BEAUMONT -- The audience was full of babies and toddlers. They rested in arms or fidgeted. Many sucked on pacifiers.
They didn't care about the speeches from the colonel or the judge. They didn't even realize their dads or moms would be leaving.
The men and women of the 373rd Combat Sustainment Support Battalion of the U.S. Army Reserve, based in Beaumont, left on Valentine's Day for Fort Lewis, Wash. Then, they will be deployed to Iraq. The Holiday Inn on Walden Road hosted a Feb. 13 deployment ceremony and reception for the friends and families of the battalion.
The tiny boys in baseball caps with diapers showing under their little blue jeans will be wearing big boy pants when the fathers return.
But unlike family separations in previous wars, the families will be able to keep in touch and even see each other through laptop computers with built-in cameras and the Internet, plus cell phones.
Still, the men and women will go through "a year of missed soccer games and baseball practice," along with missed birthdays and anniversaries, said Lt. Col. Guilia Giacoppe of Sugar Land.
The 78 soldiers in the battalion include men and women ranging in ages from their 20s to their 40s. Some have been overseas before; some haven't.
The reserves come from five different states.
"This is a hard day, it's a tough day, but it's an important day," Col. Robert Haste of Broken Arrow, Okla., commander of the battalion told the group.
The battalion supports combat troops and oversees communications, supplies and fuel.
Haste quoted German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel: "The battle is fought and won by the quartermasters before the first shots are fired."
Mark Miller, 44, stands more than 6 feet tall with close-cropped graying hair and the erect posture of a military man. His gray-beige camo fatigues are crisp and pressed.
But his 7-year-old daughter, Jocalyn, isn't impressed when she sees him.
"She associates this uniform with him being gone," said Cindy Miller, 40, his wife. Cindy has gone through deployment before. Mark was in Uzbekistan in 2003, when Jocalyn was a baby.
Now she knows when her daddy is away.
"He was gone for three weeks (for training) and she liked to have lost it," Cindy said.
E6 Staff Sgt. Mark Miller is a communications specialist who now works at the federal Bureau of Prisons. He's used to the military world. He grew up as a Navy brat traveling with his parents. He served in the Army and joined the reserves when he completed his duty. All together, he has 24 years wi th the Army and reserves.
He and Cindy married in 2000. She knew he was in the reserves and could be called back to duty, but the world was a different place at that time. Sept. 11, 2001, changed things.
Mark Miller knew after the terrorist attacks things would change. "I thought it would be hot and heavy," he said.
In 2003, he was sent to Uzebekistan, where he was at a former Soviet Union base. He managed to get some cell phones to call home sometimes. Cindy learned it took three weeks for a letter or package to reach him.
The family now includes Aubrey, 5. She's not quite as conscious that something is happening with her family, Cindy said.
But the family life changed drastically as they prepared for Mark's departure recently. They moved to an apartment in Groves and have placed their new house, under construction, on the market to sell. Mark said he didn't want to worry about the construction while he's away for what could be up to a year.
While he's gone, Cindy, Jocalyn and Aubrey will be the girls he left behind -- but likely never again. He said he'll probably retire after this deployment.
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