When Army Reserve Capt. Nate Henderson came home to Sullivan County in late June, one of the first things he noticed was the color.

After months in the Middle East, the green hills and trees stood out immediately.

“I come home, and even down in New York City, I’m like, man, everything’s green,” Henderson said.

For Henderson, 39, a longtime Sullivan County resident and Army Reserve captain with 22 years in uniform, the return marked the end of a deployment that carried him through Kuwait, Israel and Jordan, from Gaza reconstruction planning during a ceasefire to Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. military operation against Iran.

It was not the year he expected.

“I thought I was going to be [doing] project management,” Henderson said. “And then [I] end up in a major conflict.”

Henderson lived first in Kingston, NY before moving to Sullivan County in the early 1990s. He grew up in the Neversink area and attended Tri-Valley.

As a child, he said, he was a “nerdy kid” who liked anime, video games, computers and programming. He was also heavily involved in Tri-Valley FFA, an experience he credits with helping shape his sense of service.

“[The FFA] definitely helped me develop a drive for selfless service, for giving back to the community and to uplifting other communities as well,” Henderson said.

That interest in computers later became a career. Henderson earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Iona College in 2014 and went on to earn a master’s degree in the field. He worked in artificial intelligence and software engineering, including time as an independent software engineer.

A call to serve

But his military career began much earlier.

Henderson said he is a product of the Global War on Terror. He remembers watching the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks unfold on television while he was in school.

“I remember being in Miss Lieberman’s study hall, first period, and watching on TV, watching the planes hit the towers on 9/11,” Henderson said. “It shaped an entire generation of people.”

For Henderson, that moment became part of a call to service.

“I feel like, personally, that we have a duty to our country, and that’s why I joined,” he said.

He enlisted at 17 in 2004 through the Army’s split option program, which allowed him to attend basic training during the summer, return home for his senior year of high school, and then complete job training after graduation.

He went to basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and later completed advanced individual training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. His first military specialty was as a heavy construction operator, working with bulldozers and other construction equipment.

Over time, Henderson rose from private to staff sergeant before commissioning as an officer. He reclassified as a technical engineer before deploying to Afghanistan in 2015, doing survey, drafting and design work. After becoming an engineer officer, his responsibilities expanded.

“You go from the start of my career focused on building berms and digging holes and stuff like that, and then kind of exploding it to now being involved heavily in an actual strategic theater operation,” Henderson said.

Dispatches from abroad

That was the role he carried into his latest deployment.

Henderson said his unit deployed as a strategic asset for Army Central Command, responsible for defensive construction and engineering work.

Then the Gaza ceasefire changed the mission.

Henderson was in Kuwait when he and his sergeant major were sent to Israel around late September or October. Their task was connected to standing up the Civil Military Coordination Center, or CMCC, during the Gaza ceasefire.

The center brought together American forces, the Israel Defense Forces, NATO partners and civilian organizations. Henderson said British, Norwegian and Italian personnel were among those involved.

He stayed on an Israeli Air Force base in what the soldiers called the “Coalition Village.” He was able to see Jerusalem and Tel Aviv briefly, but the mission limited travel.

“Given the sensitive nature of what was going on, it was a command decision that we were going to travel as [little] as possible,” Henderson said. “For the most part, there was a lot of [focus on the] mission.”

Henderson said his experience with Israeli civilians was overwhelmingly positive.

“I’ve never felt so welcomed in a foreign country before in my entire life,” he said.

He also worked closely with Israeli soldiers and described them as professional and deeply shaped by the Oct. 7 attacks.

“To understand the Israelis and their mindset is to remember what it was like for us during 9/11,” Henderson said. “They treat their October 7 just like we treated 9/11.”

At the CMCC, Henderson’s work focused on the engineering side of the Gaza reconstruction effort, particularly around Rafah and Khan Yunis. He said the mission was not simply about clearing strategic points or creating temporary camps. It was also about how to move civilians out of danger and into safer, more durable housing.

“What we didn’t want to do was create a bunch of refugee camps,” Henderson said. “The Palestinians, primarily in Gaza too, are so used to being placed in camps and forgotten about.”

Instead, Henderson said, planners were looking at what they called at the time “alternate safe communities.”

“We wanted to give them actual semi-durable housing that was a safe, contained area that would get them out of the combat zone,” he said.

Rafah, he said, presented major challenges.

“Rafah was one of the strongholds for Hamas to begin with, so it was a focal point on a lot of the concentrated fire,” Henderson said. “Rafah was very, very destroyed.”

The work required both technical and political planning. Henderson said planners could not simply seize land for the safe communities. They had to determine where property could be purchased for the project, while also ensuring the money would not go to landowners connected to Hamas.

“There’s the technical aspect of trying to figure out how to complete your tasks, and there’s the political aspect of how to make sure that you’re not also giving money to the people who are trying to harm Israel,” Henderson said.

Day to day, Henderson said personnel took a bus from the air base to the CMCC, where military officers, civilian organizations and nongovernmental organizations worked side by side. Some NGOs specialized in unexploded ordnance, or munitions that had not detonated.

The center used open-floor planning rather than standard briefings. Different working groups had tables in a large shared space. Mondays often focused on rubble and construction, while other days focused on humanitarian needs and other planning areas.

The work also drew attention from national leaders. Henderson said Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and others visited the CMCC. Henderson did not personally brief the vice president, but he was present as officials moved through the working groups and received updates.

He said Vance and Gabbard were more informed than he expected.

“I thought it was going to be the dog and pony show,” Henderson said. “No, they were definitely on the mark.”

Under fire

After about three months in Israel, Henderson returned briefly to Kuwait. Then the focus shifted again.

By late January or early February, he was sent to Jordan. Operation Epic Fury was on the horizon.

“We all went to theater thinking we were going to do one job, which is construction management, doing engineering for theater-level assets,” Henderson said. “And it very quickly shifted into, okay, well, now this is a war-fighting posture.”

For many soldiers, he said, it was the first time they had been involved in a major combat operation.

“This isn’t just a typical rotation,” Henderson said. “Now we’re doing an actual combat operation.”

Henderson praised the soldiers around him, including the 42nd Infantry Division, a New York National Guard unit, which he said played a major role in air defense and support operations.

“They were phenomenal out there,” Henderson said.

His own engineering work changed as well. Projects that had once involved renovations or improvements became more urgent and strategically significant.

“Everybody that came back from my unit, we all came back with a Combat Action Badge because everybody saw combat,” he said.

Drone warfare also forced engineers to think differently, he said.

“Nobody really knows how to deal with this new, unconventional style of warfare,” Henderson said. “We had to sort of design and develop, improvise what we think might be helpful in defending our assets.”

The threat in Jordan felt different from Afghanistan, Henderson said. In Afghanistan, attacks often involved insurgents firing short-range rockets. During the Iran conflict, the danger came from much farther away.

“You’re just taking fire, and you can’t see who’s shooting at you,” Henderson said. “They’re from miles and miles away.”

Warnings could give soldiers only minutes, and sometimes less, to get to a bunker.

“You’re sitting in this bunker and you’re just like, you don’t know, you can’t see anything,” Henderson said. “You can’t do anything. You’re just kind of waiting for something to happen or for the all clear.”

One night in Jordan, Henderson said, he was outside during a bunker call when Israeli F-16s intercepted incoming cruise missiles near where he was stationed.

As one aircraft peeled off to return to Israel, Henderson remembered thinking he might have been a little too close to the action.

“I probably should have been in the bunker for that,” he said.

A soldier’s return home

The deployment was eventually extended. Henderson said he had expected to come home around late April, but the extension added roughly 60 to 90 days. He did not return until June.

He said he was not bothered about staying longer.

“For me, I’m a very duty-driven person,” Henderson said. “I think I would have felt worse leaving before the conflict. I didn’t want to be there, but I felt like I had a duty and an obligation to be there if my fellow soldiers were going to be there in the fight.”

Getting out of Jordan brought its own complications. Henderson said soldiers had to work through logistical questions about where and how they would leave the theater. Normally, he said, soldiers leaving the region would pass through a theater gateway, a processing point where IDs, orders and travel status are checked before they move onward.

But the usual gateway in Kuwait had no one there at the time, Henderson said, leaving soldiers to figure out another route out of the region. Eventually, an improvised gateway was set up in Aqaba. After a flight was shifted, the State Department put the soldiers up in a resort for a night.

It gave them something many had gone without.

“[It was] the first full night’s sleep anyone’s gotten in a long time,” Henderson said.

From Aqaba, they flew by charter back to the United States. Henderson went through Fort Bliss, Texas, for medical and demobilization processing before returning to Sullivan County in late June.

This homecoming, he said, was different from the others.

Henderson has been deployed on three combat tours, including Afghanistan and a return during the COVID era. But the transition after Operation Epic Fury was the hardest.

He deliberately took a few weeks to decompress. Seeing family, friends and local contacts helped him feel like he was home again.

“Catching up with them and then being grateful that I had returned, being happy that I returned safe and everything like that, that was the big, all right, I can settle, and I’m home now,” Henderson said.

Now, Henderson said, he is turning his focus back to local civic life and politics. He sees that work as an extension of the same sense of duty that led him into uniform.

“There’s a lot of issues in Sullivan County,” Henderson said. “There’s a lot of distrust in Sullivan County towards the government, and I think that’s where my focus is going to be.”

Through Sullivan’s Legacy, a political group that supports candidates while remaining separate from their campaigns, Henderson said he hopes to inspire stronger candidates and a deeper sense of public service.

For Henderson, that work is about planting trees whose shade he may never sit under.

“I know in my heart of hearts I will never see the full fruition of my life’s work in politics and my life’s work in Sullivan County,” Henderson said. “But if I can inspire other people to pick up that banner, to continue the work, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”