At the time that the storm hit, I was in the Army Reserve. I had just returned home from a year of being on active duty, a few months earlier. I evacuated with a friend to his parents\' home in St. Charles Parish. Once cell phone reception had returned, a few days later, I called some contacts at Ft. Polk and was told that a full scale humanitarian relief effort was underway, including a military field hospital (my MOS was 91K: medical laboratory technician) which would be forming and deploying shortly.\r\nWhen I managed to get to Ft. Polk and had signed papers to be reactivated, it became apparent that this humanitarian deployment had either been cancelled or was never actually planned to occur in the first place. Thus, I was obligated to another year of servitude, on an unrelated mission.\r\nWhen I got back, my reserve unit had moved to Hammond, due to flood damage at the Reserve Center in New Orleans. I manged to get a ride to the new location, and I requested to be separated from the miltary \"in whatever way the paper-work is simplest\". I told the admin office that, not having a car, it would be impractical to attend drills in another city, and that, after the Federal Government had so thoroughly betrayed me and all of South Louisiana, I could not bear to continue in its service.

Citation

“[Untitled],” Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, accessed April 18, 2024, https://hurricanearchive.org/items/show/45258.