Civilian Soldiers -- Long Tour, Heavy Burden

[Timber Loftis]

NY Times.
September 15, 2003
For Citizen Soldiers, an Unexpected Burden
By SARAH KERSHAW

HAYWARD, Calif., Sept. 14 — Mike Gorski thought he was done with active military duty when he left the Marines for civilian life more than a decade ago and signed on with the National Guard a few years later.

A banker with a new wife, Kim, and a new house here, Mr. Gorski, 33, knew that he would have to spend one weekend a month in training and two weeks a year on active duty. There was always the possibility of being called up for perhaps one six-month deployment.

But since the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Gorski, a staff sergeant with the 870th Military Police Company of the California National Guard, has spent 16 months away from home, first at an Army base in Tacoma, Wash., and most recently in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala. He is likely to spend eight more months in Iraq, and he has decided to leave the National Guard as soon as he can.

"It's just like being on active duty," he said in a telephone interview from Karbala, where 125 members of his company are stationed. "And there's a reason you get out of active duty. At the same time, you want to stay because of patriotism, so you join the National Guard or the reserves. All the guys are prepared for one deployment, especially in the wake of Sept. 11. But we've basically returned to active duty, and that's not what we're in for. It's too much to ask."

It is attitudes like Mr. Gorski's that have military officials deeply worried about an exodus from the state-based National Guards and the reserves of the nation's armed forces. Since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of citizen soldiers have been mobilized at a level thought to be the highest since World War II.

Those concerns grew last week when the Army announced that about 20,000 reservists and National Guard troops stationed in Iraq and Kuwait would likely have to serve a full year from the time they landed in those countries, extending their tours by several months.

"It's different from Desert Storm," said Maj. Gen. Paul D. Monroe Jr., the adjutant general, or commander, of the California National Guard, which has some 1,500 troops in Iraq. "Nobody was gone a year. Everyone went together and came home together. Now they have to think if they stay in, how many more times will they be mobilized? That's paramount on their minds, and that's never been paramount on their minds."

General Monroe, who was in Iraq over the weekend to see his troops there for the first time and spoke by telephone, added, "When I became adjutant general, I thought my biggest problem was going to be an earthquake. Nobody envisioned this."

But even as military officials fear problems with retaining reservists and National Guard troops, recruiting has not suffered and has even increased in some parts of the country, officials say.

Word of the extension comes as a new reality takes hold for the citizen soldiers and their families. In the past two years, more than 212,000 reservists and National Guard troops have been mobilized for war overseas and the fight against terrorism at home.

The president can mobilize reservists for up to two years in a five-year period without Congressional approval, but long deployments were unusual until 9/11, when reservists and National Guard troops were called up to guard airports, Army bases and forts, bridges, transportation systems or be sent overseas.

Of the more than 290 American soldiers who have died in Iraq as of today, 26 of them were members of the National Guard, officials said, although none from the 870th have died. It was unclear how many of the casualties were from Army, Air Force, Navy or Marine reserves.

For the 870th, which has headquarters in Pittsburg, Calif., about 30 miles east of here, the extension would mean that instead of coming home in mid-November, they would stay through May 2004. Most of them, who are now training Iraqi police, guarding the local police station and performing other security tasks, had thought their tours would last about six months.

Among the soldiers of the 870th are teachers, bankers, mortgage brokers, telecommunications experts, police officers and copy machine repairmen. There is a father who has not seen his first child, one who has not seen his second and a grandfather who is raising his grandson.

Mr. Gorski and his wife have it relatively easy. They have no children, only two dogs, Chesty and Bosco.

They have been able to count on Mr. Gorski's full income because his company, which he did not want to publicly identify, has paid his salary during his deployment in Washington and in Iraq. That has helped them keep up the mortgage payments and allowed Mrs. Gorski, who is pursuing a career in real estate, to devote most of her time to leading a support group for families of the 870th.

But for those with children, mounting bills and a reduced income, the hardships have become almost unbearable, several spouses and members of the 870th said in interviews. Two other members of the 870th besides Mr. Gorski said they would leave the Guard as soon as possible.

Kathy Martin is working full-time as a mortgage broker and taking care of five children — four of her own and one of her husband's — while her husband, Joe, a sergeant in the Hayward Police Department, is serving in Iraq with the 870th. Mrs. Martin said she feared that her husband, who was stationed at Fort Lewis for 10 months, would miss opportunities for promotion because of his absence.

Mrs. Martin's first husband was an active duty sergeant in the Army. But she said being married to a reservist — she married Mr. Martin in March, 13 days before he was deployed — was more difficult.

After Mr. Martin served his 10 months at Fort Lewis, she said, "We assumed we were finished, we assumed we had done our one-time-in-a-million deployment for the National Guard."

Gale Tompkins-Bischel of Rodeo, Calif., has a 10-year-old daughter and a 22-month-old son. The only thing that had kept the family going since her husband, Dave Bischel, a route salesman for a bottled water company, was deployed was what she called the "180-day plan." Mrs. Tompkins-Bischel was counting on him being gone six months, she said, and now he plans to leave the National Guard when his first year is up in January. It is unclear, however, if he would be able to leave Iraq then if he is still posted there.

She said her daughter, Aria, made a calendar called "Number of Days Until Daddy Gets Home," and together they mark a box for each day he is away.

"If we were career military, I think I'd have to take it more in stride," Mrs. Tompkins-Bischel said. "But we're not. And we were not prepared for this. Nobody was."

Specialist Jory Preston, 30, of Pleasant Hill, Calif., signed on with the National Guard in January and was assigned to the 870th. He was working at a small telecommunications company and, having served in the Army in the 1990's, saw the National Guard as a way to earn extra money. He was married in February, and his wife was already pregnant by then.

The next month, he was on his way to Iraq.

While Mr. Preston was away, his wife, Anita, gave birth, on July 20, and then became clinically depressed, he said in a telephone interview from Karbala. His employer is not paying his salary and with what he is earning for his military service, he estimated the couple was losing $2,000 a month. His wife had to leave their apartment and move in with her father, he said.

"They told us when we first got deployed it would be six months — the whole thing," he said. "I thought I could handle that, I wasn't aware of my wife's situation and I thought I could suck it up and drive on, as the soldiers say."

But Mr. Preston said he felt ill-prepared for his assignment with the 870th, never having been trained for military police work — riot control, arrest procedures, how to convoy and how to protect the convoys — receiving only two months training at Fort Lewis before being sent to Iraq. He said he would leave the National Guard as soon as he could.

"I'm trying to do a job that I'm not qualified to do," he said. "But when you tell your superiors, they're looking at you like none of that matters. They just need the bodies, they just need the numbers."

Of his wife, he said, "I feel like I owe her the complete rest of my life."

As the leader of the 870th's "family readiness group," — each company has one under a program that General Monroe enhanced before his troops were sent to Iraq — Mrs. Gorski is dealing with a lot of the frustrations that the families are enduring. Leading the group was a job her husband had planned to do until he was deployed to Iraq, she said.

Her telephone rings constantly, and she has an $11,000 credit card bill, from charges for postage, care packages, telephone calls to Iraq and food for the family support meetings and dinners, she said.

"I'm in a way fighting my own war on the home front," she said. "I don't know what day it is. I wake up and there are phone calls that need to be made, meetings need to be planned, people need help or if they don't have questions they need to be consoled. I have to tell them everything is going to be O.K."

Mrs. Gorski said that while the 870th and its four sister companies were in Fort Lewis, there were five divorces, two attempted suicides, several bankruptcies and a lot of depression among soldiers and their spouses. Her central mission now, she said, is to make sure that "nobody dies on my watch, nobody ends up in the loony bin, that all the heads stay above water."

Even when, she says, all she feels like doing is staying in bed or staring at the distant San Francisco skyline from her bedroom, even when she is so unable to concentrate that the study guide for her real estate test "might as well be in Swahili," she forces herself to be a cheerleader for the others.

Mrs. Gorski encourages them to go to counseling, and has started going herself, she said. She organizes potluck dinners and picnics and has set up a phone tree to keep the families informed about the soldiers, using 10 volunteers, including her mother and her mother-in-law.

On Tuesday, when the news broke that reservists and National Guard troops would probably stay longer, she asked the volunteers to activate the phone tree, telling them that she did not know how that would affect the 870th but to ask the families how they were holding up.

It was still unclear over the weekend if the 870th would have to stay for the full year. For the families, it was a roller-coaster week. On Tuesday, Mrs. Gorski heard that the company was in limbo. On Thursday, she heard that the company would have to stay, and she planned a meeting with the other families to talk about taking their case to elected officials. Then, on Friday, Mrs. Martin said she heard from her husband that the 870th was not staying, but on Saturday she said he told her that they were.

Through it all, Mrs. Gorski said she was forcing herself to believe that her husband would return safely, whenever that might be.

"I couldn't be one of the women who could deal with losing their husbands, so God can't do that to me," she said. "Whether it's irrational, that's the way my brain reasons it, and I feel like we have way too many guardian angels who have gotten us this far."

[Sir Taliesin]

When my unit came back from Desert Storm, within 3 years we had almost an 80% turnover in personel. I think that's pretty much typical of the whole system. I expect nothing less this time around.

Unlike the guy in the article, I don't think that is too much to ask of reserves and National Guard troops. That's all part of being a soldier and you know when you sign the dotted line and commit to 6 years in the reserves or the National Guard that you may be deployed for an extended period of time. If you don't feel that you can do an extended tour of duty, don't sign up.

Been there and done all that.

[Timber Loftis]

Theoretically, the National Guard is reserved for state-side duties and defense. Since when did the "reserve troops" become the mainstay of the military? That's exactly the sort of thing that gets us stretched too thin.

[Chewbacca]

These people should stop bitching. We really needed to go to war in Iraq, I mean our back was to the wall, the threat was dire and immenent. It doesn't matter they had to do jobs they weren't trained for and their families are suffering, our national security was on the line...

edit- just too clarify that this post oozes with sarcasm.

[ 09-15-2003, 08:11 PM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]

[Sir Taliesin]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Theoretically, the National Guard is reserved for state-side duties and defense. Since when did the "reserve troops" become the mainstay of the military? That's exactly the sort of thing that gets us stretched too thin.

When we went to an All Volunteer Army. We also cut our defense spending to the point that we could no longer field a huge active force. Since we couldn't keep a large active army, many of the missions were placed under the responsiblity of the Reserves and National Guard. The commands in the Reserve and the State National Guard Commands loved this because the Federal government turned over a large amount of money to this organizations to spend on training, equipment and infrastructure (i.e. Armorys and Reserve Centers, ranges and over facilities etc, etc.)

The primary mission of the Reserves and National Guard is Combat Support and Combat Service Support. In other words, Military police, communications, logistics, maintence and transportation. Most units that make up the Reserves and National Guard cover theses area. There are also some Combat units (most of these are in the National Guard). Combat Arms Units are Infantry, Armor, Artillary, and Engineers. There are also some SF (Special Forces) units mostly in the National Guard.

BTW the Reserves are under the direct command of the Federal Government and the National Guard is under the nominal command of the individual states, except in a time of crisis or a national emergency. At the point they are placed under federal control.

As for them not having adequate training, it usually comes down to the unit commander as to whether or not the unit is ready to go to war. If the Unit Commander is worth his salt then the unit is training every drill weekend. I mean quality training. Soldiers involved in those kinds of units tend to be good troops, cause the bad apples get weeded out quickly and either find another unit that will put up with their lazy asses or get thrown out because of lack of participation.

In my 15 years in the active reserves, it was my experience that it got tougher as the years went. More time was required in the field during AT and we had more FTXs (field training exercise. They lasted the WHOLE weekend and usually started in Friday night) on drill weekends. As I got higher in rank, I had to out in more time throught the month than just one weekend. Senoir NCOs and officers got together through the week and planned out the drill weekend. We didn't get paid for it either. Also many of our ATs (Annual Training) were overseas, which required an additional week (3 weeks instead of the normal 2). While I was with my old unit, we had ATs in Panama, the Christmas Islands, Guatamaula, Honderous, Jordon, Turkey and Eygpt.

After Desert Storm, the Army made a conscious effort to make sure all Reserve and National Guard Troops were deployable. If you were a single mom or dad and had nobody to keep your children, then you had to get out. Many people that had businesses in civilian life left as well. Hard to run a business from overseas in a combat zone. All this was and is pointed out to the troops. It is their choice to stay or go if there is going to be a hardship. They know there is always the possiblity they could be deployed for an extended period of time. They go over all of this EVERY year with ALL troops. There is nothing hidden. But you don't get to opt out at the last minute either.

Also I must point out that during my deployment to Desert Storm, my wife lacked for nothing. All our interest rates on our loans were cut to nothing. We recieved a housing allowance and a utility allowance, as well as regular pay, combat pay, free health insuance, dirt cheap life insurance (which I still maintain at an obsencily cheap price!) and a depentant allowance. When all was said and done the entire difference between my Civilian salary and my Military Pay (Sergeant, E-5 pay grade) was about $50. And I made above the median income in 1991! I don't think much has changed since then as far as pay goes.

[Felix The Assassin]

A post of this nature from TL, did I read that right.

During the last 8 years of democratic Presidential rule, we dropped down to an unheard of, and we cannot support both fronts on the battle field 10 division active Army and restructured the ARNG as direct combat (shooters) and the Reserve's as Combat Service Support (CSS = Non shooters) to facilitate the active Army.

Of the 10 active divisions.
7 are heavy = tanks, brads, etc.
3 are light = Airborne, Air Assualt, and the Mountain Light.
There are 2 Seperate heavy BDEs left, and 1 ACR (Armored Cavalry Regiment). Plus SPECOPS, Rangers, and some "Other" independent units.

The ARNG supplies 3 Heavy, 1 Light, 1 CAV, and 1 "Other" to the TOTAL ARMY FORCE.
The Reserves supply all of the builders(ENG), pysops, water treatment, and heavy med spt to the TOTAL ARMY FORCE.

Notice Total Army Force.

So you wonder, why is Felix always on IW and not in the sand while these overworked Reservist and Guardsmen are their. Because they form the Total Army Force.

I spent 7 months last calender year in the Balkans, and we will deploy to Iraq in the early Spring 04 to releive a heavy unit from the states, we are planning to spend 14 months on a 12 month rotation there. But, one must remember that the active Army is the mainstay of the Total Army Force and we expect to endure harder and longer hardships. However, we ourselves wonder, when and where is the relief? We are heavy, we are shooters, why are we going down there now? Didn't they just say we need less shooters and more builders? But hey, somebody must fill the manpower requirment, conduct raids, and wave and pay respect to the locals. I can relate to that, but I do have one problem, and here most recntly the policy downrange is when dealing with the locals to remove ones sunglasses / eye protection. That I have aproblem with!

If we were still a 16 Division Army, the ARNG and AR would feel less of the Total Army Force burden, and could remain to the state. However, this is today and such is life. Now look at this for face value. We just got a soldier in who did a change of station from the states to here. Well, he just so happened to have been 3rd ID, who supported operation's from day 1. This poor trooper spent 19 months in Iraq with 3ID, got a 30 day leave, moved over here, will have 5 months before he does another "12" months down range. Can you say hollow Army as soon as thess back to back rotation soldiers get a chance to ETS (get out).

Felix

[Timber Loftis]

Thanks for the soldiers POV Felix.

One of my good friends is in the ARNG -- a water guy. He got married earlier than anticipated because he knew he was shipping out soon. This was months before the war's start, of course. All the ARNG guys at the wedding expressed real concern for the number of troops vs. the number of fronts.

You either fight on fewer fronts or get more troops. It's that simple. After Clinton's downsizing of the forces, I feel sure we likely have enough tanks and trucks to mount up more guys. We just need the guys.

Time Magazine three weeks ago had several articles on our thinly-stretched forces. One of the articles talked about hiring civvies to do more of the non-combat functions and putting guns in the hand of non-shooters.

[Sir Taliesin]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Thanks for the soldiers POV Felix. One of the articles talked about hiring civvies to do more of the non-combat functions and putting guns in the hand of non-shooters.

Can you say "Merceniares"? I thought ya could. I understand that some weapons systems were manned by "Civilian Technicians" during the latest hostilities.

Good post Felix! That one troop that used to be in the 3rd ID is getting a raw deal!

[ 09-17-2003, 04:56 PM: Message edited by: Sir Taliesin ]

[Skunk]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Thanks for the soldiers POV Felix. One of my good friends is in the ARNG -- a water guy. He got married earlier than anticipated because he knew he was shipping out soon. This was months before the war's start, of course. All the ARNG guys at the wedding expressed real concern for the number of troops vs. the number of fronts. You either fight on fewer fronts or get more troops. It's that simple. After Clinton's downsizing of the forces, I feel sure we likely have enough tanks and trucks to mount up more guys. We just need the guys. Time Magazine three weeks ago had several articles on our thinly-stretched forces. One of the articles talked about hiring civvies to do more of the non-combat functions and putting guns in the hand of non-shooters.

I don't think that Clinton was wrong in what he did. He was concerning himself with winning wars - rather than occupying countries.

As you saw from the Iraq conflict - putting money into technology rather than 'grunts' saved money and allowed the war to be won very quickly and relatively painlessly in terms of US lives lost.

The alternative to what Clinton did would have been to either give up the technological edge, or increase the already massive defence budget either by raising taxes or by slashing other budgets. Can't have it both ways.

[Sir Taliesin]

But some one must be the occupier after the war is over. That's when troops are probably the most critical now-a-days. Still you have point about the technilogical edge we enjoy. There need a better balance of the two.