Soldier set to climb peak for fundraiser

FORT DRUM — You've just finished a long, hard slog through a work week. How do you spend your Saturday? Watching a movie, maybe, or taking a walk if the weather allows?

If you're Army combat medic Sgt. Thomas G. Bauschke, and your work for the past year has been war, you have another idea about how to unwind.

As the soldiers of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team prepare for their February block leave — a month off that follows their redeployment from Afghanistan to Fort Drum — many are looking forward to returning home to spend time with family and friends.

Sgt. Bauschke will do that, briefly, in a weeklong visit to his home in Friday Harbor, Wash. Then he'll board a plane for Tanzania, where he'll hike about 15,100 feet over six days up Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest point, at 19,341 feet above sea level. The climb down will take a day and a half.

Some of his fellow soldiers are incredulous.

"'You just spent a year climbing mountains in Afghanistan, and you want to go climb a mountain on leave?'" some have asked him, Sgt. Bauschke said, speaking at an otherwise empty bar on post Tuesday night, three weeks after his return from Afghanistan.

"I tell them there's a big difference between 'told to climb a mountain' and 'want to climb a mountain,'" he said.

This time, he won't have to carry combat gear.

An outdoor adventurer for years, Sgt. Bauschke will use this trek not only as a breath of freedom after a tough deployment, but as a fundraiser for the Wounded Warrior Project, a national nonprofit organization that provides support to severely wounded service members.

It will be the third time he's combined his respect for military service with his love of the outdoors into a fundraising trek for the group. In 2005 and 2006, he hiked Washington state's Wonderland Trail and Mount Rainier, respectively, raising a total of about $8,000 in donations.

Those treks are some of the latest in a string of challenges Sgt. Bauschke has taken on since the mid-'90s, when a National Geographic story about Appalachian Trail hikers piqued his interest in grand outdoor adventure. The interest was anything but casual; Sgt. Bauschke committed half of 1995 to trekking the trail's 2,175 miles, trading in 45 pounds for a beard in the process.

A similarly strong conviction led to his decision to re-enlist in the Army at age 41, after a 16-year hiatus. Interested in serving after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Sgt. Bauschke re-enlisted after Congress in 2006 raised the maximum age for enlisting active-duty soldiers from 34 to 42.

"That told me that they must really need people," he said. He left a job painting houses to enlist as a medic, and soon found himself in the infantry, where fellow soldiers sometimes pointed out he was older than their parents.

Sgt. Bauschke's age, now 44, makes his plans for his leave time all the more impressive to his fellow soldiers.

"He's like one of those 80-year-old guys who goes barefoot water skiing, but he climbs mountains," said Spc. Joseph R. Pohl, 29, a friend also just returned from Afghanistan. "It's very cool."

The fundraising effort also is "a great gesture to the rest of us," Spc. Pohl said. "The people he knew that were injured, the people I know who were injured — I know some of them look at what he's doing, and even though he's already in the Army he's doing a little bit more."

Sgt. Bauschke will begin his climb Feb. 16.

To contribute, checks made out to "The Wounded Warrior Project" can be mailed to the attention of Suzanne M. Raible, ladies auxiliary president for American Legion Post 673, 113 E. Dexter St., Black River, N.Y. 13612-3179.

For more information on the Wounded Warrior Project, go to www.woundedwarriorproject.org.