Wisconsin is famous for a few things.

Beer, cheese and bratwurst, Laverne and Shirley and bitterly cold winters leap immediately to mind when thinking about the Badger State.

Somehow, training U.S. soldiers for desert combat isn’t high on that list.

Nonetheless, that’s what Selma City Councilman Sam Randolph spent the last month doing when he was called to active duty.

“I was training soldiers to go to Egypt.

I was assigned to an infantry battalion out of New Jersey to do a peace-keeping mission,” Randolph said. “I’m an instructor with the 100 Division. I was teaching them how to survive by cooking their own meals and basically taking some infantry guys and teaching them how to survive in a desert environment.”

Though Wisconsin isn’t known as a desert state, Randolph said the dry weather and flat land made for a good practice ground.

“They got the correct training,” Randolph said. “On a windy day, the wind would blow up a small dust storm.”

The Ward 5 councilman should know.

An 18-year military veteran, Randolph served in the Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq in the First Gulf War.

At one point, Randolph said he was just 100 kilometers from Baghdad.

As an Army Reservist, he could go back at any time.

Though he does training now, there is a chance he could be called to another unit and sent to the current war.

“If a unit is understrength, they’d reassign me to another unit,” the first-term councilman said. “There’s a great possibility since they’re going to be calling up 10,000 reserves,

we are soldiers first.”

In addition to soldier, councilman, father and husband, Randolph is a delivery driver for Federal Express.

“I deliver express mail to the Black Belt counties,” he said. “Fed Ex is really supportive of anyone that’s in politics.”

That political life was on hold for a few weeks while Randolph did his duty, but now he’s back in Selma and back in his city council seat. Of course, after Desert Storm, a council meeting is a cakewalk.

“I’ve been in real tense situations that the council meetings would never come up to even though battles,” he said. “But, it’s alright to disagree,”

Randolph has a year and half left before he can retire from the service.

Until his wife, Jackie and son Kenard, must live with the idea that Randolph could be called to go back to war.

“She’s very prepared to deal with it,” Randolph said.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy when he has to go away for extended periods of time.

Randolph said he talked to his wife nearly every day while he was in Wisconsin.

“She’s the first one I talk to in the morning when I wake up and the last one I talk to at night when I go to bed,” he said. “We always have communication everyday.”

Though he has not announced his candidacy officially, Randolph said he does plan to run for the Ward 5 seat again.

“I think the city’s moving in the right direction and I want to be a part of moving forward,” he said.