Veterans Day has a special meaning to second-year medical student Greg de Gruchy.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s among a relative few in the UConn Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine for whom this day of remembrance is intended\u2014himself a veteran who went on deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan during his four years of service with the U.S. Marine Corps.de Gruchy was a corporal in an Air Wing unit that worked in aviation ordinance at the Al-Asad and Al-Taqaddum air bases in Iraq in 2008 and 2009.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe worked on gun systems, munitions, predominantly helicopters,\u201d de Gruchy says. \u201cIn Iraq we handled a lot of our own internal security, and being ordinance we are on the perimeter of the base, so we really did have to be prepared for combat. I had to do the occasional IED patrol, we had to do vehicle stops and searches, but my predominant mission was mostly logistics, maintenance, doing buildups for close air support missions.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2010 the mission was in Afghanistan, where he had the leadership role of work center supervisor, \u201clike a subject matter specialist,\u201d as he describes it.<\/p>\n
Coming from a military family and feeling destined for military service, it was the combat training that drew him to the Marines.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew I was joining the military at war, and I knew I was going to get a very high level of training, which is particularly useful when you\u2019re in conflicts that don\u2019t have a concept of a front line,\u201d de Gruchy says. \u201cAnd that was something that I\u2019m very grateful for having gotten. I definitely received a very good level of combat competency between basic training and combat training.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another role he had in the Corps was helping fellow Marines deal with the stress of being part of a high-deployment unit, counseling them and connecting them with resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was something that I really enjoyed doing,\u201d de Gruchy says. \u201cWhat I found really rewarding was, it was a way that I could make a unique impact. I\u2019ve always been interested in helping people, even before the Marines. It was an interesting manifestation of something I\u2019ve always wanted to do, and it kind of pointed me in the general direction of working in health care when I got out of the Marines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next step was UConn for undergraduate study in allied health science. He graduated in 2014 but stayed an extra year taking additional classes and doing research. Then it was on to medical school. de Gruchy says he\u2019s not sure what area of medicine he wants to practice yet.<\/p>\n
As UConn Health brings back its Veterans Day Observance for a second year, de Gruchy reflects on his service.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re the person who can step up and do it, then go and do it, that was a little bit of the feeling, and I\u2019m very proud of that. I was one of many people who went, but I got to be the person who stepped up into that role and had the opportunity to go,\u201d de Gruchy says. \u201cPeople continue to make big sacrifices and need support, and it\u2019s important to not let that be something that\u2019s entirely forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Veterans Day has a special meaning to second-year medical student Greg de Gruchy. He\u2019s among a relative few in the UConn Schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine for whom this day of remembrance is intended\u2014himself a veteran who went on deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan during his four years of service with the U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":119287,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2010],"class_list":["post-119286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 05:36:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/119287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119286"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=119286"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=119286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}