"Today In UB History: Feb. 28, 2005"

About a week after Sept. 11, while studying for an exam at night, Matt Cascarino received a phone call from the United States Air Force.

It wasn't until two years later, after serving emergency active duty, that he was finally able to take his exam.

Cascarino is one of an increasing number of UB students who have been called overseas to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. As the days and months pass by and combat operations continue, more students like Cascarino have been getting phone calls from the armed forces.

A senior geography major, Cascarino has been serving as a staff sergeant in the Air Force's International Guard since 2000, and he's been a cadet since the age of 12.

Three days after the phone call, Cascarino was at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., serving in Operation Noble Eagle with the 89th Security Force Squadron.

As a trained military policeman, his job was to provide security for Air Force One, the president and his family, foreign ambassadors, as well as the vice president, secretary of state, and secretary of treasury.

He worked directly with the secret service to ward off supposed threats.

"Our job was to make sure they were safe," he said.

Cascarino worked grueling shifts six days a week, from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. for nearly nine months. In May 2002, he was sent to Niagara Falls Air Force Base for six weeks of work, followed by three months of training for Operation Enduring Freedom, including lessons in Afghanistan's culture and language.

"The training was awesome," Cascarino said.

From September to December 2002, Cascarino was deployed in the Middle East at a classified combat zone with the 405th Air Expeditionary Security Force Squadron.

There, his duties entailed daily military ground defense and patrolling of the base.

"We were the only ones who had weapons," Cascarino said. "We would be the first to go if anything happened."

Cascarino's daily gear was extremely heavy, including such items as a vest, armor, a machine gun and a pistol. The hummer he drove in often reached 144 degrees in the hot daytime weather.

He said his daily posts put a massive amount of responsibility on his shoulders.

"We were responsible for defending from any attack," Cascarino said. "You're always on edge. There are no relaxing moments."

Cascarino and his comrades slept in eight-man tents. Meals ready to eat were served in the chow hall tent, and on special occasions there was fresh crab.

A tent with satellite for 15 minutes of e-mail, and occasional volleyball in their free time, were the only traces of life in the United States.

At one point, while monitoring the entrance and exit of individuals from the base, a few British soldiers who had been hijacked by Iraqis wandered up to the base with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their ID tags. The hijackers told the British that if they had been American soldiers they would have lost their lives.

Following Operation Enduring Freedom, Cascarino was sent back to Niagara Falls for active duty, where he stayed until October 2003. He used military leave he had saved up to start the fall semester at UB.

Cascarino said his two years of active duty were a historical first.

"It was the first time ever that the international guard and reserves from all branches were required to fulfill their two years," he said. For military servicemen with six-year reserve contracts, two years emergency active duty is the limit.

In March 2003, he volunteered to go to Iraq, but the trip was cancelled four times.

With a year and a half left in the reserves, these days Cascarino is working on finishing his degree, and once a month he reports to the Niagara Falls Air Force Base.

"It's like a family gathering because we've all been through so much together," he said.

Cascarino's actual family, which is from Binghamton, shares his deep military background. His grandfather was a prisoner of war in World War II, his dad served in Vietnam, and he has four uncles in the Air Force.

With so much invested in serving his country, Cascarino has walked out of classes during heated discussions about U.S. foreign policy and the war in Iraq, feeling unable to defend himself.

"I really don't like it when people blurt out their opinions and think they know everything," he said. "They should be more open-minded, knowing they don't know everything."

Cascarino said despite the dangers, he enjoyed his deployment to the Middle East.

"I was more content there then I'd ever been in the United States. I wanted to stay," Cascarino said. "I would rather have been doing that, working toward something tangible with a purpose, than rotting away in a classroom playing the game of life where we read textbooks, to get a degree, to get a job."

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