Determined airman balances service, school, family

<p>As an Air National Guard member, Staff Sgt. Remie Bellot has made four trips to the Middle East as part of the Guard's 165th Airlift Wing.</p><p>But each time he's come home, the 32-year-old has quickly swapped his fatigues for a book bag, re-enrolling at Southern Polytechnic State University, where he's a senior working toward a software engineering degree.</p><p>"You always have to understand your priorities, and that's what helps keep me set for getting that degree," he said. "I may have to put it down for a while, but when I come back I get right back to it."</p><p>Bellot, a native of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, joined the National Guard in 1995 as an aircraft electrician and environmental technician for C-130H cargo aircraft.</p><p>He has traveled to Masirah Island in the Gulf of Oman, Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq, Kuwait and Uzbekistan. Missions to those places each lasted about five months, he said.</p><p>After returning last Wednesday from a 10-day training session, Bellot said he's happy he is back in school.</p><p>"It's been hard because it's easy to lose much of how to write computer programs fast," he said. "With any kind of war there are new inventions. Our unit is a test bed for new devices and components, so I get to see aspects of what I've already learned."</p><p>Bob Harbort, a professor of computer science at the Marietta university, said it's beneficial to have an undergraduate in his class who serves in the National Guard. Bellot's experience gives the class real-world perspective on the information they are learning.</p><p>"We want to prepare them to function on their own and to pick up the technology and problem solving skills for later on," Harbort said.</p><p>Bellot, who also works as a network engineer for a communications company, called his most recent deployment the Middle East "stormy, muddy and nasty" and said the transition each time he comes home isn't always easy.</p><p>"When I would come back home, I'd have to wear shades to protect my eyes from the green grass because all you see over there is brown," he said. "Here, you're blinded because the green is overwhelming and so bright."</p><p>Serving in Iraq, he said, was especially difficult.</p><p>"We went through months of having to wonder if missiles would come," he said. "It's depressing because it's something you don't really think about until you come back home."</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x1cdc8a8)</p>