Inevitable Sacrifice: A Story of Love, Marriage and a Couple's Service to Country

Published Nov. 14, 2009
By Senior Airman Stephen Linch
380th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

SOUTHWEST ASIA -- Joyful Greeting

He was there, and then he was gone. It was just a glimpse in the night. She continued to exit the C-130, still scanning her surroundings to see if it could be.

Then she saw him. Her face lit up as she joyfully greeted her husband at the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, Oct. 31, 2009.

Although she was ecstatic to see her husband for the first time in six months, Capt. Kieran Dhillon-Davis, the new chief of the 380th AEW Mental Health Services, didn't come here to see him, but to take his place.

Managing the Transition

According to Captain Kieran Dhillon-Davis, a clinical psychologist at the 380th AEW, her job is to ensure mission readiness by providing mental health services to Airmen and Soldiers. Such support includes individual therapy, tobacco cessation aid and suicide awareness training. In the position she also focuses on behavior change and stress and anger management.

Capt. Luther Dhillon-Davis, former chief of the 380th AEW Mental Health Services, will soon return to Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, the couple's home station. However, for now he is focusing on managing the hand-off and preparing his wife for a successful stay.

"I was eagerly anticipating her arrival," Captain Luther Dhillon-Davis said. "I was and still am excited to get to share with her this transition."

Over the course of a 14-day-period, Captain Luther Dhillon-Davis has facilitated the transfer by seeing patients alongside his wife, providing her with continuity detailing location specific information, and showing her around the 380th AEW.

Captain Luther Dhillon-Davis noted how grateful he was to spend time with her over the changeover period saying, it was the "closest thing to a traditional mid-tour break," they would get.

Inevitable Sacrifice

The couple became acquainted when 23-year-old Kieran Dhillon enrolled in a neuropsychology class on the nature of emotion in the summer of 2002, after seeing 24-year-old Luther Davis's name on the class' roster at Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, Calif.

Over the next four years, Luther Davis would create a holiday for his college sweetheart, "Blue Day," named after her favorite color and a commemoration of their engagement. Both would join the Air Force and start their residency, and they would combine and hyphenate their last names in a wedding ceremony at a winery in Temecula, Calif.

They celebrated their third wedding anniversary separately on the May 28, 2009, shortly after Captain Luther Dhillon-Davis left for his deployment. They knew there would be sacrifices when both entered the Air Force.

The couple agrees that getting deployed back-to-back is not an ideal situation, but they are learning to deal with the challenges it brings.

"I've had to learn how to be supportive without being there physically," admitted Captain Luther Dhillon-Davis, a 31-year-old Wichita Falls, Texas native.

When the couple informs people of their situation, the response they normally receive is, "Geez that sucks! Why couldn't they work something different," he said.

According to Captain Kieran Dhillon-Davis, their career field is critically-manned and constant deployments have left a shortage of Airmen capable of deploying. Both acknowledge that this situation could have been far more stressful if they were deployed to separate locations.

Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, recently spoke of the expeditionary requirements during a speech at the Air Force Association Convention saying, "This unexpected demand for Airmen with special qualifications has resulted in a deployment tempo, the likes of which we have never seen before."

Significant amounts of Airmen are deployed around the world - 40,000 of the 330,000 strong force are supporting combatant commanders, said the 36-year Air Force veteran.

"The vast majority have served on multiple deployments, with no doubt more in their future," he added.

In overcoming the impact of two decades of deployments, General Schwartz said, "America can always count on the U.S. Air Force to deliver. More accurately, it is our Airmen who will deliver."

Good-bye, Again

The couple sat beside each other, smiling, laughing and getting lost in somber moments of silence -- a silence that screamed the truth. That the reality was a KC-10 was waiting on the ramp to take him home, and the two would have to say good-bye, again.

Captain Luther Dhillon-Davis departed the 380th AEW in the early morning hours of Nov. 14, 2009. In the upcoming months, Captain Luther Dhillon-Davis will re-integrate back into the 82nd Medical Group and serve the Airmen of Sheppard AFB, and Captain Kieran Dhillon-Davis will continue to hold the line as the 380th AEW's only clinical psychologist.

On her husband's departure, the 30-year-old Redland, Calif., native said, she has only the mission-at-hand on her mind, and intends on, "Doing what I have been called out here to do - just like everyone else."

The 380th AEW provides intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and aerial refueling in support of Operations Enduring Freedom, Operations Iraqi Freedom, and Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa.