“My youngest sister’s name is Tabitha; she lives in Connecticut now. My younger brother’s name is Josh; he lives in the Arpin area. And my sister Rachel, who’s also younger, she’s in La Crosse,” Cherney said.
“I went to Stevens Point for high school; I was at SPASH, and then I did five years of college at UWSP. I didn’t graduate. I got deployed overseas, had to go to Kuwait, then finished off my college degree.
“Prior to entering the military, it was mostly farm work and construction work. I actually enlisted when I was 17, so I was still in high school, so I was still working as a farm hand, working with my neighbor building houses, doing construction work.
“I went between my junior and senior year, over the summer. I was supposed to go down there for eight weeks of basic training; I was down there for 14. It was funny, because there was an issue with California, wasn’t sending their recruits that they were supposed to, so they had people that were listed that they hadn’t sent regularly. We had to sit there and wait for more people to get there. So, they always talked about how ‘zero week’ in basic is terrible. I had six weeks of zero week before we started basic training, so that was not fun.
Cherney said that one particular drill sergeant sticks out from his time in training.
“He was from Louisiana, and he was the craziest person I’ve ever met. So, Fort Sill has multiple venomous snakes, and his pastime was to walk around and catch them, to bring them to show you, so you can identify them so you could stay away from them. Then he’d go release them back out where he caught them. To the point where I watched him take a moccasin out of the water. Dude was insanely crazy, just insane. Like, we were driving a five-ton, we had a bunch of guys in the back, and all of a sudden he seen it, and it was near a culvert or a bridge, and he seen it. He slammed on the brakes, he jumped out, and he had his stick, and he was dragging the head and by the tail. He had a bite stick, and he grabbed the head, and we’re like, ‘What is wrong with you?’ ‘Oh, this is a water moccasin; I wanted to show you guys what it looks like so you can identify it.’ And I’m like, ‘This dude’s crazy,’” he recalled.
During his time in the service, Cherney was deployed to Kuwait and Iraq and Kosovo.
“My first deployment after basic training was to Kuwait. We did the seaport defense, so we had the Port Shuaiba. If you ever followed the news on what Iran did, when they fired their missiles back, the first casualties that came back were from that Port Shuaiba where I was deployed the first time. So, it’s a deep seaport in Kuwait — it’s the only deep seaport in Kuwait — so that’s where any of your big tankers and big equipment and stuff has to come through, ‘cause it’s the only spot that’s deep enough to handle those,” Cherney recalled.
“The Army is very simple in the fact that as long as you listen to what was said, and do what you’re supposed to do, you really don’t have a problem. I know a lot of the hardest things for guys to figure out, if they wanted to be leaders in the Army, was that they had to learn how to follow first, because if you weren’t capable of following instructions, you’re not capable of giving instructions. So, that’s one of the first things I learned, was you had to learn to be a follower before you were allowed to be a leader, and that’s just hard for some people to understand, they think they’re always supposed to be in charge of stuff, but you have to be able to take instructions and follow instructions if you expect people are going to do the same for you, because you should never ask anybody to do something you’ve never done yourself, or you wouldn’t do yourself,” he stated.
During his service, Cherney also trained individuals for overseas deployment at Fort McCoy.
For the full interview with Auburndale High School students, visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOpgztj3AeU.
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