Latina Letters From the Front!

I am Sgt. Maj. Natalia Hayes, a senior noncommissioned officer of Puerto Rican descent who joined the Army Reserves in June 1988 as a dental specialist. Today, I am an operations Sergeant Major in the 307th Medical Group and have a multitude of roles. I wish I could say that joining the U.S. Army Reserve was out of an amazing sense of patriotism and pride, but I can’t. I joined the military out of a desire to improve my situation and make something of myself.

My parents came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico when they were children. My father, Jose de Leon, arrived in 1953 and my mother, Maria Otero, arrived in 1960. My parents met in Chicago, IL as teenagers and were married after I was born in 1970 and am the eldest of five children. We lived in the urban south side of Chicago, IL. We moved out of Chicago, IL in 1977. My father tells the story that I came home one day complaining about the graffiti on the walls, the filth in the neighborhood and the overall disagreeable people in the neighborhood, whether those people were the gangs or something else, I can‘t say. My father continued to move with the family around until 1982 when he found us a home in Vine Grove, KY. While moving and bouncing from school to school, my parents found out that I could not read. My father told me that an education was what I needed to better myself; he made it his mission to teach me to read.

On October 3, 2004, I was mobilized for Operation Iraqi Freedom. My unit, the 373rd Medical Company, was deployed to Iraq under the 44th Medical Command where I utilized my skills as a dental hygienist. During my deployment I was stationed at two Forward Operating Bases (FOB), one in FOB Tall’Afar and the other in Al Qayyarah, which was called FOB Endurance. My first challenge in Tall’Afar was there was a result of power supply. We had generators to run the equipment, however we needed pieces of equipment to convert the European 220 power supply to the 110 that our equipment required.

The second challenge was starting a hygiene program for the Soldiers on the FOB. I wanted to give the Soldiers the best care that my education and training could provide. I conducted cancer screenings, nutrition counseling, tobacco cessation counseling and nutrition counseling. Our clinic of 1 doctor, 1 assistant and 1 hygienist conducted business as usual while weapons fire was a constant. Although, running the clinic was our primary mission, our secondary mission was to support the medical team on site. Our unit assisted in two mass casualty situations. Both incidents were sobering and heart-wrenching.