Trigger finger wound can’t take out Sniper

COB Speicher, Tikrit-

Sergeant Jarrad McGregor, 30, of Evansville had eight years active duty experience, but it was his Indiana National Guard brothers who motivated him to return to a war zone despite just coming off a surgery to his trigger finger.

“You meet guys in active duty,” Sgt. McGregor said, “but these are the guys I grew up with. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

McGregor almost didn’t make it. He graduated from sniper school just before the Indiana National Guard’s deployment. By then the problem with his right finger had grown from an old blemish he earned from a fight in Korea to a five-centimeter cist. He decided for elective surgery while in mobilization with the Guard at Fort Stewart.

“If I would have know they were gonna do this,” McGregor said, showing the scar down the length of his index finger, “I wouldn’t have done it.”

McGregor will have to redo the surgery, he said, but not until after his more than nine-month deployment with Indiana's 1st/151st conducting convoy security in Iraq.

While in the wounded warrior program at Fort Stewart, GA, McGregor had a choice to not deploy because of the injury.

It wasn’t much of a decision for him. He’d already decided he was going catch up with the 1/151 out of Jasper, IN. After about a month of recovery at Fort Stewart, he finally caught up with his unit. He’s been at COB Speicher for all of 12 hours.

“This is my family here,” McGregor said.

He’s humble and quiet, but McGregor speaks with passion about the Guard soldiers from the Evansville area. “It’s a lot of different guys who live in (my) community here. Average, every day guys who were established in the community and gave that up to support what’s going on,” McGregor said.

McGregor said his mother didn’t want to see him go into danger, but she understands. “It’s what I love to do. I’ve done it since I was eighteen.”

“You can’t lead from the rear,” he said.