The coaches were already idling at the curb outside, ready to take him and his comrades on a series of long, slow steps to Iraq. And Gabe Fasbender wasn't about to lie about how he felt.
"This," he said, "is the worst day of my life."
Elena, 14 months, squirmed in his arms. Roman, 8 weeks, squirmed in the arms of his wife, Kristin. The Hastings couple stood in the gym of the armory in Inver Grove Heights in the last minutes before a major deployment of Minnesotans began. Fasbender and about 500 others were about to board the buses that would take them to the airport.
"I'd rather go now, when they're this young and they don't understand," said the formerly stay-at-home dad, who is about to begin a life about as far from home as you can get. "I'd rather have gone before I had 'em, but this is fine."
It was a room intense with emotion: tears, strained faces, hugs, awkward last words. But little about it was quite as poignant as the youngest families: the tiny children racing about on the hardwood floor, finding other children, seemingly oblivious to the reality of what was about to take place.
Sgt. Rob Schultz of Lakeville was asked about his two kids, the eldest of whom, in his arms at that moment, is all of 3. How much of this were they registering?
"Hopefully none," said the career Army man, awaiting his second deployment to the region but the first to Iraq.
On the other end of the gym, Spec. David Denasha of Duluth held onto his 3-month-old, Emilio, at the end of what his wife, Lynn Begay, described as a "six-day road trip" across two states, saying goodbye to family and showing off their new son.
