SAN ANGELO, Texas — Wearing dog tag necklaces, holding rubber grenades and shooting water from fire hoses aren't everyday activities for most children.
On April 29, Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo hosted its "Operation Kids" 2023 event, where participants could experience an imitation deployment process with all of the above and more.
This free event separated children into four different groups -eagles, wolves, cobras and sharks- as they took deployment orders, rode busses, learned how to kick in doors, etc. for a one-day only experience.
Senior master sergeant Crystal Doepkner brought her seven-year-old son to get a firsthand look at her life in the service.
"We wanted to show him kind of like what me and his dad -his dad's also in the military- what we do whenever we deploy," she said. "So maybe when we deploy in the future, he understands kind of what we go through."
Doepkner moved to San Angelo last year after previously living on a base in Omaha, Nebraska. This was her first time participating in the event, which has been happening for the past thirteen years now.
Another master sergeant, Ashley Bowen, was one of the coordinators of Saturday's event.
Despite the busy schedule, Bowen was able to speak with families directly to better understand what this experience meant to them.
For parents like Doepkner, it was better than anything she could have expected.
"I think it's amazing. I mean, he's [Doepkner's son] having a great time and I think that knowledge is power so it helps go through those maybe future moments where me and his dad might deploy or have to be gone for a long period of time so that he knows what we're going through and might feel a little bit safer or secure knowing what we do," she said.
The event ended with a "welcome home" ceremony, where children ran off of school busses to greet their parents with waving American flags.
Participants then received coins and medals for to commemorate the day while an aircraft formation flew overhead.
Goodfellow Air Force Base hopes to continue this event as a way to help children become less afraid and more educated on deployment and the military as a whole.
