Please read the following and proceed to act now! I just hope that it motivates you to give these guy's a hand so that they can get some relief.
Because of the expressed fondness you share for this war, I thought that you would appreciate what the real soldiers(non cyber hawks) are having to deal with. Cyber Chicken Hawks like yourselves, that advocate vigorously for the status quo in a needless war should be expected to have the willingness to make the same sacrifices as the many that are, by enlisting now. Judging by your words in these threads and expressions of eagerness, devotion and your unconditional support for Bush and his Iraq war policies, you've got the right stuff that he needs in the war on Iraqi terror.
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As Ranks Dwindle In a Reserve Unit, Army's Woes Mount
After Tours in Two War Zones, Many in 211th Are Fed Up; Tough Sell for Recruiters
By GREG JAFFE Staff Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
CLYDE, N.C. (Aug. 4) - On a cool, wet Saturday last month, the depleted 211th Military Police Company of the North Carolina National Guard mustered in a ragged line for weekend drill. Back-to-back deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq had taken a toll on its ranks.
Six months ago, the company's 109 soldiers were greeted as heroes when they returned from Iraq. A column of police cars, sirens blaring, escorted them from the airport to a welcome-home parade. Businesses closed. The whistle at the local paper mill shrieked to announce their arrival.
But on this July morning, only 52 soldiers showed up for roll call. Four were AWOL, or absent without leave. About 30 had decided to get out of the Guard for good. Another 26, who had been temporarily assigned to the company to beef it up before combat, had returned to their regular units.
"After the second deployment, a lot of soldiers just said [forget] it," says Capt. James Payne, the unit's commander and an executive at Carolinas Healthcare System, a local nonprofit. "The overwhelming feeling is that they are tired. They have just had enough."
The 211th's dwindling ranks point to a larger manpower challenge for the U.S. military, as its presence in Iraq drags on with no clear end in sight. More broadly, it shows the difficulty of waging military campaigns on multiple fronts, as the Bush administration has committed to do in its war on terrorism.
The U.S. Army's part-time soldiers reside in both the National Guard, which can fall under state or federal control, and the Army Reserve, which is always federally controlled. Today, these reserve troops make up about 40% of the force in Iraq and virtually all of the troops in the Balkans. The Guard and Reserves are home to critical specialties such as military police, civil affairs, transportation and construction units that are essential to fighting insurgencies in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The Guard also is providing combat forces in Iraq to relieve active-duty units. The big question facing the Pentagon is how many reserve soldiers will choose, like the departed members of the 211th, to leave the service following their yearlong deployments. Top Guard officials say they are concerned but don't foresee a long-term problem based on current retention numbers.
The first large group of part-time forces shipped to Iraq for 12-month tours began trickling home several months ago. Under an Army policy known as "stop loss," soldiers can't leave the Guard during a deployment or for their first 90 days back in the U.S., even if their enlistment contracts expire. The policy is designed to ensure that units remain intact when they are most needed. But now the time for departures is arriving, as the three-month waiting period runs out for many soldiers.
The National Guard says it's losing about 17% of its force annually, a number within its target of a 15% to 18% attrition rate. But Guard officials concede that the numbers are skewed by the many deployed troops who are temporarily prohibited from leaving the service under the stop-loss policy.
The early signs from units that have returned and are free to leave are mixed. In North Carolina, where the 211th is based, Guard officials say they expect their loss rate to surge from 14% to over 20% later this summer when deployed units are eligible to get out.
Bringing new people in also is getting harder, especially since the Guard's recruiting targets have risen since 9/11. As of June 1, the Guard was on pace to meet only about 88% of its recruiting goal for the year.
Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, the Guard's top general, recently told reporters that he's optimistic most returning soldiers will stay with the service. However, a survey conducted by the Army suggests a looming problem later this fall. About 43% of National Guardsmen returning from deployments in Iraq said they intend to leave when their contracts are up, according to the survey of 11,000 returning Guardsmen. It's unlikely that all the soldiers who say they plan to leave will actually leave, Army officials say. But the survey is cause for concern. "This is a different Army than it was three years ago when we trained and trained and trained, but for the most part didn't deploy," says Brig. Gen. Sean Byrne, a senior Army personnel specialist. "It is safe to say that there is stress on the force and some people are coming back thinking they are not going to be with us."
The 211th was first called up for duty in Afghanistan in late January 2002 shortly after the Taliban fell. With the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon still fresh in everyone's mind, the unit was eager to go. In fact, soldiers from other Guard units in the state who hadn't been called to active duty clamored to join it.
Spc. Jason Coggins, who was a member of the 211th's sister unit in nearby Asheville, was one of about two dozen soldiers who transferred into the unit. Spc. Coggins's father was a member of the 211th, and the son was eager to deploy with him. Spc. Coggins also wanted to do his part for the war. "I really felt like I was involved in something important," he says. The 211th was assigned to Kandahar and given the job of guarding Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners. The unit's training had focused on securing and defending prisons, not handling inmates. But it adapted quickly because it included several civilian police officers. Morale remained strong. The company had hoped its deployment would last six months; it stretched to nine.
In late November 2002, the 211th returned from Afghanistan to its first welcome-home ceremony. For some soldiers, adjusting to civilian life was difficult. Sgt. Christopher McCall, 27, had planned to take three weeks off to reconnect with his family before starting work again as a deputy sheriff. Instead, he went back to work after only one week. "I got bored and restless," he says.
Sgt. Eric Sollie, 25, says he had trouble sleeping at first. His wife says he was quieter than normal and harder to talk to. A college graduate, he decided to leave his job as a project engineer for a construction company and start his own homebuilding business with a partner. He worried about the effect another deployment would have on his new business. But, like most in the unit, he believed it was unlikely the 211th would be called up again soon. In late February 2003, when a war with Iraq seemed inevitable, he recalls watching TV with his wife. "You don't think you are going to get called up again?" he says she asked. "There is no way," he replied.
The U.S. Army is desperately short of military police units, like the 211th, which are critical to battling insurgencies and to mounting nation-building campaigns. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, about 13,000 of the National Guard's 16,000 military policemen have been called up for at least one deployment. Several thousand soldiers have been called up twice.
Capt. Payne, the 211th's commander, didn't want to alarm his troops, but he was getting signals that they might be deployed again. Commanders in Raleigh had begun calling him to ask if the unit's equipment was in good shape.
Ever since Capt. Payne, who joined the 211th 16 years ago as a private, returned from Afghanistan, his 10-year-old daughter, Aleesha, worried he'd be deployed again. She fretted every weekend when he left for Guard drill. "If I go, I promise I will come home," he says he assured her.
On March 2, 2003, four months after coming home, Capt. Payne and his soldiers were drilling in their squat brick armory when he got a call from Raleigh that the unit was being called up for Iraq. He recalls ordering the unit to assemble in formation.
The 211th's top enlisted soldier, First Sgt. David Baker, addressed the soldiers. "For some of you, your worst nightmare has materialized," First Sgt. Baker recalls saying in his deep, sandpaper voice.
Some soldiers cursed. Others groaned. One soldier, who joined the unit after it returned from Afghanistan and missed the first deployment, let slip a cheer, Capt. Payne remembers.
Spc. Coggins, the young soldier who had transferred to the unit to deploy with his father in early 2002, recalls letting out a frustrated sigh. Shortly after returning from Afghanistan he had gotten married. His wife was pregnant. Looking to upgrade from his job managing a convenience store, he had scheduled an interview with the North Carolina prison system. Instead, he cancelled the interview and prepared to leave again.
Once the ground war started, some members of the 211th wondered if the Army had a plan for them. The unit spent more than a month sitting at Fort Dix in New Jersey, where the soldiers trained and played cards. Then they spent two months in Kuwait, guarding the U.S. base there.
In July 2003, they were moved to a base about 80 miles northeast of Baghdad and given the mission of guarding the Mujahedeen-e Khalq, or MEK, a group of Iranian exiles who, with Saddam Hussein's help, had sought to topple the Iranian government.
Twice a week, the 211th ran convoys through the heart of the restive Sunni Triangle to Baghdad and Balad to get supplies. Often it took sniper fire. Although the 211th never suffered any serious casualties, one of the units traveling the same route lost four soldiers to a roadside bomb.
Many soldiers in the 211th were convinced that, because they were Guardsmen and not active-duty soldiers, they had been given second-rate equipment. They say they had to make due with older, less-effective flak vests, while their active-duty colleagues were protected by new Interceptor Body Armor, which includes special ceramic plates that protect vital organs. Their Humvees weren't armored. Even their rifles were hand-me-downs from the 82nd Airborne Division. The sights were out of line and the barrels had too much give in them, the soldiers say. Though they spent hours cleaning and repairing the guns, Capt. Payne says "not a soul in the unit had faith in them."
Army officials acknowledge that Guard equipment is often older than that of active-duty troops. They estimate it will take about $15 billion to upgrade Guard units. Doing so is a top priority, they add.
Last February, the 211th returned to North Carolina, having spent 22 of the previous 26 months away from home. In May, the 90-day waiting period, during which its members had to stay enlisted, ended and soldiers began to leave.
Sgt. Sollie, who had tried to start his own homebuilding business after the Afghanistan deployment, says he knew he was getting out of the Guard the moment he got home. "I know I couldn't put my wife and my business partner through that again," he says.
Four other members of the company, who joined before 9/11 to help pay their way through college, have either left or are planning to leave when their enlistment contracts end. More than three years after enrolling for classes, all are still freshmen or sophomores.
On the rainy Saturday the 211th met for drill last month, Lt. Col. Tim Houser, who oversees three other military-police companies, stopped by to check on what was left of the unit.
"What reasons are they giving for getting out? Is it because their wife's mad at them, because they don't want to deploy?" asked the colonel, a tall and thin man with a salt-and-pepper crew cut.
"The overwhelming reason is that they are just dog tired," Capt. Payne answered. "When we ask them, they say they've had enough."
Col. Houser worries about how long it will take to get the 211th back up to strength. "People know if they sign up for these units they are going to do multiple deployments. It is a tough message to recruit against," he says.
He also has other companies in his battalion to worry about. The 210th just returned from Baghdad, where it lost one soldier and a half-dozen were wounded. Its commander, Capt. Tom Lewis, says it's too early to tell how many of his men will opt out. "A lot of my soldiers are tired," he says. Some are "frustrated and angry" about having been forced to stay in Iraq 15 months when their deployments were supposed to be much shorter, he says.
A third company in the battalion is in Kosovo. And the battalion's last company, the 105th, is readying itself for what will likely be an Iraq deployment later this summer.
Because the 105th sent soldiers to the 210th and 211th to fill them out before their Iraq deployments, it has only half the soldiers it needs. Now, with its own deployment pending, it has had to draft soldiers from other North Carolina units -- a shell game that Col. Houser concedes will eventually catch up with the Guard.
Later that day, Capt. Payne and First Sgt. Baker called the 211th together one last time to take roll before sending the soldiers home. Because four soldiers were AWOL, First Sgt. Baker gave a short lecture on showing up for duty. If Guard members miss drill too often, they can be demoted in rank or even expelled from the service.
Among the missing was Spc. Coggins. He has three years left on his Guard contract. Asked by phone a few days later why he didn't show up, he struggled to come up with an excuse.
"I guess I feel like I am putting more into the Guard than it is giving me in return right now," he said.
That score simply gives insight to the educational experience a kid has had PRIOR to formal military training; what he/she learned in HS.
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