By BILL POWELL
Jasper Herald Staff Writer

SAN ANTONIO – When Pvt. Joe Chambers arrives in Jasper for the start of deer shotgun season Saturday, his brief time at home will be an opportunity to regroup after last week’s shooting incident at Fort Hood, Texas.

Chambers, 21, is a military policeman assigned to the 470th Military Intelligence Battalion at Fort Sam Houston, a 90-minute drive from the Soldier Medical Readiness Center on Fort Hood.
The Fort Hood shooter who gunned down 13 is currently at Brooke Army Medical Center on Fort Sam Houston – Chambers’ post in San Antonio. Military police in Chambers’ unit may very well be providing security at the hospital while Chambers and his father, Jasper Police Department veteran officer Rick Chambers, are together in the southern Indiana woods.

Joe Chambers and an Army buddy took a weekend excursion to check out Fort Hood just recently, before the shooting. “It’s huge,” he said Monday. “We got lost a couple of times.”
Thursday, the day of the shooting, was a slow one for the military police of the 470th, Chambers said. He and a sergeant from his unit went to get haircuts. While they were out, another soldier from the unit called to advise the sergeant that he’d better contact his wife.

The sergeant’s wife, who is also an Army sergeant, was taking part in a leadership course at Fort Hood that day. Chambers said the sergeant he was with remained calm and poised, at least until he spoke with his wife.

She was a quarter-mile away from Building 42003 when the shooting started, they learned. Not realizing what was happening, she thought her classroom was close to a qualification shooting range. As soon as students were locked down in their classroom and a head count started, she realized the main post area was nowhere near a shooting range.

She made it through the ordeal unscathed, although she was shaken like everyone else, according to Chambers.

“It’s just hard to fathom that something like this would happen on one of your own installations here on American soil,” the young soldier said. “Everybody in the military is one big family.”

That connectedness made the loss cut deep, he said, but the military’s indomitable spirit and ability to close ranks and cling together is also aiding everyone in moving forward.

Chambers is setting things up to pursue a criminal justice degree while in San Antonio. At some point in the future, he may trade his combat uniform for that of a Jasper police officer or Indiana State Police trooper. But, at this juncture, he’s loving the military, he says.

“I’m glad I got into it,” he says. “I’m proud to be in the military.”

His mother, Karen Chambers, is crediting the military with broadening her son’s horizons. The first time he was aboard a jet was in January of this year when he flew from Louisville to Atlanta and then St. Louis en route to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.

Chambers has noticed heightened security in the wake of Thursday’s shooting, especially at Fort Sam Houston’s gate.

On Friday, 24 hours after the shooting, everyone on Fort Sam Houston observed a moment of silence precisely at 1:20 p.m. Chambers’ military intelligence unit occupies the old Brooke Army Medical building and everyone in the huge facility stood silently during the observance.

“I hope nothing like this every happens again,” he says. “That’s all I know.”

Contact Bill Powell at bpowell@dcherald.com.

Used by permission of the Herald in Jasper, Ind.