PORT ANGELES – Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Thayer, 50, had spent nearly a career’s worth of time in the National Guard seeing no action.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, he has been deployed three times, seen extensive action and now is medically retired after an explosion wounded him in Afghanistan.
Before his first activation, his time in the National Guard was spent in training and on the Counter-Drug Support Task Force.
After Sept. 11, 2001, he volunteered for federal duty, and at the dusk of his military career Thayer saw extensive action as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as being called up for duty to help with Hurricane Katrina recovery in New Orleans.
In addition to his National Guard duties he worked for Crown Distributing prior to his deployments.
“It is something that as a Budweiser salesman in Port Angeles, Washington, you just don’t expect to see,” he said.
Thayer, who graduated from Port Angeles High School in 1976, joined the Army right of high school just after he married his sweetheart, Kathy.
After a period of no active military duty from 1980 through 1989, he joined the National Guard.
“I’ve been in ever since,” he said.
He graduated from Peninsula College in 1998 and plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree in environmental science.
Since Sept. 11, he has been activated a total of three times.
He spent April 2003 to June 2004 in Iraq as a platoon leader.
His duties in Iraq were those of a platoon leader. In addition to leading his team in missions, he often helped them out on a personal level.
“You hear from this guy who just lost his house and car or to this other guy whose wife is running around on them and try and help them out best you can,” he said.
“There is a lot of baby-sitting along with the leading, too.”
In Afghanistan, his team of about 16 soldiers were helping train Afghan soldiers to defend themselves, he said.
“The idea is for them to eventually be able to defend themselves,” he said.
“It is difficult, though, because not everyone we talked to seemed to want to learn.”
For the first six months of duty in Iraq in 2003, he and his wife had only very sporadic contact.
“We didn’t have anything to write on, so sometimes we’d tear off a piece of a box and write on that, like a postcard side, and send it out,” Thayer said.
“Even then it would be four or five months before she would get it from me.”
Now the veteran is unable to work because of wounds he received while in Afghanistan.
While on routine patrol, the vehicle he was in was hit with an improvised explosive device.
“I was thrown quite a ways and the next thing I knew I woke up in Germany,” Thayer said.
He now is undergoing physical therapy to help his knee heal as well as counseling to work through some post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms he has.
Although the events in Iraq and Afghanistan could have invoked some issues, what haunts him most is time he spent in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
“I was working on corpse recovery,” he said.
“In Iraq it was more of a faceless enemy. Sometimes they would shoot at us over the wall and take off and we would never see them at all.
“But in New Orleans I was there recovering the bodies of mothers and sisters and children.”
For now, Thayer cannot return to work because he isn’t able to pass the physical requirements because of the damage done to his knee during the explosion.
“I haven’t received any disability yet,” he said.
“I’m waiting to find out from the [Department of] Veterans Affairs if I will be approved, or at what level I’ll be approved to receive disability.”
As he recovers from his wounds, Thayer has spent time with his two grown children, Christina Acuna of Puyallup and Joshua Thayer of Port Angeles, as well has his six grandchildren.
He also helps with officiating for local high school sports.
