Montgomery veteran helping give fellow veterans the support they need

Robert Dabney Jr. knows the physical and mental toll that military service can take on a person and family.The Montgomery resident – who was raised in Memphis, Tennessee – began his service in the U.S. Army as a combat medic two weeks after graduating from high school. Dabney’s nine-year career in the Army included deployments to Kosovo, Saudi Arabia, and two combat tours in Iraq. “I wanted to get out of my community,” Dabney said. “There were very little prospects for advancing my life in my community at the time. I wanted to experience more than I had experienced in Memphis. I felt that being in the military would help me to continue to grow and to see more of the world.”Dabney was part of the initial invasion of Baghdad in 2003. “Most of the casualties that I treated were Iraqi military members or citizens themselves,” he said. “That was during the first deployment. When we finally made it to Baghdad and began to set up shop there, then we started to see a lot more mortar attacks an