Meat the Veteran: William Keith Schantin
By Angie Helvey, Active Media
From the age of 16, Canby native and U.S. Army veteran William Keith Schantin (Keith) dedicated his life to serving our country. In fact, he fought to stay enlisted as long as possible and continued on after two deployments to the Middle East, despite dealing with injuries and a pending medical discharge. “I loved it the most for the brotherhood,” he says, “and the opportunity to be a leader.”
Keith always knew he wanted to join the military, and he started early, entering the delayed-entry program at 16 before traveling to Fort Benning, Georgia for boot camp. He trained there to become an Eleven Charlie or 11C Infantry Mortarman, and was set to go to Airborne School, but then came his first injury, which put him on hold for three months before he went “Needs of the Army” and traveled to Fort Lewis, Washington, where he would be stationed for the next seven years.
Keith’s first deployment came in 2010, to Iraq. “It was the more mellow of my two deployments,” he explains. “We were doing lots of humanitarian aid.” That included security for elections, village security (like building up police departments) and building up and helping to train local armies. His mom sent him care packages full of candy, which he and his unit would pass out to the village kids. He even learned some Pashto and Dari, the native languages of the two main tribes of Iraq.
His unit was an RDU, or Rapid Deployment Unit, so after Iraq, Keith had at least 9 months at home before deploying again, during which he got married and had his first child. His Afghanistan deployment began in 2011. Keith’s unit had 13 infantrymen, with nine regular and four mortar men, and was attached to a Special Forces Unit before being dropped out in what Keith describes as “the middle of nowhere” in Afghanistan to conduct village stability operations. For this specific assignment, they were required to grow out their beards and dress like locals, driving small trucks through the markets.
The unit often traveled on side-by-sides or four-wheelers, and their location was remote, with food and other supplies delivered by airdrop. Communication with his family was inconsistent. There were many harrowing circumstances, like when they were hit from 26 different fighting positions surrounding their base. “We did a lot of training in Iraq, and they’d wake us up at two in the morning with screaming and simulated explosions,” he explains. “So luckily, a lot of us were ready for it.”After he returned from Afghanistan, there was a lull in deployments. He spent three years stationed in Fairbanks, Alaska, dealing with injuries, which were driving him towards a medical discharge. But Keith wasn’t ready to be done yet — he found a loophole, joining the Army Reserve for the next three years, during which he went to Poland to take part in a joint multinational training operation. Upon return to the U.S., he signed up to deploy to Afghanistan again, and it was then that he was finally given a permanent medical discharge after 13 years.
Now, Keith works as a journeyman carpenter and is a Canby youth wrestling coach. He lives not far from Canby, in Beavercreek, and is still heavily involved in the Canby community, including stepping up to move livestock and help families in need during the 2020 Riverside Fire in the Molalla River Basin. Canby is proud to call Keith its own.Know a local veteran we should feature? Contact Active Media today — donovan@activemediausa.com or 503-825-2111.
