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Author Topic:   Army Times Articles
proxieme
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posted June 22, 2004 07:17 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
No home, sweet home for 20,000
Spike in violence forces longer deployment, Rumsfeld concedes

By Vince Crawley
Times staff writer

In postponing the departure of 20,000 soldiers who thought they were going home after a deadly year in the combat zone, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded he did not anticipate the spike in violence in Iraq.
“I certainly would not have estimated that we would have had the number of individuals lost that we have had lost in the last week,” Rumsfeld told Pentagon reporters April 15.

At least 90 American troops were killed in the first half of April — the bloodiest fighting yet of the 13-month-old war. That easily surpassed the previous record for any month of the operation, 83 in November.

In a rare prime-time TV news conference, President Bush on April 13 said his commander in Iraq, Army Gen. John Abizaid, would get whatever troops he requests.

Bush also insisted that U.S. occupation authorities would hand over power to an interim Iraqi government as scheduled on June 30 despite attempts by anti-American groups to destabilize the nation-building process.

However, under a timetable outlined by Bush, U.S. forces will remain committed to Iraq for at least another 18 months. By January, Iraq is scheduled to hold elections for a general assembly, which would draft a new constitution. Then, on Dec. 15, 2005, Iraq would hold elections for its new permanent government.

“Our commitment to the success and security of Iraq will not end on June 30,” Bush said. “On July 1, and beyond, our reconstruction assistance will continue, and our military commitment will continue.”

On April 15, Rumsfeld publicly disclosed that most of the 1st Armored Division and 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment would remain in Iraq “an additional 90 days.” The units, having served a year in the war zone, were preparing to return to their home bases in the next weeks.

The combat-zone demand for troops also has resulted in some 1st AD soldiers who already had returned to their home stations in Germany being ordered back to Iraq.

The 90-day extension would run through the June 30 hand-over date. If more troops are required beyond July, Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the joint staff is looking for possible replacements to relieve the extended troops.

Pace told reporters the rotation plan can be sustained well beyond the current mission, formally known as Operation Iraqi Freedom II. Army planners are drawing up Operation Iraqi Freedom III and IV missions, which would include fielding 105,000 to 115,000 troops in Iraq for at least two more years.

On top of the 90-day extension, Rumsfeld said troops will remain deployed a total of 120 extra days to allow for a month of restaging out of Kuwait.

“If additional capability is needed in Iraq longer than the 90 days General Abizaid anticipates, the current plan is to replace [the troops being extended 90 days] by bringing in other forces from other locations in the world,” Rumsfeld said.

Those being extended include about 11,000 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division and about 3,100 to 3,200 soldiers from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Polk, La. One squadron of the regiment has returned home already, and Pace said those soldiers would not be deployed back to Iraq.

In addition, one U.S.-based brigade of the 1st Armored Division already has returned to Fort Riley, Kan., and won’t be asked to return immediately to Iraq, officials said.

Several hundred active-duty soldiers from Fort Bragg, N.C., Fort Drum, N.Y., and Fort Lewis, Wash., have had their homecomings delayed.

The postponement order also affects more than 2,800 National Guard and Reserve members in Iraq. Another 1,600 Guard and Reserve members will remain in Kuwait beyond their planned rotation dates.

________________________________

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proxieme
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posted June 22, 2004 07:18 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Extended deployments hit Army families hard

By Gina Cavallaro
Times staff writer

A wave of disbelief and stoic resolve has descended upon families of the 20,000 troops ordered to stay in the Iraq war zone for up to 120 days beyond their one-year deployments.
Among the soldiers who got the news, some hadn’t left Iraq yet and just stayed there. Some had made it as far as Kuwait and made a quick U-turn to Baghdad. Others made it home to their families only to find out they’d return within days.

“I’m not looking forward to going back. I thought I had done my time. I thought that was enough,” said a 1st AD Apache helicopter pilot based in Hanau, Germany, a chief warrant officer 4 who did not want to be identified.

He flew home from Baghdad April 5, and though news of troop extensions had not been reported yet, he said, there was an eerie silence among soldiers on the plane.

“Usually everybody hoots and cheers, but there was none. Nobody really believed we were actually out of Iraq,” said the warrant officer, who on April 16, when he talked with Army Times, was due to board a plane back to the war zone within a day or so. “Maybe there was a feeling of, ‘This is not really over.’”

That feeling is creeping over some soldiers in units that already have redeployed, such as the 3rd Infantry Division, which is on deck to return to Iraq in November. As one 3rd ID soldier put it, “stay tuned.”

Another soldier from the 4th Infantry Division who redeployed in late March thought the Army would have been better off extending his stay. “They messed up,” he said.

The Pentagon announced April 15 that 20,000 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division, headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany; the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment out of Fort Polk, La., and various Reserve and Guard units will stay in Iraq for at least 90 more days.

Both active-component units have been deployed since April 2003. The soldiers will be held in the war zone to help combat the upsurge in violence that has claimed the lives of at least 90 troops since April 1.

Spouses interviewed by Army Times said they found out about the extension through friends or their Family Readiness Groups, and the news is hitting home hard.

“President Bush said the war is over, but it’s not over for us. [The extension] is unbelievable. It just came out of left field,” said Hollie Mitchell, whose husband, Chief Warrant Officer 4 Joseph Mitchell, is an Apache attack helicopter pilot for 1st Battalion, 501st Aviation, 1st AD.

Hollie Mitchell, who became pregnant four months ago during her husband’s mid-tour leave, said his unit arrived in Kuwait April 4, and by April 10 they were back in Baghdad.

She heard about the extension April 8 from another wife at a vehicle checkpoint on the way into post in Hanau.

“She said she had gotten a call that they had been extended 120 days,” she recalled the woman saying. “I just broke down and started crying right there.”

Shaken by the news, Mitchell went straight to the battalion’s rear detachment, where an officer confirmed the extension of up to 120 days.

Melissa Webb, whose husband is an Apache pilot in the same unit with Mitchell, found out through 4th Brigade FRG channels. In an April 8 meeting, which she did not attend because she was waiting for her husband to call, the spouses learned that the soldiers’ probable expected return date from Iraq is around mid-August.

“I had seen [the news of the extension] in the paper, but I disregarded it because [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld stated that troops would be on the ground for 365 days, no longer,” said Webb. “You put your belief and hope in what Rumsfeld and [President] Bush say. Our world was shattered in a day. It’s devastating.”

At Fort Polk, Suzy Yates said she doesn’t know where her husband is stationed in Iraq, but talked with him April 8.

“His spirits were high. He understands he has to take care of his soldiers. I stayed strong for him on the phone,” said Yates, whose husband, Sgt. Cory Yates, is a cavalry scout in the 2nd ACR’s Comanche Troop. After the call, she said, “My head dropped into my hands and I took a moment for myself.”

the wives in both Germany and Louisiana said banners had been prepared, parties scheduled and vacations planned. Now, everyone’s adjusting to the new redeployment schedule.

“We’re all depressed about it, but we’re all learning to live with it,” said Jamie Smith, whose husband, promotable Sgt. 1st Class Joe Smith, is a medical platoon sergeant with Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 3rd Squadron, 2nd ACR. “We’ve got another nine years in the military. I knew sooner or later he’d go back.”

What scares Smith the most, she said, is that she doesn’t know where he is and communications are not as good as they were a few months ago.

“It’s hard one day, not so hard the next. Some of the ladies had a harder time dealing with it than others,” said Yates, an FRG co-leader who said she’s keeping her expectations in check.

“They said three to four months, with six months being the worst,” Yates said. “I’m preparing for the worst.”

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proxieme
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posted June 22, 2004 07:18 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Hurry-up deployments?
Uprisings may force shorter turnarounds and longer tours

By Matthew Cox
Times staff writer

There is a good chance that the decision to delay the homecoming of 20,000 soldiers will mean many more troops will be returning to Iraq sooner than they thought.
Commanders in Iraq have ordered the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment and elements of the 1st Armored Division to remain in theater for up to an additional three months. Both units have already served one-year tours in Iraq. The move to quell the recent surge in violence inside the Sunni Triangle will keep the U.S. troop strength in Iraq at 135,000 until the scheduled June 30 hand-over of authority to the Iraqis.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld maintains the military has a plan to bring in other forces to replace soldiers from the 2nd ACR and 1st AD if the unrest in Iraq doesn’t subside after 90 days. However, he also conceded at an April 15 press conference that he would hold those troops in the war zone beyond the 90-day extension if necessary.

The moves to beef up the force in Iraq reflect the ongoing struggle of the U.S. military to maintain its combat readiness as it draws deeply on all assets, with every division — even the 25th Infantry Division out of Hawaii — involved in rotations to Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. At the same time, Guard and Reserve forces have been mobilized at a rate not seen since World War II.

a senior Army planner said maintaining a force of this size in Iraq beyond the 90-day extension will complicate rotation plans and mean less time at home for overworked combat units, struggling to reset while reorganizing into a more modular structure for the Army’s future force.

“We didn’t plan for the amount of violence we have right now,” said the senior planner, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified. “We were planning on a more peaceful transition heading up to June 30.”

The 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) is an obvious pick for hurry-up orders to Iraq, the senior planner said. The 3rd ID has been home the longest, having returned from Iraq in late summer, and is well along in resetting equipment.

The division was alerted weeks ago to expect to go back to Iraq in November as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom III, but may find itself headed back to the war zone this summer to replace the extended units.

Currently, the unit’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team is the Division Ready Brigade for the entire Army, meaning it’s the only brigade ready to launch at a moment’s notice.

The mission of the DRB is to maintain a high state of readiness and deploy on short notice, typically within 72 hours, depending on the type of unit. The remaining units in the division then follow.

The 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, which returned from Iraq in February, is preparing to assume DRB status in May. If things in Iraq deteriorate further, soldiers in that unit could find themselves turning around to deploy within just a few months of coming home.

It will be the first time in five months the division has had enough forces at home long enough to assume the DRB, said 82nd spokeswoman Master Sgt. Pamela Smith.

The 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), which also returned home in February, is also in the process of getting its 3rd Brigade Combat Team trained to assume DRB by early summer, said 101st spokesman Lt. Col. Trey Cate.

As for the National Guard, there are three infantry brigades in Iraq. Four other Guard combat units have been notified of a pending mobilization.

As of March 1, the 42nd Infantry Division from New York, the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment from Tennessee, the 256th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized) from Louisiana and the 116th Cavalry Brigade from Idaho were alerted to expect an upcoming mobilization.

National Guard units, however, can take several months to mobilize and train before being ready to deploy, said Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a spokeswoman for the National Guard Bureau.

Moving the 3rd ID into rotation months ahead of schedule, would mean that another unit will have to deploy to Iraq four months sooner than planned when it comes time to relieve the 3rd ID, the senior planner pointed out.

Which unit that would be is not yet clear.

As they draft options for OIF III and OIF IV rotations, planners also face the challenge of keeping the Army on track in restructuring 33 combat brigades into a more modular force of 43 to 48 Units of Action.

The 3rd ID is at the leading edge of that program and is well into the transition. The division’s 2nd Unit of Action, or 2UA, recently completed training at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif. The division’s 1UA is preparing for its NTC debut in the coming weeks. The 4UA is in the process of converting. The 3rd BCT is slated to restructure last.

Next in line to restructure is the 101st followed by the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), two highly deployable units that likely will be less available as they transition, the senior planner said.

“From a planning perspective, the transition to modularity will have to be taken into account as we schedule follow-on forces,” the planner said.

Ultimately, the Army could handle the need for additional forces, the senior planner said, but it will result in a shorter turnaround time for units between homecomings and future deployment dates.

Normally, brigades have 120 days to refit after returning from a deployment. The time is used to take leave, retrain on crucial battle skills, repair equipment and send soldiers to professional development courses.

Unexpected deployments will likely reduce this refit time to 90 days or less.

“You would end up with a ripple … what you are doing is reducing the time they are back in the states,” the senior planner said. “We could clearly surge the number of troops on the short term, but that would cause a problem in the long term.”


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proxieme
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posted June 22, 2004 07:19 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Senators mull easing family deployment stress

By Karen Jowers
Times staff writer

Senators are exploring how to make life easier for military families stressed by increasing deployments.
On the table are proposals for more child-care options, help for military children moving to new schools, assistance for working spouses and fixing inequities in the way military allowances are counted for eligibility for federal programs.

At a joint hearing June 24 of the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions children and families subcommittee, senators made no promises.

“But we may have some tactical ideas about how to solve these problems and may make suggestions to DoD,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., chairman of the personnel panel.

He and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the children and families panel, held hearings in Georgia, Kentucky and Connecticut earlier in June to get firsthand accounts from military families and officials about how well family programs work.

Chambliss said military families were under stress even before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and he and others said the problems must be carefully evaluated.

“Extensive commitments of our military forces are pushing our military families to the limit,” said Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.

But civilian policies sometimes exacerbate the stress in the lives of military families.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., cited an example in Long Island in which the children of two deployed parents went to live with their grandparents. “They were kicked out of their school” because the grandparents lived across district lines, she said.

Spouses in Connecticut complained about professional certification standards not being recognized among states. For example, spouses who want to provide child care in homes off base wait six months because Connecticut does not recognize other states’ certification.

Alexander asked for written statements from witnesses to provide further examples of how reciprocity among states could help families, such as greater acceptance of course credits and tests for transferring high school students.

In addition to its current programs, the military is taking other steps:

•A toll-free telephone, e-mail or Internet connection with an information and referral service for a variety of topics, activated earlier this year for Marines worldwide, shortly will expand to the Army. The Navy and Air Force are considering it.

•Joseph Tafoya, director of the Department of Defense Education Activity, said he is working with superintendents of education in places with large military student populations to ease their transitions from school to school.

•An Army program allowing soldiers to request a year’s extension at their duty station to let a child finish his senior year at the same high school has had great success, defense officials said. Only 1 percent of requests have been turned down since the program began in April 2001.

The Air Force is considering the idea. The Navy and Marine Corps have policies allowing requests for deferment from assignment for various reasons and don’t feel they need a special policy, officials said.

•Families at field hearings said not enough respite child care is available, especially for spouses left behind during wartime deployments.

Concerns also have been raised about extending child-care hours to match service members’ longer and unpredictable schedules.

One issue harder to resolve, Alexander said, is the effect of privatized housing on eligibility for certain federal benefits for low- income families.

“This has been an issue historically,” said Joyce Raezer, director of government relations for the National Military Family Association. “Because of the way housing allowances are counted, the 60 percent of folks who live off the installation have always had to deal with this issue.”

What has complicated it, she said, is that under authorities for privatizing housing, legislation mandates the service member receive the basic allowance for housing, then turn it over to the developer.

At Fort Carson, Colo., for example, two-thirds of families receiving food stamps were ineligible once their on-base housing was turned over to the private developer.

“It would be nice if everyone were treated the same,” Raezer said, whether on or off base.


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proxieme
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posted June 22, 2004 07:20 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
3,600 troops in Korea headed for Iraq

By Matthew Cox
Times staff writer

The surprise decision to shift 2nd Infantry Division soldiers from South Korea to Iraq may be a quick fix to the Army’s troop-shortage problem, but it has turned Michelle Smith’s life upside down.
Smith’s worries began May 17 when the Pentagon announced that 3,600 soldiers from the 2nd ID’s 2nd Brigade would be sent to Iraq this summer to help relieve the 20,000 soldiers who recently had their yearlong tours extended by three months.

Her boyfriend of three years — a soldier Smith would identify only as a staff sergeant in 2nd Brigade’s 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment (Air Assault), told her during a phone call from Korea on May 20 that his command had put out a stop-loss order. That order is likely to mean the boyfriend is heading to Iraq for a year instead of his planned separation from the Army in June after 10 years of service.

“We had come to a decision about him leaving the Army; [we were] making plans for the future for us to be together,” said Smith, a former soldier who also was stationed in South Korea. “I’m so scared that all of that is going to come to a screeching halt.”

Army officials in South Korea did not respond for comment on the issue by Army Times’ deadline.

Now living in Miami, Smith, 36, was stationed in Seoul as a personnel sergeant. She met her boyfriend in 2001 when he was assigned there temporarily.

Tours in South Korea usually last 12 months, but Smith said her boyfriend liked serving in a forward area and extended. Now the 29-year-old infantryman likely is heading to a place where soldiers are killed every day, Smith said.

“I don’t want to be on the receiving end of that,” Smith said. “I’m not ready for that. He’s too young.”

With no other fresh combat forces available, the Army had few choices other than to tap units designated for a third round of tours in Iraq.

Joining the 2nd ID force will be elements of the 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) from Fort Drum, N.Y.; the 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment from Fort Riley, Kan.; and two companies from the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, permanently assigned units at the Joint Readiness Training Center, Fort Polk, La., a Pentagon planner said.

Sometime in midsummer, the mixed-unit force will relieve soldiers from the 1st Armored Division and 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, a senior military official said May 17 during a background briefing at the Pentagon.

It’s unclear how many soldiers in the 2nd ID’s 2nd Brigade are close to completing their 12-month tours in Korea, but defense officials said recently those circumstances are unlikely to keep soldiers from going to Iraq.

“Typically, you would have folks in the neighborhood of six months. So what could occur is you will have some folks who conceivably could have a tour of between 18 and 24 months, far more between 12 and 18 months, and I think an important thing to put in context is that that is needed in this case and it reflects the fact that we are at war,” the official said.

To Smith, the fact that her boyfriend has volunteered to serve two tours in a unit based less than three kilometers from the demilitarized zone should count for something. “I think he has done more than enough for his country,” Smith said.

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proxieme
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posted June 22, 2004 07:23 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Pay, op tempo, quality of life among the reasons soldiers are getting out


In the Jan. 5 issue, it was reported that nine out of 10 respondents to an Army Times poll rated the military quality of life as at least fair; one in three said it was excellent. About eight in 10 rated their pay and allowances and their military health care as excellent or fair. And of those living in military housing, nearly two out of three ranked it at least fair.
That sounds great, so why are so many soldiers leaving the Army?

• Lack of compensation. Any leader will say, without fail, the soldier is the most important thing in the Army. Soldiers who find themselves in potentially life-or-death situations should be paid handsomely — closer to what a fallen brother-in-arms gets.

As a potential solution, lawmakers are weighing the merits of deployment pay — a special allowance for troops deployed more than six months. But that should commence the day the troops arrive overseas.

Also, bribing untested recruits to join the Army is an insult to those already in. Throwing money to recruits is a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

If soldiers who are already in were offered $10,000 to stay, maybe a recruiter would not be pressured to meet a quota. The Army’s most senior noncommissioned officers are right on the money in suggesting lump-sum re-up bonuses of $5,000 to $7,000 throughout the service.

• Overstretched reserves. An employer is supposed to take back a deployed National Guard or reserve soldier with open arms after a deployment, but in the case of the Chaplain Corps, civil affairs, interpreters, nurses and a host of other military occupational specialties, a deployment could last as long as a full active-duty enlistment.

Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, suggests one deployment for each Guard or reserve soldier every four to five years. Hopefully it’s not too late for that idea.

• Broken promises. Today’s Army uses fewer and fewer troops to go more and more places and perform more and more tasks in less and less time. Using troops solely for grass-cutting details is counterproductive. In the civilian world, if you are hired as a plumber, you work as a plumber. Having guardsmen who spend a weekend a month as artillerymen cross-train for a deployment as MPs or infantrymen doesn’t pass the common-sense test.

• Quality of life. We understand as soldiers that when we took the oath of service, certain sacrifices were to be made by ourselves and our families. But good soldiers in field units get out when they miss four out of five wedding anniversaries because of “mission first.”

The proposal by the Army’s top NCOs should help — stabilizing soldiers so they are at “home bases” more. Guardsmen and reservists would like that, too. They went from a weekend a month to stop-loss and extension status.

• Housing choices. Some reservists are not only extended but also lead a nomadic existence on active-duty posts, moving many times to replace or become “backfill” soldiers. Many field soldiers might live two or three soldiers to a room. Former Sgt. Maj. of the Army Jack Tilley has it right when he says he would like to see commanders have the authority to let soldiers with 36 months of service live off post.

• The “point system.” Soldiers want to be promoted by humans — not by a point system in the back of a newspaper. In essence, E-4 promotable soldiers are job hunting every month. Soldiers are at the mercy of the supply of and demand for slot openings, not ability levels. The more “indoor” the job, the higher the point scale is for promotion; the more “hoo-ah” the job, the lower the point scale.

An operating room “technician of the year” who has to achieve 796 out of 800 points month after month realizes that he may not only never see E-6, but also may never see E-5. Tilley is right to want competency testing — an initial test for all MOSs.

How can skill level be established without bringing back the Skills Qualification Test? The Army Physical Fitness Test and Weapons Qual add points — they don’t determine job performance.

• Transition training. Everyone has to leave the military eventually. The fine folks at Army career planning and placement perform an admirable job of preparing soldiers to make the transition. “Troops to Teachers” is a great program.

But what about the combat-arms folks? To what civilian job does tanker or infantryman experience translate? An enlisted soldier in a combat arms MOS in the last six months of his final enlistment should have the option of learning a skilled trade that translates to a real job on the outside.


The writer, an Army sergeant, was a combat medic with Operation Desert Thunder in Kuwait with the 70th Engineers from Fort Riley, Kan., and served with the National Guard at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. He is a pharmacy technician at Reynolds Army Community Hospital at Fort Sill, Okla.

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proxieme
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posted June 22, 2004 07:28 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Multiple extensions wear down loved ones


Spc. Scott Peterson, 30, a member of the Iowa National Guard’s Detachment 1, Company F, 106th Aviation Regiment, learned last month that his tour of duty was extended for a third time.
And that’s not making his wife very happy.

The 106th consists of some of the nearly 23,000 soldiers nationwide who recently had their time of duty extended. “I know he’s over there doing his job,” said Kelly Peterson, 30, of Cole Valley, Ill. “But the military and the president need to understand that these are people’s families.

Sometimes I think they forget these are people’s sons, husbands, wives.”

Her husband is a member of a helicopter unit that flies the CH-47D Chinook. Two members of the unit, Chief Warrant Officer Bruce A. Smith, 41, of West Liberty, and Sgt. Paul Fisher, 39, of Cedar Rapids, died from injuries sustained when the helicopter they were in was shot down in November.

Peterson said the news that her husband won’t be home until at least fall hit hard. But in fact, these heartbreaking extensions are becoming ritual, she said.

“We’ve had so many extensions before, but this one really shocked a lot of us,” Peterson said. “I honestly had thought in my mind he was going to be home this summer.”

The unit’s 90 soldiers were deployed in February 2003 and sent to Iraq two months later. It’s possible this won’t be the unit’s final extension, said Lt. Col. Greg Hapgood, Iowa Guard spokesman.

“The president has the ability to order the National Guard for up to two years, so they can be extended any number of times during 730 days,” Hapgood said.

Once a soldier’s two-year stint is finished, he can’t be called up again, Hapgood said. But until then, “They don’t belong to us.”

The 106th’s homecoming celebration planned for May 15 has been postponed.

So has Spc. Ben Beaudry’s June 5 wedding to the mother of his 6-month-old son, Stacey Madden, 22, of Davenport.

“We feel like we have been strung along,” said Peggy Beaudry, the soldier’s mother. “We recognize that he has a job to do and we’re proud of him, but we still want him home.”

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proxieme
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posted June 22, 2004 07:29 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Issue Date: December 08, 2003

Making sense of stop-loss, stop-move
Rules lay out who’s affected, excepted

By Jim Tice
Times staff writer

Soldiers now can make sense of the reinstated stop-loss, stop-movement policy signed Nov. 13 by Acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee.
The Army on Nov. 22 issued to field commands the implementing instructions for the policy, which affects active-component units alerted for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Sources said the delay in issuing the guidance was in part the result of efforts to ensure all situations were addressed.

Stop-loss and stop-movement begins 90 days before a unit’s main deployment date, and will continue until 90 days after the main body’s return to home station.

Highlights of other implementing guidance are:

Enlisted

•Soldiers in deploying units with re-enlistment assignments, except those identified for reclassification training and participation in the Bonus Extension and Retraining program, will remain with the unit for another 90 days after it returns to home station.

Other scheduled reassignments will be deleted or deferred, unless approved for a policy exception by the commanding general of the Human Resources Command.

•Soldiers scheduled for NCO Education System training, such as the primary, basic or advanced courses, will attend school before or after deployment, but not while the unit is in Iraq or Afghanistan.

•NCOs subject to stop-loss remain eligible for promotion and school selection.

•Soldiers with mandatory retirement dates because they have reached age 55, or 30 years of service, will be retired as scheduled.

•Soldiers in deployed units who reach their retention control points will be under stop-loss orders.

•Command sergeant major and sergeant major reassignments will be handled on a case-by-case basis by the sergeant major management branch of the Human Resources Command.

Officers

•Branch commissioned officers and warrant officers in deploying units and on reassignment orders will remain in the units. HRC will issue new rotation dates, which will be 90 days after a unit’s scheduled redeployment.

•Officers passed over for promotion twice, but who declined retention under the Selective Continuation policy, are subject to stop-loss.

•Passed-over officers who have not been offered Selective Continuation will be involuntarily separated or retired as previously scheduled.

•Officers with mandatory retirement dates because of age or length of service will be returned to home stations 90 days in advance of separation to allow for out-processing and Army Career and Alumni Program activities.

•Lieutenants and captains subject to stop-loss and stop-movement are not eligible for an early-out under the National Guard Combat Reform Initiative program.

Exceptions

Stop-loss and stop-movement do not apply to soldiers on reassignment orders to a Stryker Brigade Combat Team; a special operations accessions course; the Warrant Officer Candidate Course and Officer Candidate School; and Army Medical Department courses and schools.

Officers in deploying units who are scheduled to assume command of nondeployed battalions and brigades in fiscal 2004 will take over command as scheduled. As previously announced, commanders of deployed units will not change command during the period of deployment.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Those affected
The guidance to the most current stop-loss, stop-movement instructions, issued by the operations directorate of the Human Resources Command, apply to units that have been alerted for the fifth rotation to Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom 5); the second large-scale deployment to Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom 2) and certain transition units already deployed to the Iraq theater.
Included in the latter category are the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (SBCT), which deployed in early November, and the 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division Task Force, which deployed in September. The stop-loss and stop-movement effective date for these brigades and their supporting units is Jan. 1. Restrictions will be lifted 90 days after the units return to home stations at Fort Lewis, Wash., and Fort Riley, Kan. the brigades are slated for 12-month deployments.

Other major units on the stop-loss list include the 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas; the 25th Infantry Division (Light), Hawaii, and the Germany-based brigades of the 1st Infantry Division.

— Jim Tice

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Oxychick
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posted June 22, 2004 07:35 AM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
Thanks!

Some reading for this evening, off to work now. Again, thanks for posting all of this info!

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