Raymond 'Rake' Ozenna is an officer in the Alaska Army National Guard.
He hails from the smaller of the two Diomede Islands in the middle of the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia. Known by the nickname of 'Yesterday Isle', Little Diomede has a population now of just under 100 people but back when Ozenna lived there it likely had twice as many; Ozenna is one of those that wanted to see a bit more than the frozen 2 square miles of rock and the always frigid water. The significance of these two specks of land in inhospitable sea is that since the purchase of Alaska in 1867, the border between the US and Russia runs between the two with Big Diomede belonging to Russia and two miles to the east, Little Diomede is American.
Ozenna is a native Inupiaq (part of the larger Inuit grouping), though Ozenna uses the more common, and now sometimes considered derogatory term Eskimo, and since he is one, he has the right to use whatever term he wishes. He was raised in the tiny village by his cousins after his parents disappeared when he was very little. "As soon as Rake was old enough, he had joined the Alaska Army National Guard. From the lowest rank of private, he broke through to reach captain in the 207th Infantry Group based at Fort Richardson outside of Anchorage, better known as the elite unit of Eskimo Scouts, perfect for deployment to mountain winters in Afghanistan." In the more than 10 years since he had last visited the land of his birth, Ozenna had seen "Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Iraq again, Afghanistan again".
Ozenna history with the military is an interesting one. "The primary task of the Eskimo Scouts was not fighting, but surveillance. Rake was to be the eyes and ears of America on its sub-zero icy border. Combat was for other units. He had applied and won a transfer to the 19th Special Forces group in Washington State. They taught him how to shoot and kill men in the cold. In return, he had showed them how to read the Arctic wind and ice. It was this unit that had taken him to Afghanistan .. where he learned the skills he was about to use now."
That 'now' was our introduction to Ozenna takes place when a call for medical assistance in Little Diomede reached Anchorage and Ozenna's girl friend at the time, Dr. Carrie Walker, went with Ozenna back to his place of birth. The timing was lousy for not only was the weather troublesome, so were the Russian troops which would land a couple hours later as the world witnessed a bold move by the Russian President. That will mark Ozenna's transition from being a valued member of the Eskimo Scouts to having a larger part in the country's trouble spots.