May 31, 2004, Volume 2 ,
Issue 4

Index of Articles

Note: Topics below are now bookmarked!
Click on the underlined topic below to link to the pages on that topic.

National Guard Family
Program Online Communities for families and youth:

https://www.guardfamily.org/

http://www.guardfamilyyouth.org/

TRICARE website for information on health
benefits

http://www.tricare.osd.mil/

Civilian Employment Information (CEI) Program Registration for
Army and Air National Guard, Air Force, and Coast Guard Reserve

https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/esgr/index.jsp

Cumulative roster of all
National Guard and Reserve who are currently on active duty

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2004/
d20040331ngr1.pdf

Military Child Education Coalition (MCEC)
contains links and information about schooling, distance education,
scholarships, and organizations devoted to the military family

http://www.militarychild.org/index.cfm

Militarystudent.org is a
website that helps military children with transition and deployment
issues.  It has some great features
for kids, parents, special needs families, school educators, and more—even
safe chat rooms for kids.

http://www.militarystudent.org

Disabled Soldiers Initiative (DS3)

This website provides information on the new DS3
program.  Through DS3, the Army
provides its most severely disabled Soldiers and their families with a system
of advocacy and follow-up.

http://www.armyds3.org

Have an article, announcement,
or website that you’d like to share with the National Guard Family Program
Community?  Send your suggestions in
an e-mail to [email protected].

READINESS

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National Guard
Training To ‘Invade’ Wolf Creek Facility

Wichita Journal

May 24, 2004

By Ken Vandruff

Approximately 200 Kansas Army National Guard troops on
a training mission will move into the area surrounding the Wolf Creek Nuclear
Generating Station starting June 5.

The training exercise gives
soldiers of the 130th Field Artillery Brigade experience in protecting Wolf
Creek if necessary, according to Joy Moser, director of public affairs for
the Adjutant General’s office.

For years, the Kansas
Guard had two units designated as the primary units for Wolf Creek in
case of an accident or to provide additional security.

Moser says one of those
units is currently on active duty and the other is about to be activated. So
this training exercise will give the Guard an additional unit to use
at Wolf Creek.

The first day of the
exercise will rehearse the state’s emergency response plans for Wolf Creek.
Moser says the remainder of the training will focus on anti-terrorism
measures.

“They’ll do
nuclear, biological, chemical (training) and first aid,” Moser says.

The public will notice
checkpoints on the highways around Wolf Creek, which is located just north of
Burlington in Coffey County. Moser says the brigade will also establish a
base camp on the Wolf Creek grounds.

The training exercise will continue until June 10 when the
soldiers will return to Fort Riley for the remainder of their annual training
period.

Army, Strapped For
Manpower, May Tap Training Units For Combat Duty In Iraq

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San Francisco Chronicle

May 26, 2004

By Robert Burns, AP Military Writer

Washington (AP) — In a sign of the
Iraq war’s strain on the U.S. military, the Army is planning to send into
combat thousands of soldiers whose normal job is to play the role of the
“enemy” at training ranges in California and Louisiana, defense
officials said Tuesday.

The Pentagon
also is considering adding yet another National
Guard brigade, the
155th Separate Armored Brigade from Mississippi, to the mix of active-duty
and reserve units designated for the next rotation of ground forces into Iraq
this year and in early 2005, other Army officials said.

With nearly every other major combat
unit either committed to or just returned from Iraq or Afghanistan, the Army
is planning to call on two battalions and one engineer company — about 2,500
soldiers — from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, which serves as a
professional enemy force  at the
National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. The regiment last saw combat
in the Vietnam War.

The Army boasts of the “tough and
uncompromising standards” of the 11th Armored Cavalry, which it says
makes it the premier maneuver unit in the Army and “the yardstick
against which the rest of the Army measures itself.”

Similarly, the 1st Battalion of the
509th Infantry, which acts as the Opfor, or opposition force, for light
infantry and special operations training at Fort Polk, La., is being called
to Iraq, according to two Army officials who discussed the matter on
condition of anonymity.

The 509th Infantry has not seen combat
since World War II, although five members of the unit served as
“pathfinders,” or advance scouts, during the 1991 Gulf War; two
were killed and one was taken prisoner.

Both the National Training Center and
Fort Polk’s Joint Readiness Training Center will remain open, the officials
said, with National Guard soldiers
expected to fill in for the units going to Iraq.

The Navy said Tuesday that it is
sending a second aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, into the western
Pacific, apparently to compensate in part for the planned deployment to Iraq
this summer of an Army combat brigade based in South Korea.

The Stennis, which
left its San Diego home port Monday, will participate in an exercise off
Alaska in June and then join the USS Kitty Hawk, which is permanently based
in Japan, in the western Pacific.

The next U.S. troop rotation in Iraq
will kick off this summer, not long after the June 30 turnover of partial
political control to an interim Iraqi government and a coinciding change in
the U.S. military command structure in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez, who has been the top commander in Iraq since May 2003, is to be
replaced this summer by a four-star general, most likely Gen. George W.
Casey, officials said.

The move is part of a restructuring of
the U.S. command in Iraq. The idea is to have a four-star there to focus on
the bigger picture, including working with U.S. and Iraqi political
authorities, while a lieutenant general handles the day-to-day command of
combat.

Although the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse
happened on his watch, Sanchez’s departure is not related to that, said Larry
Di Rita, chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Any
suggestions to the contrary, he said, are “just wrong.” Sanchez has
testified to Congress that he was not aware of the abuse until it was
reported to him in January.

Rumsfeld’s original plan was to replace
Sanchez this summer with Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. Bantz
Craddock, and to nominate Sanchez for a fourth star and the command of U.S.
Southern Command, a senior defense official said. Because of the prisoner
abuse controversy, Rumsfeld decided it would take too long to get Sanchez
confirmed by the Senate, the official said, and so decided on the
noncontroversial Casey for the Iraq post, probably leaving Craddock for the
Southern Command job.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for
the U.S. military in Baghdad, told reporters Tuesday that Sanchez’s 5th Corps
headquarters, of which he is the commander, left Iraq in February.

“We have always expected Gen.
Sanchez to depart some time after the transfer of sovereignty,” Kimmitt
said. “My personal expectation was, like me, he would be departing in
the July time period.”

Casey would be an unusual choice for
the top military post in Iraq, in part because he has served for less than a
year in his present position as vice chief of staff, the No. 2 staff job in
the Army.

In his 33-year Army career, Casey has
never served in combat. During the final years of the Vietnam War he served
with the 509th Infantry, based in Germany and later in Italy, and during the
1991 Gulf War he was in the Pentagon as special assistant to the Army chief
of staff.

Prior to becoming the Army’s vice chief
of staff last October, Casey served as director of the Joint Staff.

President Bush praised Sanchez during an appearance before
reporters in the Oval Office. “Rick Sanchez has done a fabulous
job,” he said as he met with a group of Iraqis. “He’s been there
for a long time. His service has been exemplary.”

National Guard Will Be Ready If Disaster
Strikes

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Biloxi Sun Herald

May 27, 2004 Thursday

By Patrick Peterson

Dateline: Gulfport

Though the Mississippi National Guard faces massive
mobilizations this summer, its leaders are sure the Guard would still be able
to mobilize and help South Mississippi if a major hurricane strikes.

“Both of our engineer battalions
are back. We would have ample forces,” said Lt. Col. Tim Powell,
spokesman for the Mississippi National
Guard.

About a tenth of the state’s 10,000
Army Guardsmen are mobilized for service in Iraq. However, about 4,000
soldiers from armored and infantry units in the northern part of the state
have been alerted they might be mobilized this summer.

Powell said that even if half the
state’s Guardsmen are mobilized, a portion of the remaining 5,000 could help
in the event of a storm on the Coast.

While military bases have hurricane
plans, Keesler Air Force Base and the Naval Construction Battalion Center at
Gulfport do not normally provide troops to Harrison County during hurricanes.
However, those troops could be called to help the county in a dire emergency,
said a spokesman for the Harrison County Civil Defense Department.

“If the National Guard could not respond immediately, then we could got
to Keesler or the Seabee base,” said the spokesman. “With the
military now, their resources are limited.”

Hurricane Georges in 1998 was the last
time the state National Guard was
called on to help the Coast. The governor activated about 1,000 National Guard members. They
patrolled Coast neighborhoods, directed traffic, rescued victims stranded by
floodwaters and delivered vital equipment.

During the storm and its aftermath,
soldiers delivered almost 40,000 meals to local residents huddled in
shelters. The Guard units worked on the Coast for about seven days in 1998.

Despite the mobilizations, the
Mississippi Emergency Management Agency has not reduced its expectations of
the state National Guard’s role in
a disaster.

“We’re aware there are a lot of
units deployed, but the Guard has not expressed to us a concern in that
area,” MEMA spokesman Amy Carruth said.

When a hurricane threatens South
Mississippi, the National Guard
can be vital to protecting lives and property.

“They assist in evacuating people.
They have trucks that are tall enough for rescue missions in flooded areas.
And they help with securing areas, to keep people from looting and
stealing,” Carruth said.

“They also help with traffic
control. The MP units can help with escorting people into
neighborhoods.”

During a major disaster, state officers
from the Department of Transportation, the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries
& Parks and the Department of Public Safety could be called to the Coast
from other regions of the state.

“They exhaust their resources and
we exhaust our resources, then you ask for federal resources,” Carruth
said.

Carruth said MEMA officials trust that
the state National Guard will be
ready in case of a national disaster.

“We really don’t keep up with a
count of who’s activated,” she said. “We’ll just have to deal with
the situation when it comes up.”

Powell said that if additional Guard
units are mobilized this summer and sent to Iraq, the Guard would make an
alternate plan so it can supply troops in case of a hurricane.

“We’ve deployed forward to the
Coast many times,” said Powell. “We have a state emergency plan in
place.”

Remaining Guard units would fill the
place of any mobilized unit that would normally be called up for hurricane
duty.

Said Powell, “If that unit were
deployed, it would just be replaced by another.”

Patrick Peterson can be reached at
896-2343 or at [email protected]

DEPLOYMENT

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National Guard Duty Volunteers To Keep
Peace In Kosovo

The Toledo Blade, OH

May 26, 2004

Bowling Green – Ten
Ohio Army National Guard soldiers
from a Bowling Green unit – who didn’t have to go – volunteered to leave
Sunday for a peacekeeping mission that eventually will take them to Kosovo.

They are among 950
Ohio Army National Guard soldiers to be deployed to Kosovo with formal
send-off ceremonies next week, including 65 members of a Sandusky-based unit,
which has its send-off June 5. It is the largest group for the Ohio Guard
ever sent to Kosovo in southern Serbia, Guard spokesman James A. Sims II
said.

 Ohio already has 2,700 National
Guard soldiers and airmen deployed – the most since World War II – to
Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Europe, and local air bases, Mr. Sims said. That’s
18 percent of Ohio’s approximately 15,000 National Guardsmen.

In Kosovo, the 10 Bowling Green unit
volunteers, all but one of whom are from northwest Ohio, will be among
thousands of soldiers assigned to security duties. They will be part of the
1-148th Infantry, based in Xenia.

Like the Sandusky unit of 65 soldiers
in Troop C, 2-107th Cavalry, which includes a few members from as far away as
Youngstown, Cincinnati, and Indiana, and the Headquarters and Headquarters
Company 1-148th Infantry Battalion, based in Lima, Ohio, they are part of the
37th Armor Brigade.

Soldiers are to leave next week for Camp
Atterbury near Indianapolis, go on to Germany in mid-July for additional
training or duties, and arrive in Kosovo in September.

They are to be away from home for a
year to 18 months. It is unlikely that they would be sent from Kosovo to
Iraq, nor are they directly replacing a unit now in Kosovo that is being sent
to Iraq, Mr. Sims said.

The United States became involved in
Kosovo in the spring of 1999 when NATO started bombing Yugoslavia in an
attempt to stop it from driving ethnic Albanians out of the Kosovo region. A
peace accord was reached late that spring and NATO peacekeeping troops have
been there ever since.

 Send-off ceremonies for local guardsmen are to begin Sunday at
3:30 p.m. at the Apollo Career Center, Lima, for the Lima-based group and at
5 p.m. at Xenia High School in southwest Ohio for the Bowling Green unit
volunteers and their Xenia-based group.

 The Sandusky-based
group’s ceremony will be at 9 a.m. June 5 at the Sandusky AMVETS post, 307
Putnam St.

Army May Tap Into More Fort Polk Troops

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By
Robert Burns/AP Military Writer

Leesville Daily Leader, Leesville, LA

Washington (AP) — In a sign of the
Iraq war’s strain on the U.S. military, the Army is planning to send into
combat thousands of soldiers whose normal job is to play the role of the
”enemy” at training ranges in California and Louisiana, defense officials
said Tuesday.

The Pentagon also is considering adding
yet another National Guard
brigade, the 155th Separate Armored Brigade from Mississippi, to the mix of active-duty and reserve units
designated for the next rotation of ground forces into Iraq this year and in
early 2005, other Army officials said.

With nearly every
other major combat unit either committed to or just returned from Iraq or
Afghanistan, the Army is planning to call on two battalions and one engineer
company — about 2,500 soldiers — from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment,
which serves as a professional enemy force in training other units at the National
Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. The regiment last saw combat in the
Vietnam War.

The Army boasts of the ”tough and
uncompromising standards” of the 11th Armored Cavalry, which it says makes
it the premier maneuver unit in the Army and ”the yardstick against which
the rest of the Army measures itself.”

Similarly, the 1st Battalion of the
509th Infantry, which acts as the Opfor, or opposition force, for light
infantry and special operations training at Fort Polk, La., is being called
to Iraq, according to two Army officials who discussed the matter on
condition of anonymity.

The 509th Infantry has not seen combat
since World War II, although five members of the unit served as
”pathfinders,” or advance scouts, during the 1991 Gulf War; two were killed
and one was taken prisoner.

Both the National Training Center and
Fort Polk’s Joint Readiness Training Center will remain open, the officials
said, with National Guard soldiers expected to fill in for the units going to
Iraq.

The Navy said Tuesday that it is
sending a second aircraft carrier, the USS John C. Stennis, into the western
Pacific, apparently to compensate in part for the planned deployment to Iraq
this summer of an Army combat brigade based in South Korea.

The Stennis, which left its San Diego
home port Monday, will participate in an exercise off Alaska in June and then
join the USS Kitty Hawk, which is permanently based in Japan, in the western
Pacific.

The next U.S. troop rotation in Iraq
will kick off this summer, not long after the June 30 turnover of partial
political control to an interim Iraqi government and a coinciding change in
the U.S. military command structure in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who has been
the top commander in Iraq since May 2003, is to be replaced this summer by a
four-star general, most likely Gen. George W. Casey, officials said.

The move is part of a restructuring of
the U.S. military command in Iraq. The idea is to have a four-star there to
focus on the bigger picture, including working with U.S. and Iraqi political
authorities, while a lieutenant general handles the day-to-day command of
combat.

Although the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse
scandal happened on his watch, Sanchez’s departure is not related in any way,
said Larry Di Rita, chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Any suggestions to the contrary, he said, are ”just wrong.” Sanchez has
testified to Congress that he was not aware of the abuse until it was
reported to him in January.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for
the U.S. military in Baghdad, told reporters Tuesday that Sanchez’s 5th Corps
headquarters, of which he is the commander, left Iraq in February.

”We have always expected Gen. Sanchez
to depart some time after the transfer of sovereignty,” Kimmitt said. ”My
personal expectation was, like me, he would be departing in the July time
period.” He added that he had heard nothing official from the Army on the
timing.

Casey would be an unusual choice for
the top military post in Iraq, in part because he has served for less than a
year in his present position as vice chief of staff, the No. 2 staff job in
the Army.

In his 33-year Army career, Casey has
never served in combat. During the final years of the Vietnam War he served
with the 509th Infantry, based in Germany and later in Italy, and during the
1991 Gulf War he was in the Pentagon as special assistant to the Army chief
of staff.

Prior to becoming the Army’s vice chief
of staff last October, Casey served as director of the Joint Staff.

Di Rita said no final decisions had
been made on who will replace Sanchez and what job Sanchez might have next.

President Bush praised Sanchez during an appearance before
reporters in the Oval Office. ”Rick Sanchez has done a fabulous job,” he
said as he met with a group of Iraqis. ”He’s been there for a long time. His
service has been exemplary.”

Eastern Oregon Soldiers Get The Call

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The Associated Press

May 30,
2004, Sunday

Ontario, Ore.

More than 300 members of the Oregon Army
National Guard will be mobilized
and sent to Texas, where they’ll train before heading to Iraq.

The soldiers are mostly from eastern
Oregon and part of the 3rd Battalion, 116th Cavalry, Oregon Army National Guard.

The 3rd Battalion consists of soldiers
from The Dalles, Hermiston, Pendleton, La Grande, Baker City and Ontario.

The battalion will arrive at Fort Bliss
in early July to begin training for a deployment to Iraq later this year.

The 3rd Battalion is part of Idaho’s
116th Cavalry Brigade. The Army defines the brigade’s role as “assisting
civil authorities, foreign and domestic, as they prepare for or respond to
crises and relieve suffering.”

The commander of eastern Oregon’s 3rd
Battalion, Lt. Col. Dan McCabe, told the Argus Observer newspaper that the
mobilization order is not a surprise.

“We’ve been expecting it and we are prepared to begin
the initial process to reach our first training site at Fort Bliss,” he
said.

Mississippi Air National Guard’s 186th
Air Refueling Wing Headed to Iraq

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Associated Press 

May 29, 2004, Saturday

Meridian, Miss.

About 90 members of the Mississippi Air
National Guard’s 186th Air
Refueling Wing will deploy for Iraq this week.

They are part of more than 270 members
of the 186th headed to Iraq in phases over the next month, said Maj. Brad
Crawford, a spokesman for the unit.

The group will depart from Meridian’s
Key Field.

Tours of duty will range from 14 days
to 60 days, depending on each guardsman’s responsibilities within the unit.

“This deployment is part of a
normal rotation that comes up at a particular time and the members have known
that they were leaving for quite some time,” Crawford said.

Crawford said the troops will leave in
groups of 30 on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The troops are a combination
of full-time and part-time guardsmen.

An advance team of 30 members left for
Iraq on Tuesday.

The 186th will support Operation Iraqi
Freedom’s flying missions. Crawford said it will be a good opportunity for
members to use their training in real-world conditions.

“They are going to help protect our national security
and they are happy to be able to do it,” Crawford said.

Full Mobilization Announced for Cavalry
Brigade

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Associated Press

May 29,
2004, Saturday

By Dan Gallagher

Boise, Idaho

A full mobilization of the Army National Guard’s 116th Cavalry
Brigade was announced Saturday, including the eventual shift of 2,000 Idaho
members to Iraq, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne said.

It’s the most extensive call-up of
Idaho’s National Guard for
overseas military deployment in the state’s history.

“This is an operation other than
war. It’s an operation of stability and support,” Guard spokesman Lt.
Col. Tim Marsano said. “It’s not the kind of thing we’re seeing on the
television in places like Fallujah.”

The Army defines the brigade’s role as
“assisting civil authorities, foreign and domestic, as they prepare for
or respond to crises and relieve suffering.”

“They know they will be doing
historic work in a place that desperately needs their help,” Kempthorne
said. “It’s possible these men and women could be away from home for up
to two years.”

An initial, partial mobilization order
came on May 8. Previously, military officials expected 3,500 brigade members
to travel, including 2,600 Idaho residents. The full order now involves 4,300
citizen soldiers from seven states, including 2,000 from Idaho.

The other states include Oregon, Utah,
Montana, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

The North Dakota soldiers are members
of F Battery of the 188th Air Defense Artillery unit, based in Grand Forks,
Guard spokesman Rob Keller said. The unit was put on alert March 1.

Keller did not immediately know when
the North Dakota soldiers would be leaving.

The change in numbers reflects new
national requirements and a clarification of the eligibility for the
brigade’s soldiers, who have been on federal active duty to this point,
Marsano said.

The initial wave of the soldiers will
mobilize June 7 and travel to Fort Bliss, Texas, by June 10 for the next
level of training. The brigade then will undergo a mission readiness exercise
at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La.

It was scheduled to serve in Iraq for 12 months. While the
soldiers are expected to be away from home for 18 months, the mobilization
could last up to two years

REUNION

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Murfreesboro
Guard Unit Returns

The Associated Press

May 26, 2004

Dateline: Fort Campbell, Ky.

A C5A Galaxy plane carrying 65 members
of a Tennessee National Guard unit
landed at Fort Campbell at dawn Wednesday.

A second plane with another 65 members
of the 269th Military Police Company was expected in early afternoon. The
unit is based in Murfreesboro and has been at Fort Campbell, then in Iraq
since December 2002.

“They’ve just landed and I’m
looking at the plane right now,” said Jim Hinnant, public information
officer at Fort Campbell at 5:25 a.m., CDT, as the huge transport taxied
after landing.

Judy Roberts told The Daily News
Journal of Murfreesboro this week the moment her husband, Raymond Roberts,
again touched U.S. soil would rival child birth in their family’s history.

“They’ve been over there a very long time,” Judy
Roberts said.

All Members of Florida National Guard
Unit Make it Home Alive

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Associated Press

May 31,
2004, Monday

North 
Miami, Fla.                   

War sent 126 soldiers from a local
Florida National Guard company to Ramadi,
Iraq, a place one described as “the worst place on earth.” But
after 14 months of rocket attacks, ambushes and explosions, they all made it
back to South Florida.

Part of the Guard’s 1st Battalion,
124th Infantry Regiment, Charlie Company came home with 23 Purple Hearts,
more than any other company in the 12,000-member state military force. The
battalion didn’t have a single combat death.

The North Miami-based company had one
man absent when it returned in March: Sgt. Camilo Mejia, who was convicted
this month of desertion.

Charlie Company was posted to a remote
scrap yard in Ramadi, daily targets of a guerrilla network that made bombs
from cell phones and toy cars. They had to keep the peace, search vehicles
and houses, confiscate weapons, get the infrastructure working and hire and
train police.

Ramadi has more residents than Miami,
packed into a smaller geographical area. The guardsmen found it a hot, dusty,
smelly city of open sewer lines and strewn garbage, a place where fruit
merchants and bomb-makers were often the same.

“If hell physically exists, if
there is in fact a hell . . . it is Ramadi,” said Edouard Gluck, a
battalion photographer. “It’s the worst place I’ve ever been to on the
face of the earth, and I’ve been to a lot of places.”

Still, the 1st Battalion and Charlie
Company were known for their good luck.

On June 14, a bullet penetrated the
flak jacket of Spc. James Bissett as he sat in the rear of a vehicle. It hit
his cross and his dog tag and went no farther. The impact cracked Bissett’s
sternum. He was the first in Charlie Company to earn a Purple Heart.

An explosion at one intersection a
month later was one of the company’s worst experiences. Spc. Ramiro Mayorga
lost several fingers. Sgt. Jason Recio lost a leg below the knee. Sgt. Jose
Mateo took shrapnel to the left knee, left arm and head and lost hearing in
both ears.

The engagement changed the way Charlie
Company looked at the war.

“But that was the first time we
had very major injuries,” said Spc. Esteban Lora, a Miami Dade College
student. “The whole ‘I’m Superman’ mentality, ‘I’m invincible,’ that
went away.”

The last man from Charlie Company to be
wounded in battle, on Feb. 19, was its leader. Capt. Tad Warfel was searching
a hospital with his men when someone hurled a grenade from an upper floor.
The blast caught him in the right arm.

When the company flew home, it was down
from 126 men to 95, mostly because of injuries.

Mateo, a former auto technician with
shrapnel up and down his left side and bulging discs in his neck, is battling
depression and post-traumatic stress.

“It’s OK,” Mateo said. “I’m alive, you
know? We’re all alive.”

BENEFITS

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Senators
Want Military Health Insurance Extended To Guard members, Reservists

The Associated Press

May 24, 2004

By William C. Mann

Washington — Members  of the National Guard and Reserves should have military health insurance
partly because their lack of insurance makes one-fourth of them unable to
answer the call when their units are mobilized for service in Iraq, two
lawmakers said Sunday.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is
sponsoring insurance legislation with Sen. Hillary Clinton and others, said
it would “make sure that every Guard and Reserve member becomes a member of
the military health care system just like an active-duty person and family.”

 “If you join the Guard and Reserves, you are being asked to do
more things than ever in the history in the country,” Graham, R-S.C., told
“Fox News Sunday.”

But, he said, “One in four
people called … are unable to go on active duty because of health care
problems.”

Graham and Clinton, D-N.Y.,
pledged to push hard for the legislation despite opposition from the Bush
administration and Pentagon generals.

Clinton said the 25 percent
unfit rate is occurring because the reservists worked in jobs without health
insurance and made too little money to provide it for themselves.

“At a certain point, you
say to yourself, if you’re going to shift all of this responsibility onto our
Guard and Reserve members, then don’t we want to invest in them so that they
can be ready when they’re called?” Clinton asked.

Graham said putting
reserves insurance into law would help recruiting, readiness and retention.

“It’s about $4 billion over
five years. They have earned it. They need it,” Graham said. “And we’re going
to fight for it in a bipartisan way.”

Last year’s $87 billion law to finance
continued military operations and reconstruction in Iraq was amended to
include military health care for activated guardsmen and reservists. The new
legislation would extend the protection to all members of the Reserves and
National Guard.

Pay Issue Concerns For Some Oklahoma
National Guard Members

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KOTV, OK

May 24, 2004

Some Oklahoma National Guardsmen want to know why they haven’t been
paid all the wages Congress approved for active-duty soldiers.

National Guard Specialist
Bryan Akins left his wife and son in Stillwater to serve at Fort Polk,
Louisiana. During his year long deployment, Bryan says he and 140 other
soldiers received base pay.

He says he did not get a $28 a day per
diem for food and living expenses. “We’re not complaining about getting
deployed at all. Every one of us signed up for that. What the problems is, we
got down there and we’re supposed to get this per diem and these families
didn’t. Now you got people who are late on their mortgage!”

The News on 6 tried to contact
officials at Fort Polk, but no one has returned our calls.

US Senator Jim Inhofe and Congressman
Frank Lucas say they’re investigating the matter.

DOD Begins TRICARE Retail Pharmacy
Program June 1

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United States Department of Defense News Release

May 28, 2004

The Department of Defense
announced today that on June 1, 2004, the new Tricare Retail Pharmacy (TRRx)
contract takes effect for Tricare beneficiaries located in the 50 United
States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and
Guam. The contract, awarded last year to Express Scripts Inc. of Maryland
Heights, Mo., has approximately 53,000 civilian pharmacies in the nationwide
network. In the past, the Tricare regional managed care support contractors
provided retail pharmacy services and most beneficiaries should not notice
the change in services with the new contract. To use the new retail pharmacy
program, as with all other DoD health programs, beneficiaries must be
eligible and enrolled in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System
or DEERS.

“The new single contract
integrates the previous regional contracts into one uniform retail pharmacy
benefit across all Tricare regions,” said Army Col. William Davies, director,
DoD pharmacy programs.

The TRRx program has many
new enhancements. Pharmacy claims processing is now centralized and
beneficiaries no longer have to mail pharmacy claims to multiple sites for
processing or call various telephone numbers to get assistance filling a
prescription when using the retail network. Patient safety has also been
enhanced by use of the Pharmacy Data Transaction Service to process all
pharmacy claims, including paper claims.

For a single co-payment of
$3 for generic or $9 for a brand-name prescription, eligible TRRx
beneficiaries may continue to receive a 30-day supply of their prescription
medication from the new network of retail pharmacies. To use this benefit, a
written pharmacy prescription and a uniformed services identification card
are required. Tricare beneficiaries who used a retail pharmacy last year will
receive, by mail, a pharmacy identification card, a TRRx benefit guide and a
letter listing the twelve network pharmacies close to their home.

The TRRx benefit is now
portable. Beneficiaries traveling outside of their designated Tricare region who
need to fill a prescription are no longer required to pay the full
prescription price, or file a Tricare claim to get reimbursed for their
out-of-pocket expenses when they use a Tricare retail network pharmacy.
Pharmacy co-payments are the same in every location where the TRRx is
available.

To locate a network
pharmacy, beneficiaries may use the Tricare pharmacy locator service
available on the Express Scripts Web site at http://www.express-scripts.com/TRICARE, or they may call (866)
363-8779 or, using the letters on the telephone keypad, spell (866)
“DoD-TRRx.”

For eligible beneficiaries
with other health insurance (OHI), Tricare pays after all other insurance
plans have paid. To use Tricare as the secondary payer or to obtain
reimbursement for their out-of pocket pharmacy expenses, beneficiaries will
need to submit a Tricare claim form (DD Form 2642) and a receipt for their
prescription medication to Express Scripts for processing. If the medication
under the beneficiary’s OHI is not a covered benefit or if the beneficiary’s
prescription coverage has ended for the year, Tricare will pay as the primary
insurance payer.

The TRRx benefit is not
available for beneficiaries who reside or travel outside the U.S. or its
territories. These beneficiaries are encouraged to use a military treatment
facility, if available, or the Tricare Mail Order Pharmacy program to fill
their prescription medications. Express Scripts can mail prescription
medications to any U.S. postal address or to an APO/FPO address. However,
Express Scripts cannot send prescriptions to a private, foreign address.
Prescriptions mailed to beneficiaries in overseas locations must be
prescribed by providers who are licensed to practice in the United States.

A downloadable Tricare
claim form is available on the Express Scripts Web site at http://www.express-scripts.com/TRICARE or on the Tricare Web site
at http://www.tricare.osd.mil/claims. Pharmacy claims filed
with Express Scripts should be mailed to: Express Scripts, P. O. Box 66518,
St. Louis, Mo., 63166-6518.

Beneficiaries residing in overseas locations,
other than Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Island, do not have access
to Tricare retail pharmacy networks. Therefore, they must pay for their prescription
medications upfront and submit a claim with Tricare overseas claims processor
to be reimbursed. For reimbursement rates or assistance processing a
non-network overseas retail pharmacy claim, beneficiaries may contact the
overseas Tricare Service Center at http://www.tricare.osd.mil/overseas/index.cfm.

HOMEFRONT:
DEALING WITH DEPLOYMENT

Back to Table of Contents

Iraq War
Reserve Call-Ups Taxing Local Governments

Los Angeles Times                                                                                                                              May 25, 2004                                                                                                                                     

Los Angeles — The
deployment of more than 10,300 California
National Guard members and
military reservists has become a burden to state and local government
coffers, forcing service cuts and unplanned spending on replacements or
overtime.

From the California Highway Patrol down to the city of
Carmel-by-the-Sea, all levels of government have been making up for lost
personnel as their workers head overseas.

State agencies may be hit hardest by the loss of employees. They
are required by California law to make up the difference between civilian and
military pay, and continue to pay full benefits to deployed troops.

Controller Steve Westly estimates activated reservists cost the
state an average of $1,500 a month, with monthly differential payments
ranging from $5.25 to as much as $4,757.

It’s cost the state Corrections Department nearly $2 million
since July to replace prison guards on military leave. The agency has 148
employees on active duty.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has had more than
150 deputies called up for military duty since the 2001 terror attacks.
Currently, 35 deputies are activated.

The California budget crisis worsens the situation for many agencies.

CHP Capt. Steve Beeuswaert said three patrol officers of the 106
in his Santa Ana office are now serving in Iraq.

“We just run short,” he said. “With the budget
situation, we can’t hire anyone. We don’t have reserves. It just means we
have three less officers out on the road.”

Most cities and counties offer some sort of supplementary
compensation to troops, with no reimbursement from the federal government.

In Carmel-by-the-Sea, building maintenance specialist John
Hanson recently left to begin a one-year tour in southern Iraq. His absence
will force the city to spend an additional $13,000 a year, mainly on hiring
contractors to do his work, said city administrator Rich Guillen.

“We miss him,” said Guillen. “In a small city
like ours, everyone has to pull together to fill his shoes.”

In San Diego County, the Poway school district has hired a
temporary replacement for American history teacher Curtis Lewis, a  California
National Guard platoon leader who left in April for Iraq.

The district continues to pay Lewis half his salary and full
benefits, and estimates the extra cost during the teacher’s one-year
deployment will be about $28,000.

But for Poway High Principal Scott Fisher, the cost goes beyond
money.

“We don’t even think about the financial part,” Fisher
said. “Curt was a top teacher on campus. When you take him away, you
can’t replace him immediately.”

Reserves Make
Sacrifices To Serve Country

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Redlands Daily Facts

May 23, 2004

By Andrew Moyle
Staff Writer

Sunday, May 23, 2004 – At
any moment, Dr. Wendell Findley could get the call to serve overseas with his
Montebello-stationed Army National Guard unit.

Getting the call could mean
disaster for Dr. Findley’s Pain Clinic, the Pomona medical office Findley
owns and runs alone.

“It would be
devastating,” Findley said. “It’s hard to say, but sometimes I
think that the reservists and National
Guard can be gone as much as 16 or 18 months. There have been other
reservists that own their own businesses who have had to close down.”

While the stakes for most
employers of National Guard and Reserve members are not as high as Findley’s,
deployment can mean a strain on the resources of any business, offset only by
the pride entailed by employer support and the skills reservists and Guard
members bring to the production line, boardroom or medical office.

The number employers having
to make the sacrifice of the reservists – often their best workers – for
months on end is going up.

Last week the Army, Navy,
and Air Force each reported increases in the number of reservists on active
duty, while the Marine Corps reported a slight decrease.

The net result was
3,044 more reservists on active duty than the week before, according to a May
19 Department of Defense press release.

The total number currently
on active duty for the Army National
Guard and Army Reserve is 148,442; Naval Reserve 2,504; Air National
Guard and Air Force Reserve, 11,411; Marine Corps Reserve, 5,075; and the
Coast Guard Reserve, 1,568, the release said.

That’s almost 169,000
people who are no longer contributing to the economy in the traditional
employer-employee sense.

And because reservists and
members of the National Guard are more integrated into society than
full-time soldiers, Marines and airmen, their deployment affects society and
the economy more deeply, said Tom Bullock, spokesman of the National
Committee for Employer Support of Guard and Reserve.

“Here, we’re
affecting cities on a grand scale. It brings it home to the families, to the
employers,” Bullock said. “It has a big impact.”

That impact can be seen even in the national employment picture.

“Once the reservists
are called up, they’re active military. They would no longer be counted in
the civilian labor force,” said Thomas Flournoy, spokesman for the
California Employment Development Department. “If they were employed
prior to being called up… they would reduce the number of individuals in
the civilian labor force. As far as employers and payrolls, it’s up to the
employers as far as what they report to us.”

As often as not, the vacant
positions are then filled with temporary workers who will have to give up
their jobs when the reservists return from duty.

Those temporary jobs
have the effect of decreasing unemployment roles, Flournoy said.

When one of his mechanics
was called up for active duty near the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom,
Mike Scanlon, owner of Ontario’s Certified Aviation Services, filled the
man’s spot with just such a temporary worker.

 It was nothing Scanlon wasn’t used to. The reservist was one of
three working at Certified’s operation at Ontario International Airport, and
Scanlon was long used to rearranging schedules in an effort to make things
work.

“Sometimes we go
without (a replacement), sometimes we move things around,” he said.
“It is difficult. It’s costly to retrain people, especially mechanics,
but its part of the territory. It’s my duty.”

Not just duty, but law as
well.

According to the Uniformed
Services Employment and Re-employment Act signed by President Clinton in
1994, employers get a raw fiscal deal in return for their patriotism.

When a reservist or National Guard member gets a call for
mobilization, they aren’t required to give any lead time notice before they have
to ship out. Uniformed services members don’t even have to provide their
employers with a copy of their deployment orders.

Employers must also give benefits to uniformed services
personnel similar to the benefits given to employees that are laid off or on
some other kind of non-military leave, such as jury duty or educational time
off.

The conditions that come with hiring a reservist or Guard member are no surprise to diligent
business owners, Bullock said.

“Most of the employers
are aware of the situation. They stand behind these young individuals they’ve
seen fit to hire,” he added.

 In Scanlon’s case, accepting the risks and extending benefits is
entirely worth it.

“Aside from the
background of the physical training, they come with a really strong work
ethic,” he said. “They’re very reliable. They very rarely call in
sick. You ask them to do something once and they do it.”

Financially speaking, it’s
the government that benefits most from the National Guard and Reserves. When
not deployed, reservists and Guard members cost the government one-third as
much on average as a full-time soldier, Bullock said.

And right now, those
discount fighters make up approximately 46 percent of the country’s entire
deployed fighting force, Bullock said.

Almost a quarter of the
total California’s National Guard and armed forces reserve units are
currently deployed, a pittance compared to the 81 percent of Idaho’s
part-time uniformed services personnel not currently working their day jobs,
Bullock added.

The potential of leaving
his own day job and heading overseas hangs daily over Dr. Wendell Findley’s
head.

A former full-time Army
medic, Findley will be ready if the call comes.

“You think about it, but there’s not
really much you can do to prepare,” he said. “What can you do? The
bills are still there, and there’s not much you can do about that. They’ll
let us know if, and when, it’s time to go.”

HOMEFRONT:
DEALING WITH AFTERMATH

Back to Table of Contents

Members of National Guard Returning to
Civilian Life

Associated Press

May 29,
2004, Saturday

Honolulu, Hawaii

The largest contingent of Hawaii Army National Guard soldiers to be
deployed overseas since the Vietnam War returned to civilian life Friday
after more than nine months on duty in Afghanistan.

Fifty-four members of Bravo Company,
193rd Aviation, returned to Hawaii earlier this month. Soldiers had been
servicing helicopters in Kandahar since leaving Wheeler Army Air Field on
Aug. 10.

Soldiers stood in their last formation
Friday at Wheeler. Bravo Company commander Maj. Margaret Rains, a nurse
practitioner at the Department of Veterans Affairs primary care outpatient
clinic, said soldiers will be on military leave until the end of June.

On Friday, soldiers’ thoughts were on
their colleagues still serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“They are our close friends,”
said Sgt. Gilbert Pascua, 35, a member of the Hawaii Army National Guard for 14 years.

Bravo Company members who returned this
month were replaced by another 60 aviators and mechanics who left Wheeler on
May 5. About 200 members of the 193rd’s other unit, Charlie Company, have
been in Balad, Iraq, since April 14.

Brig. Gen. Vern Miyagi, commander of
the Hawaii Army National Guard,
asked the formation of soldiers “to support the families of the other
members of their unit still in Afghanistan and to pass on what you have
learned to soldiers who will be going.”

Officials had said Bravo Company made up the largest unit
of Army citizen soldiers from Hawaii to be mobilized overseas since the 29th
Infantry Brigade was sent to Vietnam in 1968.

TRIBUTE TO OUR FALLEN
HEROS

Back to Table of Contents

Military Families Mourn
Daughters

Washington Post

May 26, 2004

20 Female Service Members
Have Been Killed in Iraq

By Darryl Fears, Washington Post Staff
Writer

El Paso — When Sgt. Isela Rubalcava’s
body arrived at the airport from Iraq, her mother wailed like a child.
“I don’t want to see her like this,” Maria Isela Rubalcava cried
out in Spanish, a priest at the scene said. “Why, Isela, why? Get up,
get up! Let’s go home.”

By the time a funeral Mass was
celebrated  last week at St. Patrick’s
Church in nearby Canutillo, the Rev. Manny Marrufo said, Maria Rubalcava had
accepted the reality that her daughter was gone, dead of shrapnel wounds she
suffered when a mortar round exploded during an attack in Mosul on May 8. It
was three days before her 26th birthday.

Rubalcava was one of 20 female U.S.
service members to die in Operation Iraqi Freedom — the highest number of
U.S. military women to die in a combat operation since World War II, military
historians said. The dead include Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 23, who was killed in
an ambush in the first days of the invasion, and Pfc. Leslie D. Jackson, 18,
of Richmond, who was killed Thursday when her vehicle hit an improvised
explosive device. Others died in helicopter crashes, or vehicle accidents, or
when guns accidentally went off, or while trying to defuse bombs.

In addition, 162 women
have been wounded in Iraq, 99 of them too badly to return to duty, according
to the Defense Department. And two of the most prominent faces of the war
belong to Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was taken prisoner and then rescued early
in the war, and Pfc. Lynndie England, who recently turned up in photographs
documenting the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

For decades, Defense Department
regulations kept military women away from direct action, out of fear that the
American public would echo the cries of Maria Isela Rubalcava — “I
don’t want to see her like this” — when it came to women dying in
combat. But when those rules changed in the mid-1990s, few people complained.
And now, with more women serving in what the military calls
“at-risk” jobs in Iraq, and more of them becoming casualties, the
public has largely remained silent.

Women who monitor gender roles in the
military are divided over what this means.

 Supporters of equality between men and women in the ranks say it
reflects a great leap forward for a society striving for equal rights.
“There’s a shift in the feeling about women,” said retired Air
Force Brig. Gen. Wilma L. Vaught, president of the Women in Military Service
for America Memorial Foundation. “People think she’s doing her own
thing.”

“There’s been a rethinking by
parents,” Vaught said. “They ask themselves, ‘Do I value my
daughter’s life more than my son’s life?’ As a parent, I don’t know how to
answer that question.”

As far as Phyllis Schlafly is
concerned, the answer is simple. “I think it’s uncivilized,” said
Schlafly, president of the conservative Eagle Forum. She called gender
equality in the military a giant step backward.

“I think it’s social
experimentation, and I don’t think it’s going to help us win the war,”
she said. “They want to masculize the women and feminize the men, so
that we’re a gender-neutral society.”

If women continue to die, said Elaine
Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, a think tank based
in Livonia, Mich., the debate will almost certainly be sharpened.

“What we’re seeing now with the
use of women in the military is unprecedented, but here we are,”
Donnelly said. She said one of her concerns is that single mothers are being
killed. Piestewa, for example, left behind two children.

“We are asking these policies to
be reassessed,” Donnelly said.

Women’s current place in the military
may be traced to legal changes beginning in 1948, when Congress passed the
Armed Forces Integration Act, which gave women regular and reserve status in
the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. At the same time, the law limited women’s
presence in those branches to 2 percent of the forces and stipulated that
women could not serve on ships and aircraft that engaged in combat.

Twenty years later, the ceiling was
lifted on the number of women who could serve, but the other restrictions
remained. It was not until 1992 that the United States repealed the laws that
kept women out of combat aircraft. Two years later, then-Defense Secretary
Les Aspin led a repeal of the Defense Department risk rule. The definition of
direct ground combat changed, and new rules allowed women to serve in all
units except those directly involved in fighting, such as armor, infantry,
Ranger and field artillery battalions.

In 1991, women made up only 11 percent
of the military, but now they account for 15 percent, according to the
Defense Department. One of seven U.S. troops in Iraq is a woman. Women there
have served on Patriot missile batteries, on military police patrols and in
other support roles that place them dangerously close to the enemy. In Iraq,
moreover, the dangers have been compounded by the guerrilla nature of the
postwar insurgency.

Parents of women who have died there
speak of their daughters — and other military women — with pride.
“Personally, I think some of them are better than men,” said Lisa
Frye, mother of Nicole Frye, an Army reservist from Wisconsin who was killed
in February at age 19 after a mortar round struck her convoy. “She was
really good with a rifle, an expert marksman. Her fiance wasn’t that good. He’s
in the National Guard.”

Nicole’s death “ripped my heart
right out of my body,” Frye said, but in the same breath she added:
“We were really proud of her and what she accomplished, really proud,
and we still are.”

Frye’s sentiment was
echoed by John Witmer,  whose daughter
Michelle was shot to death atop a Humvee while laying down ground fire to
protect her unit, the 32nd Military Police Company. She was 20.

John Witmer said Michelle and his other
two daughters, Rachel and Charity, Michelle’s twin, knew exactly what they
were getting into when they volunteered with the Army National Guard in New Berlin, Wis.

“They were clear
. . . that they were going to be in that situation,” Witmer said.
“Out of respect for my daughters, they knew what their job was going to
be, and they did the job well.”

Not every woman is
doing a great job, Schlafly said. She said the photograph of England holding
a leash attached to the neck of an Iraqi prisoner appalled her. “This
later picture is a feminist fantasy,” she said. “That’s how
feminists think about men.”

 Retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning, director of the Women in the
Military Project, said the photographs have nothing to do with gender. They
show only that women are capable of making the same mistakes as men.

 “We are seeing women POWs, women with their legs blown off,
women who are heroes,” Manning said. “And we’re also seeing the
dark side of it. . . . The pictures themselves are horrific. You think, ‘Oh,
my God, how is this going to be translated?’ “

 The fact that England is a woman helped inflame the Arab world,
where the sight of men being humiliated by women is anathema, Donnelly said.

 Sgt. Susan Sonnheim, who was wounded when a bomb detonated in
Baghdad and threw her 10 feet into the air, said women are as prepared as men
to take their place in the ranks. “We did the same training as
men,” said Sonnheim, 45, of Franklin, Wis., who served with Michelle
Witmer in the 32nd Military Police Company before she was sent to Walter Reed
Army Medical Center in the District. “If you can’t pull your weight, you
wouldn’t be there. I had a heavy backpack. A heavy ammo belt. It weighed more
than me. But I did it.”

“I’m sure they’re saying that
because women never really encountered combat, and now that they are, it’s
hard for them to fathom,” Sonnheim said. “But they’re fighting, and
they’re dying.”

Supporters and opponents of placing
women in “at-risk” jobs agree on at least one thing: Women do have
a place in a volunteer military. Whenever American men have marched to war,
women followed, according to a thumbnail history compiled by the Defense
Department.

Margaret Corbin took charge of a cannon
after her husband fell in the Revolutionary War. Two years later, in 1778,
Deborah Samson disguised herself as a man, enlisted in the Continental Army,
and was twice wounded in combat. Both women were awarded military pensions.

Women fought in the War of 1812, the
Civil War and the Spanish-American War. At least 36,000 women served in World
War I, and 400,000 took part in the second. In the Pacific theater, 458 women
died and 80 nurses were prisoners of war.

 Spec. Tyanna Avery-Felder had been afraid to go to Iraq, but she
toughed it out, said her father, Ray Avery. She seemed safe behind the front
lines, working as a cook and a helper in the mess hall. But her convoy was
hit by an  improvised explosive device
on April 7, the Army said, and she died at 22.

“I couldn’t really believe
it,” Avery said. “She was nine days from coming home.”

Sometimes, he said in a breaking voice,
“I feel that females shouldn’t be in that situation, shouldn’t be in
combat. They’re capable. People who haven’t been put in this situation don’t
know how really painful it is to lose someone, whether it’s a son or
daughter.”

Lori Witmer, mother of Michelle, said
she believes that losing a daughter is harder than losing a son, but that she
would never have intervened in Michelle’s decision to serve.

 Isela Rubalcava
was the only daughter in her family. As her body arrived at El Paso
International Airport last week, Marrufo led the family in prayers. “She
is the first woman from El Paso that had died in combat,” Marrufo said.
“I think she’s unique in that sense.”

One of Twin Brothers Serving Together
Killed In Iraq

Back to Table of Contents

The Associated Press

May 26, 2004

By Jim Paul, Associated Press Writer

Dateline: Maroa,
Ill.

The Ridlen twins seemed to always be
together, at church, on the softball field, even in the recruiter’s office
when they enlisted with the Illinois National
Guard.

The brothers were stationed with the
same unit in Iraq when a truck rigged with explosives detonated Sunday next
to a convoy, killing Army Spc. Jeremy L. Ridlen, 23.

Guard officials wouldn’t say if his
identical twin, Jason Ridlen, was with the convoy at the time, but he is
expected to accompany his brother’s body home to Illinois.

Friends said Tuesday they worry about
how he will deal with the loss.

“They just clung to each other.
You can’t talk about one without talking about the other,” said Diane
Daggett, one of the brothers’ teachers at Maroa-Forsyth High School, where
the twins graduated in 1998.

The same year, they joined the Illinois
National Guard and were assigned
to the 1544th Transportation Company.

Jeremy Ridlen was part of a convoy
traveling a supply route in the Fallujah area Sunday when a dump truck rigged
with a bomb exploded, according to the Illinois National Guard.

The boys grew up in nearby Maroa, a
central Illinois town of about 1,600 residents 30 miles south of Bloomington.
Both were students at Illinois State University when their unit was activated
last year.

Major Tim Franklin, a Guard spokesman,
said it isn’t unusual for relatives to serve in the same military unit.

When a soldier from Wisconsin was
killed in Baghdad last month, her older sister was serving in the same unit
and her twin sister was also in Iraq. Under Pentagon policy, when a soldier
is killed while serving in a hostile area, close family members may request
non-combat assignments. Both surviving Wisconsin sisters were reassigned.

The Rev. Marlin Jaynes, who is acting
as a spokesman for the Ridlen twins’ family, said it will be up to Jason
Ridlen whether he returns to a combat zone in Iraq.

He said the twins’ parents and sister
do not want to talk to the media.

Jaynes said the twins were very active
in the church, played on its softball team and were included in its weekly
prayer list after they deployed to Iraq. He said they looked so much alike
that “I was not always sure which one I was talking to. They could trick
me.”

Their high school math teacher, Erin
Morrison, said Jeremy Ridlen always tried hard in school.

“Teenagers these days can be
really attitude-filled, but he didn’t ever have an attitude. He was just a
really good kid,” she said.

“They were always together,” she said. “I
wasn’t surprised that they were together over there as well.”

A Small-Town Family Grieves As The State
Loses Its First Guardsman From a Combat Unit

Back to Table of Contents

Los Angeles Times

May 27, 2004 Thursday 

  
‘My Son Was Not Going to Let
Someone Else Die in His Place’;

Byline: Rone
Tempest, Times Staff Writer

Dateline:  EXETER, Calif. 

A little over two months ago, Spc.
Daniel Unger was among several hundred California National Guard soldiers assembled at an Army desert training post
outside Barstow to hear Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger send them off to battle in
Iraq with a rousing speech on patriotism and valor.

“You guys are the true
terminators,” Schwarzenegger told the cheering soldiers, the first
National Guardsmen from California since the Korean War to be sent overseas
in a combat capacity.

On Wednesday morning here in this
orange-growing Central Valley farming town, Army officials informed Daniel
Unger’s parents that their 19-year-old son had been killed in Iraq, the first
member of a California National Guard
combat unit to die in action.

“I was at a friend’s house,”
said Daniel’s mother, Lynda Unger, 53. “My husband called and said,
‘Come home. Just come home.’ When he opened the door he was crying and I saw
the chaplain and the other officers, and of course I knew it was Danny.”

Unger, a center fielder on his high
school baseball team who worked as a missionary in youth prisons, died Monday
during an apparent mortar attack on his base 25 miles south of Baghdad. The
attack also wounded 10 other reservists, including eight men from Unger’s
1-185th Combat Group, headquartered in San Bernardino.

Unger’s death was confirmed Wednesday
by California National Guard media
relations chief Maj. Denise Varner. By late Wednesday, the military had not
yet released any information about the names and conditions of the wounded
soldiers.

Once the news of the soldier’s death
began to spread along the quiet streets here, friends poured into the modest,
pale-blue stucco home to console the soldier’s parents, 17-year-old brother
and 11- and 13-year-old sisters.

The van in the family driveway bore a
bumper sticker: “Proud Parents of an Army National Guard Soldier.” Carport posts were festooned with
yellow ribbons and a large American flag flapped in the light breeze while
two big German shepherds in the backyard barked at arriving mourners.

The father, Marc Unger, a storefront
Southern Baptist pastor and karate instructor, alternated between fits of
deep booming sobs and quiet periods of philosophical acceptance.

“I remember driving down [Highway]
198 talking with him about the dangers of war,” recalled his father, a
bearish figure who holds a sixth-degree karate black belt.

“Danny turned to me and said:
‘Dad, I love Jesus and I know God has a plan for my life. If his plan is for
me on Earth I know that there is no terrorist and no enemy who can take me
out.”

No matter how deep their grief, both
parents said their support for the campaign in Iraq, like that of their son,
is unflagging. “He loved what he did and was very proud of
serving,” said Lynda Unger. “I want everyone to know that. No
misquotes! He believes in what he was doing. He was glad to be there.”

Marc Unger picked up a Bush-Cheney
campaign poster from a nearby table.

“We support our president. We
support our military,” he said, waving the poster. “I’m terribly
sorry that it was my son who lost his life as a hero in the service of his
country. But someone’s life is going to be lost and my son was not going to
let someone else die in his place. My son honestly felt before God that God
wanted him to join the military.”

After getting his parents’ permission,
Daniel Unger joined the California National
Guard at the beginning of his senior year in high school. He went to boot
camp at Ft. Benning, Ga., two days after graduation. Before leaving for Iraq
in late March, he stopped by his alma mater, Exeter Union High School, in his
Army fatigues to say goodbye to his friends, teachers and his baseball coach.

“He was one of the only students I
ever met who knew exactly what he wanted to do in life and was doing
it,” said coach Steve Garver, who also taught Unger in English courses.
“He felt that he had been called by God. He was a fine young man.”

Said Exeter Police Lt. Cliff Bush, a
family friend: “Danny avoided all the drugs and other issues that plague
other kids his age. He was mature from the age of 12.”

The California soldiers involved in the
Monday night incident are part of a massive rotation in Iraq in which regular
Army forces are being replaced by reservists and National Guard troops. The California 1-185th Combat Group is
part of the 81st Brigade, headquartered in Ft. Lewis, Wash. Unger was
attached to Alpha Company, based in Corona.

Unger was the fifth California National Guard soldier killed during
the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The other soldiers who died were serving
in noncombat support companies — transportation, military police and
intelligence units.

Since the major rotation of reservists for regular Army
troops began this spring, some National
Guard units have suffered significant casualties. The Arkansas 39th
Brigade, which patrols Baghdad streets, has lost eight soldiers in less than
two months.

Honoring The Fallen

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Chattanooga Times Free Press

May 31, 2004
Monday

By Dorie Turner

Chattanooga, TN

Since her husband’s death in December
2003, Amy Edgerton has had two visits by Army soldiers carrying large, bronze
boxes.

She expects her third any day now.

The 25-year-old Sequatchie County
resident buried her husband, Sgt. Marshall Edgerton, in Dalton, Ga., five
months ago, but the Army has sent two urns with some of his remains since
then.

“It was a really bad
accident,” Mrs. Edgerton said of her husband’s death. “It makes me
feel sad for all the people who have lost their loved ones, because I
understand what they went through in other wars.”

Sgt. Edgerton died Dec. 11 in an
explosion in Iraq while serving with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.

Mrs. Edgerton said she will spend today
with her husband’s family and her children, Hunter, 7, and Alyssa, 2, at a
Memorial Day ceremony in Rome, Ga.

Around the Chattanooga area and across
the country, families will gather to mourn the 802 U.S. military personnel
who have perished in the Iraq war, as well as the hundreds of thousands of
others who died in wars.

Families also will spend today
welcoming troops who recently returned from Iraq and preparing to send others
into action.

The Tennessee Army National Guard 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment’s 1st squadron
based in Athens, Tenn., departs in June for training at Camp Shelby, Miss. By
December, the squadron expects to be in Iraq, Capt. Mitch Murray said.

“We are ready to deploy whenever
they pull the trigger,” he said.

Tennessee National Guard officials said about 3,000 soldiers will be
mobilized in June. Georgia officials couldn’t provide similar numbers.

Today commemorates military people
“who have sacrificed more than we’re going to,” Capt. Murray said.

“We’re going to be away from our
families for 18 months,” he said. “The people who fought World War
II and Korea, their orders were, ‘You’re going to fight until the mission is
done.’ Our grandparents did a lot for us so we can have this life.”

Some soldiers home from Iraq are
spending the day quietly healing from wounds.

Pfc. Brian Carroll walks gingerly,
trying not to disturb the hole in his side where a piece of shrapnel ripped
through his torso last month.

The 20-year-old Athens, Tenn., native
returned earlier this month after just three weeks with the Army in Iraq.
Soon his name will appear on a brick at the town’s Veterans Memorial Park,
near a World War II marker with his grandfather’s name.

“It’s very weird,” Pfc.
Carroll said. “I’m one of those guys now.”

Memorial Day has a more personal
meaning this year, he said.

“I appreciate it a lot more,”
Pfc. Carroll said. “I’m more appreciative of the people who have been in
war and given us what we have today.”

He was injured when a roadside bomb
exploded next to his Humvee caravan about 40 miles southeast of Baghdad.

His mother, Sheila, said the doctors
told her that her son is lucky to be alive.

“We attribute it to God,” she
said. “God’s got some purpose for Brian down the road.”

Spc. Joshua Bailey, a University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga student from a farming community near Columbia,
Tenn., returned on April 17, his birthday, after 10 months with the Tennessee
Army National Guard in Iraq. One
of the first things he did was join his local Veterans of Foreign Wars
chapter.

“I’m the young whippersnapper
there,” the 23-year-old said. “No matter how old we are, we have
the same experiences.”

For him, Memorial Day is about the
sacrifices both great and small that people in the military make during war.

“It’s not necessarily life or
death, but every kid that goes over there is giving up something,” he
said. “Some people are giving up limbs, legs.”

About 138,000 military members are
serving in Iraq, with some 17,500 in Afghanistan. More than 9,000 Tennessee
and Georgia reservists and National
Guard members are on active duty.

Since military operations in Iraq began
in March last year, 802 U.S. service members have died. Of those deaths, 587
were caused by hostile action and 215 by nonhostile causes, according to U.S.
Department of Defense records.

Since May 1, 2003, when President Bush
declared that major combat operations in Iraq ended, 662 U.S. military
personnel have died — 476 as a result of hostile action and 186 of
nonhostile causes, DOD records show.

For family members like Ms. Edgerton,
who lost her husband in Iraq, the Army asks them how they want the remains of
their loved ones handled, said Lt. Col. Stan Heath, with the Army’s human
resources command in Alexandria, Va.

“If the first set of remains was
not complete for whatever reason, we would ask … if we find any other
remains, ‘How would you like them delivered?'” Lt. Col. Heath said.
“The procedure is always to follow up with whatever we find.”

Staff writer Duane W. Gang contributed
to this story.

E-mail Dorie Turner at [email protected]

GENERAL

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Soldier Fights Wife’s Deportation

Florida Today
May 24, 2004

By John A. Torres, Florida Today

PALM BAY– John Santos loves his
country, but he loves his wife more.

The Palm Bay resident is stationed in
Oklahoma with the Army National Guard.
He enlisted after serving the previous four years in the Marines.

Now, without a congressional pardon, he
plans to expatriate if the government deports his wife.

Santos’ wife, Nancy, came to this
country illegally from Mexico more than four years ago in order to find work
and send money home to her family in Mexico City. During the four years, she
has worked, paid taxes, married and is now expecting the couple’s first child
in September.

 Barring intervention by Congressman Dave Weldon, R-Melbourne,
Nancy Santos will be forced to leave the country next March.

“It’s like this: If they deport
her, I have no choice,” John Santos, 34, said. “I will have to
follow.”

But Santos will still have a year of
commitment left in the National Guard
before he can leave the country he has served.

Santos, a radar repair technician, is
dumbfounded that his service in the military counts very little in his effort
to keep his wife in this country.

 “How can we, as Americans, let this happen?” he said.
“Now we have one year and time is ticking.”

His wife Nancy, 37, has learned English
and was working as a food server in Brevard County. She said moving to Mexico
will be hard for her husband.

“He says we can move to a border
town, like Tijuana, so he can commute to San Diego,” she said.    “But I don’t like that idea. This
is his home, this is where he lives.”

The fact that the couple has a year to
try and rectify the situation is somewhat of a lucky break. Nancy Santos was
already being deported and was incarcerated in the Orange County Jail when
her husband was able to win her a temporary stay.

That gives them a year to convince the
congressman she should stay.

Weldon confirmed working on the case
and is continuing to do so. However, citing the open case and privacy issues,
he refused to comment specifically on it.

Santos would like to stay in the
military and continue living in the United States — but only if his wife can
stay as well. The couple’s first baby will be an American citizen if it is
born in the United States but would move to Mexico with Nancy Santos if she
is deported.

 Ernestine Fobbs, spokeswoman for the Bureau of U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services, confirmed that Santos’ only real hope is a private
bill sponsored by a member of congress.

“Re-entering the country after a
deportation is a criminal offense,” she said. “Usually they would
have to go through congressional offices and those efforts are out of our
hands.”

 Fobbs, who would not comment directly on Santos’ case, said
Nancy Santos would likely receive a 10-year or lifetime ban from re-entering
the U.S.

John Santos has not waited until the
last minute to work on trying to make his wife’s presence here legal.

In fact, on July 17, 2000, he filed and
was granted a Petition for Alien Relative, asking that Nancy remain in this
country because he is her spouse. Then, less than a year later, Nancy Santos
submitted an application to Register Permanent Residence. But that request
was rejected. Meanwhile, she has received work permits through immigration
and has filed taxes.

Throughout the nearly four years the
Santos’ have worked with immigration, John Santos said he was under the
impression his wife was turned away at the border during her first attempt,
not actually deported. He is angry that immigration officials collected fees
for processing paperwork without letting him know there was basically no
chance of Nancy earning legal status.

Then on March 15, the couple met with immigration
officials for what they thought would be the final meeting to make her status
legal. Instead, she was arrested and deportation proceedings started.

Families Organize To Assist Troops –
Funds Will Aid Communication To U.S.

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The Washington Post

May 27, 2004
Thursday 

By Susan DeFord, Washington Post Staff
Writer

Even though Suzanne Mauris was seven
months pregnant, she understood that her husband, Stephen, had to go to Iraq
with his Maryland National Guard
unit when it was deployed for 18 months in January.

“It’s what he’s trained for,”
she said. “I fully support him in what he’s doing.”

But since then, Mauris’s resolve sometimes
has given way to anxiety as Iraqi insurgents have launched sporadic rocket
attacks at Camp Cooke, where her husband’s unit is assigned, along with
thousands of other soldiers. 

 Nine soldiers with the 39th Brigade Combat Team at the camp, 15
miles north of Baghdad, have been killed in the past two months, according to
the National Guard. Mauris and
others who have family members there worry about their loved ones walking
through the sprawling camp and standing in long lines to call or e-mail home.

“We felt that made them a
target,” said Jill Reese, a College Park resident whose brother-in-law
serves with the 629th Military Intelligence Battalion, which is headquartered
in Laurel and draws soldiers from Maryland, Northern Virginia and the District.

Though they are half a world away,
Mauris, Reese and other family members have formed a nonprofit group to raise
money to help purchase more telecommunications equipment for the unit’s 19
soldiers based at Camp Cooke.

“What we wanted to set up for them
was more for the families’ benefit,” said Mauris, who spoke at her
Fulton home while she doled out treats to her 23-month-old son, Alex, and
Reese held the Maurises’ 2-month-old daughter, Emily. “They haven’t
heard from loved ones as much as they wanted to. It makes it harder for
families to function without knowing if their soldiers are safe.”

The unit’s 18 men and one woman work as
analysts for the 39th Brigade Combat Team at Camp Cooke, trying to assess
weaknesses that would make coalition forces vulnerable to attack, said Maj.
Charles S. Kohler, public affairs officer for the Maryland National Guard. 

In the last few months, Camp Cooke has
grown from about 2,000 to 10,000 soldiers, according Capt. Kristine Munn,
speaking for the National Guard.

Although workers are rushing to install
more telecommunications facilities, she said, they have not kept up with the
camp’s rapid expansion.

“The infrastructure just wasn’t
there to support that many people,” Munn said. “It’s just like
building a brand-new city.”

An April 24 rocket attack at Camp Cooke
that killed four soldiers and seriously wounded five others “definitely
got us moving,” said Mauris, who also volunteers as lead coordinator for
the unit’s family support group. After the attack, one quick call to a spouse
came from a member of the 629th Battalion to report the unit was okay.
Nothing else was heard for a week.

“I try not to watch the news all
the time,” Mauris said. “When you do see it, your heart drops out
of your chest. You sit there waiting for the phone to ring or a knock on the
door.”

The soldiers of the 629th Battalion
have talked about trying to obtain their own satellite dish, but that would
cost about $21,000, she said.

“We didn’t want our soldiers to go
into personal debt just to call home,” said Mauris, a former social
worker for a nonprofit health care organization in Washington.

The new nonprofit organization, Friends
of the 629th MI Battalion Inc., has applied for federal status as a
charitable organization. If granted, donations to the group would be tax
deductible.

Debra Jung, a lawyer with the Maryland
Association of Nonprofit Organizations, said she is not aware of any other
military families organizing themselves as a nonprofit group. “That more
people are trying to think of ways to help their soldiers — that doesn’t
surprise me,” she added.

 Kohler said the Maryland National
Guard supports the initiative by the families but wants to make sure they
know the guard has its own nonprofit foundation that may be able to help.

Mauris said the Friends group wants to
pursue other goals such as emergency financial assistance for families and
scholarships for children if a parent is killed in combat. Already, members
have raised a few thousand dollars selling baked goods and teddy bears and
are planning pizza fundraisers and a yard sale in the coming weeks.

 In the wake of the abuses of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib
prison, potential donors occasionally have backed off when they learn that
the unit is involved in military intelligence, Mauris said. 

“Our guys provide information to
safeguard American and Iraqi lives,” she said. “We have to support
our soldiers over there. They have jobs to do.”

She added, “There are people left
behind who still have to find a way to go on.”

To learn more online about Friends of the 629th MI
Battalion, visit http://www.friendsof629.org/.

END

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