Campbell County man sees Iraq tour cut short with final troop pullout

The date to return home from Iraq had changed eight times, but Jeremy Mixon had a firm deadline: his niece’s 16th birthday in March.

Mission accomplished — and then some.

Mixon, 31, was among the last of Virginia National Guard troops to come back from Iraq last month with the final pullout of American soldiers.

His most recent tour was cut short by about six months, to the delight of family and friends, giving him time to celebrate the holidays at home in Campbell County and plan a July wedding with his fiancé. 

 “It is the best Christmas gift I could have asked for,” said bride-to-be Jennifer Davidson.

Mixon, who is still active military, has plenty to keep him busy at home. Along with his upcoming wedding, he plans to build a house in the Concord area of Campbell County and head back to his full-time job at Wooldridge Heating Air Electrical.

The company of more than 40 employees gathered to celebrate his homecoming at a Dec. 21 ceremony. During his deployment, it sent care packages for Mixon and others in his unit.

“I consider them part of my family,” Mixon said. “They’re super supportive.”

Lester Wooldridge, owner, said Mixon is a key employee who contributes a dual role of fabricating ductwork and managing the warehouse. The company kept a framed picture of Mixon with a backdrop of an American flag in the office foyer while he was deployed.

“He’s just a class act,” Wooldridge said, adding the company wanted to support him during his time away. “It’s a calling for these guys.”

Mixon was born in Buffalo, N.Y., but has lived most of his life in the Lynchburg area.

He graduated from then-Lynchburg Christian Academy and played football, wrestled and spent much time outdoors dirt biking. Thirteen days after he graduated, he entered basic training in the Army and is the third generation in his family to serve in the military.

He attended a few years at Liberty University and was deployed from 2002 to 2003 at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His father, Jessie, had also served there while in the Navy.

When the Iraq War started in March 2003, Mixon was still in Cuba. Four years later, he found himself in the Middle East for the first time as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He remembers landing in Kuwait and experiencing the intense heat that he at first thought was from the plane engines. When he left the plane and the heat didn’t subside, he thought to himself, “wow, a year of this!”

“But you kind of get used to it,” he said.

In his first tour he worked with convoy security as a truck manager and saw much of the country, traveling to Baghdad and Fallujah, among other places. He was fortunate, he said, because when he arrived in 2007 the action was “pretty hot” but calmed down while his unit was there and picked back up after they left.

His faith and strong bonds with fellow soldiers helped him through it, he said. “That’s probably the biggest reason I do it,” he said of the friendships formed.

During those days, public debate raged in America about the war, as many felt it was a mistake and called for an exit strategy. Mixon admits it did seem at times like the war would go on forever, but he concentrated on his duties.

“At least when I was there, I didn’t really look at the big picture,” he said. “Our mission was to go from Point A to Point B. That was the way I looked at it.”

His second tour from May to December saw him working “force protection” as part of Operation New Dawn. Time went by much slower, he said, as his unit did not leave the base very often.

“It was hard for a lot of us who had been there before,” he said, “being confined to where we pretty much live.”

If the recent end of the Iraq War had not come, Mixon would still have been there over Christmas and New Year’s.  He was happy to get back to his family — and to his dog, Conan, a mastiff. 

“He was one of the hardest ones to leave,” Mixon said.

He and the dog, who is now nearly 2 years old and more than 130 pounds, bonded when he lived alone, he said. The dog was only 16 pounds when he got him.

Upon mid-December arrival in Fredericksburg with his unit, he said he was also very grateful the ceremony lasted only about 10 minutes. The last thing he wanted, he said, was to wait nearly an hour while his mother and fiancé were just feet away from him.

Sharon, his mother, said they were “thrilled to death” when he called and said he was coming home for certain in time for the holidays.

“You never want to see your children go to war,” she said.

His father said as with any soldier’s family, there was concern that he could one day have been notified that his son was killed in duty.

“I think that’s the biggest fear of any military family,” he said.

The parents never raised objections to him serving. “We are supporters of our country,” Jessie said.

In starting a family himself and becoming stepfather to a young son named Parker, Mixon said he would take an approach similar to that of his parents, who neither encouraged nor discouraged military service.

The same week that Mixon arrived back home, President Obama spoke at Fort Bragg and said the United States is leaving behind a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq.”

With the war over, Mixon said he would look back on this time in his life with good memories.

“You kind of tend to forget the bad stuff, otherwise you would go crazy.”