They are part time soldiers who shoulder full time risk. They are our neighbors who put themselves in harms way to serve in the Texas National Guard. Their families sacrifice greatly so they can serve us in 
wars and national disasters, like hurricane Ike. Thursday, we lost 4 of our neighbors, who died in the crash of a CH47 Chinook helicopter while flying from Kuwait to Balad, Iraq north of Baghdad. They were attached to the 2-149th Regiment of the General Support Aviation Battalion based in Grand Prairie.
You have likely seen these big twin bladed helicopters flying over north Texas, you can hear them coming, making that unmistakable big “wop wop wop” sound. They are the work horses of heavy lift for the military, and have a pretty good safety record. But, when something goes wrong on one of these big boys the result is often catastrophic, like it was near Balad Thursday.
Colonel Bill Mehan with the Texas Army National Guard tells me the best he can get out of the Pentagon tonight is the aircraft experienced a malfunction and went down killing everyone onboard, a total of 7 soldiers gone, 4 from the Grand Prairie unit and 3 from the Okalhoma National Guard. Say a prayer for our friends and their families tonight. I will share their names after the families are officially notified.
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