Extended Guard tours tax those waiting back home

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff, 9/13/2003

GLOCESTER, R.I. -- Samantha Huddleston, a 16-month-old bundle of hyperkinetic energy, scurries around the kitchen floor toward a plastic toy car, wide-eyed and smiling as her arms and legs move in overdrive under the protective gaze of her grandmother.

The scene is a snapshot of domestic bliss, except for one major, missing ingredient: Both of Samantha's parents are in Iraq, one based at Baghdad International Airport, the other in Balad, a dangerous hotspot in the volatile Sunni Triangle north and west of the capital.

They've been deployed with the Rhode Island National Guard since February, and were told earlier this week that they won't be coming home until April. That's seven more months, at least two months longer than they expected, and is part of a sudden, jolting decision to extend the tours of National Guard troops in Iraq and Kuwait to include a full year in the Middle East.

While regular troops in today's Army have come to expect frequent extended deployments, long assignments overseas for part-time volunteers in the Guard are a relatively new phenomenon.

"They're good soldiers and they won't complain, but I myself can't comprehend why the rotation of the soldiers isn't better," said Samantha's grandmother, Nancy Glanz, who has become reacquainted with the constant challenges of raising a baby. "I feel as if they're exhausting our soldiers."

Glanz has plenty of company among relatives and spouses of National Guard troops, who didn't envision that their call-ups would keep them in the Middle East so long after combat ended.

"I was quite upset," said Donna Bursey of Lunenburg, Mass., whose National Guard husband left home in March and arrived in Kuwait a short time later. She hoped he would return by Christmas, but now he will be gone at least until spring. "I'm not really angry at anyone. I'm just more of, OK, I don't want to play this game anymore. It's time for them to come home."

The extensions apply only to the 20,000 guardsmen and reservists now on the ground in Iraq and Kuwait, nearly all of whom believed that their one-year mobilization would include the training and preparation time -- covering weeks, and sometimes months -- spent at US military posts before their deployment overseas.

But now, because of the daunting challenges that 150,000 US troops are facing in chaotic Iraq, the National Guard and Army Reserve units overseas are considered an indispensable element of the difficult occupation of the country. The Army's 122,000 troops in Iraq include 3,000 guardsmen and 5,000 reservists. Of the 39,500 Army soldiers in Kuwait, 5,000 are from the National Guard and 7,000 are reservists.

Last week, General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the extensions, while difficult for the troops and their families, are a necessary sacrifice in the battle against global terror. "We are a nation at war," Myers said, "and we have to do what it takes in this case to win."

Still, National Guard officials acknowleged that the decision will be extremely disappointing for many soldiers.

"Now that they've been deployed and been overseas, some of them will feel that they did their part, that they gave something back to their country. And they're right, they're 100 percent right," said Captain Winfield Danielson, spokesman for the Massachusetts National Guard, which has 700 soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait. "The morale [of soldiers] that I've been in communication with is pretty high. That said, there are certainly many family members and many soldiers who want to get back home and get together as a family as soon as possible. That's expected."

Glanz, 56, said she is "heartsick" to think of her daughter in harm's way. However, she added, neither her daughter nor her husband second-guess their dangerous work, or voice regret that they are missing once-in-a-lifetime milestones in their daughter's life. "They volunteered; they knew what it could mean," said Glanz, who is retired as operations director for a nonprofit group for the elderly.

Nicole and George Huddleston are sergeants serving with the 115th Military Police Company of the Rhode Island National Guard.

"They're out there in the dark, they're out there in the street, they're banging down doors," Glanz said. "I know they are very well trained, and there's always danger in war, but it seems strange for MPs to be knocking down doors and going on raids."

The danger for the unit was underscored tragically on the morning of Sept. 1, when two soldiers from the 115th died when their Humvee struck an improvised mine on the outskirts of Baghdad. A funeral Mass for Staff Sergeant Joseph Camara of New Bedford, Mass., was said yesterday. A funeral will be held today for Sergeant Charles Caldwell, a native of Quincy, Mass.

Danielson, the Massachusetts National Guard spokesman, said he did not believe that extended deployments, and the prospect of frequent overseas assignments, would have a significant effect on recruitment and retention.

The uncertainty, however, surrounding the duration of the mission in Iraq has been wearing. Kristin Peterson of Lincoln, N.H., said her husband, Edwin, is due to return home from Kuwait by Columbus Day. But the reports of extensions have caused her to worry all over again: "I'm nervous; maybe they'll change their minds," she said.

The National Guard is composed of "citizen soldiers" who typically train for one weekend a month and two weeks during the summer in exchange for benefits such as extra pay, college tuition, and specialized skills. The Guard also includes soldiers such as the Huddlestons, who are full-time members of the Army.

Glanz's house is decorated with flags and patriotic symbols, inside and out, that show the family's support both for the US mission in Iraq -- "we're dealing with monsters," she said -- and the two soldiers whom she worries about.

Despite her support for the mission, Glanz said she angrily confronted Rhode Island National Guard leaders recently when they told family members that the enemy's shift to guerrilla tactics was proving problematic.

"That upset me," Glanz said. "Don't tell me that our soldiers are going to learn on the job how to fight guerrilla warfare. . . . Nine months ago, Saddam Hussein said, `Let them come over. We'll beat them in our streets.' "

In the interim, families at home are summoning the will to carry on. For Glanz and her husband, Peter, that means relearning how to feed and diaper a baby. For Bursey, 34, it means supporting two children despite being laid off from her job as a teacher's aide over the summer.

Last week, Bursey's husband, James, called on their anniversary from his Kuwaiti camp with the 110th Maintenance Company, which is based in Ayer, Mass.

"We were married 14 years this past Tuesday, and that's the day he called and said they'd be there most likely until April," Donna Bursey said. "It was a rough day Tuesday."