal,” she announced, “I want to have the baby on my birthday.” Jeff Adkinson chided, “It doesn’t work that way,” – and yet Ty Adkinson indeed arrived just six days shy of his mom’s birthday. It likely won’t surprise you to learn that three years later the Adkinsons had a second baby, Tori.
It appears the “good idea fairies” are punctual. Fast-forward three years, to summer 2009, and Jeff Adkinson is preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. When he returns, Colonel Suzanne Adkinson will take his place. Learning of the work being done in the Ghanzi Provence by these National Guard Troops, you nearly forget the toll the combined tours will take on this family. “It’s all about teaching the Afghan nation about being a better farmer,” says Adkinson. She and her husband will both take part in the Agriculture Development Team. (Adkinson has a degree in Agriculture and Animal Science from the University of California and a Masters in Sociology from Texas A&M.) They’ll work with the Afghan people on hydrology, plant science, agricultural science; building a better infrastructure. For example, troops now have “a slaughter house facility set up and actually working,” which Adkinson explains will no doubt be more sanitary and healthier. It’s not about providing an American-made John Deere tractor, she says, but about providing Afghans with equipment they can use and repair on their own, to become a productive village
“Momma, are you going to leave us?” asks young Ty, thinking about deployment. “They don’t understand the concept of time,” says Adkinson. Yet there’s plenty her children do understand. Ty just finished Kindergarten at Fort Sam Houston’s elementary where there is a deep unspoken education. “There are parents who come back who are missing something, a leg, or are burned.” The Adkinson family: also part of a productive village.
Colonel Suzanne Adkinson speaks of another injured soldier, a man in his 40s who was at a forward operation base in Iraq checking vehicles when he was hit. He suffered a chest wound, a collapsed lung, yet he plans to return. Consider – on the printed-program for Adkinson’s promotion and Change of Command ceremony there was an Army seal, in the design is the phrase, “Always Watching.” The motto may offer that returning soldier comfort, and defines Colonel Adkinson’s mission.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
Large and In Charge
Col. Suzanne Adkinson’s command, the 71st Battlefield Surveillance Brigade (BfSB), consists of the following units:
Headquarters & Headquarters Company, 71st BfSB
636 Military Intelligence Battalion (currently deployed to Afghanistan)
3-124 Reconnaissance & Surveillance Squadron (B Troop currently deployed to Iraq)
1-143 Infantry Battalion (Airborne)
112 Brigade Support Company
C Company, 5/19 Special Forces Group
236 Network Support Company
Agricultural Development Team 2 (deployed to Afghanistan)
Agricultural Development Team 3 (deploys to Afghanistan this Fall)