METHUEN — A former Methuen woman anxiously awaited word from her husband - a U.S. Army private - who was at Fort Hood on a training mission during Thursday's massacre on the base.
Jacqueline (Avery) Link, 23, formerly of 17 Beaumont Road, Methuen, was at her job at a clothing store in a mall in nearby Killeen, Texas, when she found out about the shooting from the TV news.
She immediately began calling her husband, who was unavailable because soldiers are not allowed to have cell phones during training exercises.
Justin Link, assigned to an air missile defense unit, said that while he was just a five-minute drive from the location of the massacre, neither he nor any of his comrades knew what was going on until their commanders told them.
He said his commander then suspended training and let everyone use cell phones so they could call loved ones.
"My wife called me yesterday, and kept calling and calling," he said. "Her co-workers knew about it. Her friends were calling me from Methuen and Salem, N.H., and she was keeping in touch with them. Everytime I got any information, I'd pass it along."
Jacqueline Link was one of a number of local residents affected in one way or another by the mass shooting, believed to have been carried out by Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was upset about his imminent deployment to Afghanistan.
As of yesterday 13 died and 30 were wounded.
Margo D'Avolio of Derry, N.H., said her son, Mark, is stationed at Fort Hood and was even treated by Hasan after he returned from his second tour of duty in Iraq.
Another man, Scott Lampron of Haverhill, said the incident brought back terrible memories from his experience at Fort Hood. He was stationed there in 1991 when a man gunned down 23 people at Luby's restaurant in nearby Killeen, Texas.
Cell phones and lockdown
Jacqueline Link's mother, Dorothy 'Dottie' Avery, a secretary in the Methuen Veterans Services office, said she was frantic when she got word of the shooting and immediately called her daughter to make sure she was safe.
"All I wanted to know was if she was OK and if she would be coming home soon," said Avery.
While Jacqueline Link was fine, she wasn't allowed to get back on the base because it had been put into lockdown.
While authorities eventually relaxed the lockdown about 11 p.m. Thursday, for a period of time Private Link said he and the rest of his unit were forced to wait in tents they were using as part of their training exercise.
His wife, meanwhile, who lives with him in government housing on the Army base, spent the night outside the base with a friend from work.
"I didn't want her to get stuck at the gates," he said, adding that Army authorities were searching every car that was entering the base, to make sure that the attack wasn't coordinated in some way from the outside.
While the attack occurred about 1:30 p.m., Private Link said he wasn't able to go back to his base housing until around 7 p.m.
"I had to weave through back roads to get there to avoid the traffic," he said.
Fort Hood is home to nearly 60,000 people and the base has every convenience of the civilian world, including fast-food restaurants, housing and churches.
Bad memories
Another local resident who served there for five years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Lampron, 43, of Briarwood Road, Haverhill, said the shooting conjured up memories of the Luby's Cafeteria massacre in 1991, when a gunman drove his pickup truck into the popular, Killeen, Texas eatery and calmly walked around executing people. By the end of the midday incident, 23 people, including the shooter, were dead.
"That's the first thing I thought of," said Lampron, a 15-year Army veteran who served two assignments at Fort Hood, from 1986-1989, and again from 1990-1992. "I couldn't believe it was happening again."
"Being in the military in wartime is a very stressful time," Lampron said. "But what surprised me, he was a psychiatrist. How he's going to tell me I'm crazy when he's crazy?"
Major Hasan's job included interviewing soldiers upon their return from active duty overseas. He had told his superior that he did not want to be deployed to Iraq, and had exhibited increasingly bizarre behavior in the days leading up to his attack.
D'Avolio, of Derry, whose son Mark is leaving the military in December, lives in Killeen, off-base, but had been treated by Hasan for post-traumatic stress.
"When he told me that this morning, I just freaked," said D'Avolio, adding that it's not surprising the psychiatrist would snap.
"He never went to war, but he hears all these stories from soldiers," she said. "How many men has he counseled, including my son?"
She said as soon as she found out about the shooting, she got on the phone and spoke with her son, who is married to a woman who is also a soldier.
She said he was "shocked" by the incident, and was exhausted after being in lockdown all day Thursday. Fortunately, officials at the base gave non-essential personnel the day off on Friday, meaning they'll get a long weekend to recuperate.
"You aren't supposed to see war in your own country," she said. "You see enough of it in Iraq."
ÔÇæÔÇæÔÇæ
Join the discussion. To comment on stories and see what others are saying, log on to eagletribune.com.
