Proud to serve

Claudia Wigglesworth has served her community as a Daleville City Councilmember for two years, giving her time and energy to make Daleville a better place. Claudia and her family have also made America a better place as well. She served the nation for 22 years in the Army, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Her husband, Charlie, is still actively serving, and their careers have brought them a wealth of unique experiences.
Charlie chooses Army
Charlie grew up on a farm in Virginia, and he never thought he’d leave.
His plans changed one day in 1971, in the midst of the Vietnam War, when an Army recruiter approached and informed him he would soon be drafted.
Charlie beat him to the punch.
“I decided (being drafted) was not a good thing so I joined,” he said. “I never intended on staying but my three and getting out, but I figured out being in the Army was a whole lot easier than farming so I stayed at it.”
He served at Fort Knox for some time, and moved on to Okinawa, where he spent time in Special Forces. Once his tour in Japan was done, he was shipped to Fort Bragg, N.C.
“I did a couple of tours at Fort Bragg, but from Bragg I decided that I wanted to give it a little bit more so I was reassigned to Fort Stewart, Ga. with the 1st Ranger Battalion,” Charlie said. “The Rangers are like the tip of the spear. You have to go somewhere and secure an airfield.”
It was on a Rangers mission to the island of Grenada in 1983 that Charlie had the most memorable experience of his Army career.
The mission was the first United States combat since the Vietnam War. The Rangers were sent to free medical students who were on the island, which was under the rule of a dictator.
“The Ranger Battalion jumped into Grenada. I just happened to be on the one aircraft that didn’t jump. I was on the one with the fuel and the ammo and everything,” Charlie said. “Needless to say we were a little (shaken), because we started taking anti-aircraft fire. We thought, ‘If we get hit, we’re done.’”
Once the shock of those first moments wore off, Charlie said the Rangers were able to concentrate on their task.
“At first there was a little bit of fear, then there was the ‘I’m going to do what I’m trained to do,’” he said. “I think as a soldier, you get trained to do a mission and you just go and accomplish it. If anybody tells you they don’t have a little bit of fear of getting shot at they are telling a story, because that’s not true.”
The mission in Grenada was successful, and the Rangers came home after about six months.
Charlie left the Rangers and spent some time in recruiting command in Washington, D.C. before returning to the battalion.
“I was first sergeant in the Ranger Battalion when I got appointed to warrant officer back in 1984,” Charlie said. “As a warrant officer I’ve been to Germany and worked for the Chief of Staff of the Army for a while, was in the 101st (Airborne Division).”
During a tour in Germany Charlie’s life changed again, and hasn’t been the same since.

Spirit of service
Claudia never had the slightest intention of serving in the military, even though service to the country is in her blood.
“My father was a retired first sergeant. My mother is German. She worked for the U.S. military as a German national. She was one of the first German nationals hired in at the end of World War II,” Claudia said. “My brother was in the Army. In addition to my dad, I had two out of my other three uncles who served in the Army, so I come from a military background.”
She played the violin, and her dream was to become a music teacher. She talked with her father and soon discovered that when he looked at her, he saw a soldier.
“He encouraged me to apply for a four-year ROTC scholarship, which I did,” Claudia said. “I didn’t get the four-year ROTC scholarship, not that I didn’t have the grades or extracurricular activities, but I was missing an important component, which was any kind of sport. I didn’t play sports at all.”
When Claudia enrolled at Old Dominion University, her father still saw the spirit of service.
“My dad encouraged me when I got in college to go ahead and enroll in ROTC,” she said. “I did.  I enjoyed it, and actually excelled at it.”
Her father’s experience in the Army, combined with changing times, paved the way for her to answer the nation’s call.
“He had been in the Army at a time when it was integrated. They had black troop units and white troop units, and they integrated and that was successful,” Claudia said. “He saw the Army was going to integrate the Women’s Army Corps in the early 70s. I think he saw that was a great time for me to be in the Army. There would be unlimited opportunity once I got in.”
Claudia joined the Army in 1982, and loved it from the start.
“My first duty assignment was Germany, which was wonderful, being half-German. I thoroughly enjoyed that job,” she said. “It was still the Cold War so a lot of our training exercises and things we did as a personnel company involved the potential threat of the Russians coming across from East Germany.”
During her first assignment she met a man named Charlie. In the years they’ve known one another life has taken them down different roads, but they’ve always ended up on the same path.

Two soldiers, one path
Charlie and Claudia wound up in Germany, in separate companies of the same battalion.
“We knew each other in Germany, and our schooling for personnel officers was at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ind.,” Claudia said. “That’s probably where we went beyond knowing each other and started dating each other.”
The two married and received separate assignments shortly thereafter.
Charlie was stationed at Fort Rucker and Claudia in Syracuse, N.Y.
“They finally said she could come down, and as I recall it was at no expense to the government,” Charlie said. “I hooked the pickup truck to a U-Haul and went and got her furniture and brought her down.”
Charlie spent four years at Fort Rucker, of which Claudia was with him for two. During this time they raised Charlie’s two sons, John and Wayne.
Having both parents in the Army took some adjusting, but the lifestyle eventually rubbed of on the boys.
“Our youngest, Wayne, was six when we got married. At the dinner table Charlie and I would always be talking Army and Wayne would say ‘I’m never joining the Army. That’s all you ever talk about,’ Claudia said. “That was kind of cute that he ended up spending 10 years in the Army.”
John graduated from Daleville High School in 1990, and decided to join the military to help pay for his college education. He served two years in the Army, came home and graduated from Troy University at the top of his class with a criminal justice degree and went on to LSU to become an attorney.
The family was uprooted once again two years after Claudia arrived at Fort Rucker, this time to the nation’s capital.
“I ended up in D.C. first and she was right behind me,” Charlie said. “While we were in D.C. she deployed.”

An Impression of America
Claudia left Washington D.C. for Saudi Arabia after combat operations ceased in Desert Storm.
“Unlike Charlie who deployed to combat with a very tight-knit group, the Rangers, I deployed as an individual person to fill an individual hole in a unit during the first Gulf War,” she said. “I was deployed for six months.”
While she was overseas, Claudia served as a company commander for Army Material Command.
“They needed a small cell of people to maintain a sense of accountability of the personnel and take care of any personnel type actions or support actions, housing and that type of thing for the employees and the soldiers who were deployed,” she said. “They had taken a lot of bullets, supplies and equipment. The big challenge during the time that I was there was to get all that stuff cleaned to standard.”
The soldiers were briefed on Saudi culture, and Claudia soon realized she was a member of a very elite group.
“It was fascinating to be a woman in Saudi Arabia and be able to drive, because the women over there can’t drive,” she said. “I was an oddity. I had to always have my headgear on. If you were in the car you couldn’t be uncovered and show your hair.”
She enjoyed frequenting a jewelry store from time to time, and soon found out though the Saudis enjoy many things from America, they must do without some of the things we sometimes take for granted.
“The man at the counter said, “Can I ask you a favor?’ Can you bring me a Bible? Do you have a Bible?’” Claudia said. “It just floored me, because that was valuable to them. They can’t buy Bibles. It might have been of great risk to him, but to me that was lasting because the impact we can have beyond the actual military assignment is our contact and impression of our values that are of interest that they want to know.”
That impression is what Claudia sees as the long-term benefits of being a soldier. Charlie said the honor of the soldier’s calling became real to him in combat.
“I think the enormity of it really hit me when, in Grenada, the first soldier I ever saw die died in my arms,” he said. “I thought, ‘This soldier just gave the ultimate sacrifice.’ We placed him in the body bag and I kept going to check to make sure he was really dead, because you don’t want to accept the fact that a soldier has died.”
The couple dealt with death again during the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
They both worked in the Pentagon that year, and narrowly missed being there when the terrorists struck.
Claudia handled paperwork that was to go to the Army’s chief of staff or the Secretary of the Army at the Pentagon. She left there in June 2001, and became a recruiting battalion commander.
“The saddest part of that is the people I worked with every day were the ones who perished in 9-11,” Claudia said.  “Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude and his staff, those were the people I worked with. That was really, really tough.”
Charlie was there to give administrative support to the chief of staff. He left on Aug. 20, 2001, to join the 101st Airborne Division.
“There were soldiers who worked for me, because I had all the clerks who worked in the different sections and a couple who worked directly for me, we tasked them out,” he said. “They were in Gen. Maude’s office, and they perished.”
Losing those they worked with on a daily basis only reaffirms the Wigglesworths’ devotion to the cause of freedom from terrorism.
“We need to stop terrorism outside the United States before it comes to our shores,” Charlie said. “We need to do that. I support that. I would rather fight the enemy away from the United States than them come and us have to fight them here.”
Claudia agreed, and said the nation needs to keep terrorism in check.
“When you start taking action you try and keep it under control,” she said. “When it isn’t you have to go where the source of their power is based, where they’re operating where they are training. We need to be there.”

Family of Dedicated Defenders
While they were still stationed at the Pentagon, the Wigglesworths received a call from their son, John, in Louisiana.
“He said he wanted to join the military again and he wanted to go in the Army but he wanted to go to California. The only thing they have there is a big national training center. It’s in the middle of nowhere and he didn’t want to go there,” Charlie said. “He’d been there as a private in the Army and didn’t want to go back so he joined the Air Force.”
John is still in the Air Force Reserves, and has over 20 years of military service in the Army and Air Force combined.
Wayne, who wanted nothing to do with the military growing up, joined the West Virginia National Guard out of high school and transferred to Alabama and served 10 years.
“He deployed twice to Iraq and he actually went in on another mission to Afghanistan,” Charlie said. “He decided he did not want to deploy anymore so he got out.”
Claudia said her family’s military service fills her with a sense of pride.
“I love that picture there of all of us in uniform,” she said. “The fact that I come from a military family, it makes you very proud.”
She retired in 2005, after 22 years of service, but said she would cherish the gifts the Army gave her for a lifetime.
“(I got the) opportunity to travel and meet people from all walks of life, Claudia said. “Working in recruiting and bringing people into the Army was a very proud time for me. Sharing the opportunity with people and having recruiters in every small town and two states setting the example and bringing people into the Army.”
Charlie set two goals for himself in his military career, and he’s met them both.
“I always wanted to be a first sergeant. I had the opportunity to be a 1st Sgt. in the Ranger Battalion. I was the first sergeant in charge of a unit of about 150 people,” he said. “Then as a warrant officer the job I always wanted to do was to be the deputy commandant of the Warrant Officer Candidate College and that’s how I’m finishing up my career.”
He has held the post for the past five years.
“Over the last five years, it’s been between 16 and 17,000 soldiers who, in one way, shape or form, you had an impact on,” Charlie said. “From the initial training to be a warrant officer to the coming back at the war college level of education here at Fort Rucker. Those are the two jobs that left the biggest impression on me.”
Charlie will retire with not only 40 years of military service to his credit, but also with a great measure of satisfaction only serving the country can bring.
“I say it’s not going to affect me or bother me,” he said. “But when I step away, out of this uniform, there is nothing else that I know of as far as a job that would ever match what it is to be a soldier.”

Value the veteran
The Wigglesworths may be accomplished soldiers, but they know their service, and America’s existence, would not be possible without those who served the country first.
“I think we are very fortunate,” Claudia said. “That’s why a day like Veteran’s Day is even more important so that we don’t do business as usual, that people really fly their flags and take advantage of the things that the sacrifices of soldiers have made possible.”
It is important to recognize the sacrifice veteran
s have made for the freedoms we now enjoy, and Charlie said honor and respect toward those who have worn the nation’s uniform is owed not only by the civilian, but also the soldier.
“There are so many who went before us and we owe those who walked before us, and as veterans we need to look after those who will follow us,” he said. “It’s good that people appreciate your service, and I’ve had veterans thank me for my service and I realize they’ve served and I thank them for what they’ve done. I’m walking in their footsteps.”

Charlie and Claudia have walked many paths in their military careers. They’ve been around the world, and experienced things only a soldier knows. Once Charlie retires, neither will wear the uniform of a soldier.
They may not always be listed as soldiers in the United States Army, but because of the experience and opportunity it afforded them, they’ll never really leave.