Military police from Illinois' National Guard will soon be in Afghanistan; they're expected to do security there for much of this year.
About thirty members of the Springfield-based 233rd Military Police Company will get additional training in Texas before going overseas.
During the deployment ceremony, Congressman Rodney Davis, a Taylorsville Republican, commended and thanked the guardsmen, like Sergeant Chad Brown for volunteering.
"I ran into Sgt. Brown and his family, his young family and his young son Colton, who's seven days old. Seven days old," Davis said. "Mr. Brown, you're going to miss a lot of that young man's growth the next few months. And as a dad I could not imagine doing what you're doing. "
The soldiers are set to return in December. It's the fourth deployment for at least one of them.
The White House had planned to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, but the current plan is to keep a force, though a smaller one, in place, come 2017.
