Posted: 1/18/07
Angered by news of extended Iraq duty
By Joel Stottrup
The telephone call from Iraq to the home of Linda Anderson of Princeton at 2:30 a.m. last Thursday left her "angry, emotionally hurt and scared," in her words.
The call was from her husband First Sergeant Randy Hatch, with Bravo Company of the First Brigade Combat Team of the 34th Infantry Division.
He called to say he had just heard that the National Guard outfit he was part of in Iraq were having their stay extended, possibly by as much as four months. That meant instead of coming home this coming March, as they had been promised, it could be delayed until as late as the summer.
Hatch's message was the climax of a series of events that began the evening of Jan. 10 as President Bush was about to give a speech about his troop buildup plan for Iraq. Bush was to call for sending about 21,000 more troops to Iraq,
Media outlets, knowing Bush would be talking about the "surge," began speculating how that would affect the 5,000 National Guard soldiers from 22 states sent to Iraq last April. Of those soldiers, 2,600 are from Minnesota, according to Minnesota National Guard spokesperson Lt. Col. Kevin Olson.
According to Olson and Maj. Gen. Larry Shellito, head of the Minnesota National Guard, they got confirmation of the extension just before Bush's speech. But they were told not to release the information to their troops until 9 p.m., about 20 minutes after the end of Bush's speech.
By then news outlets were reporting what evidently had been a leak of information about the National Guard extended stay in Iraq, according to the Minnesota Guard headquarters.
The news on the extension was therefore getting to the soldiers before there was an announcement from the military.
It would not be until Monday this week that the Minnesota Guard was to confirm the news.
The length of the extended stay for the soldiers in Iraq is not determined, but could be up to a maximum of 125 days, Olson said. That would mean an extension possibly into July.
By the time Anderson learned of the extension from her husband, an e-mail had already been sent to her computer. But she hadn't seen it when it arrived the night of Jan. 10.
The e-mail had been forwarded to her by one of the support people for family members of soldiers in Iraq. The original message had come from Minnesota National Guard headquarters.
The e-mail said the extension would be for an unspecified amount of time.
"Is this a raw deal?" the message asked, and then answered the question, "Of course! We have every right to be angry, but the reality is that the long awaited homecoming will be pushed back."
The rest of the e-mail called for reaching out to fellow families of soldiers in the same situation and said the Minnesota Guard headquarters would be seeking government assistance to help deal with the hardship for families.
"I am so proud of our soldiers and airmen and their families," the message added. "We owe all of you so much and will do our utmost to help you through this change and disappointment."
Anderson's response
When Anderson was finished with her husband's phone call early last Thursday morning, she couldn't sleep the rest of the night, she said this week. In fact, she spent some of that sleepless time sending an e-mail to the Minnesota Guard headquarters expressing her feelings. Here is that e-mail:
"How dare you? How dare you? You send such bland, heartless hogwash in your e-mail it makes me want to heave the computer out the window. HOW DARE YOU!!!"
"The National Guard takes our soldiers for the LONGEST DURATION of any branch of the service, puts them through six months of training they are told they need, yet the minute they get there, they are told to "forget all you learned in training . . . it's all different here,' and put them in a pit for 12 more months and NOW THIS? A year and a half of grief and anguish and you DARE TO DO THIS to us, the families that have waited, that knew when the soldiers were coming home."
Anderson then criticized the top brass in the Guard, accusing them of being uncaring about the soldiers and their families.
"Raw deal doesn't even begin to address the injustice this does to me, my family or most of all, my soldier," Anderson wrote.
Anderson's e-mail talked about the date Guard families had been counting on for their soldiers' time in Iraq and their homecoming plans, with reservations for getaways and money put down to secure the plans.
"Have you people lost your minds?" Anderson asked. "What is wrong with you?"
Anderson next expressed a frustration over Iraq in general.
"That place, that pit you call Iraq, was only held together by the point of a gun held by a maniac for the past 30 years and you want MY HUSBAND to stay longer to fix something that hasn't been able to be fixed for thousands of years?
"Those people hate each other and their fury is aimed at us as long was we are there. But once we leave, NO MATTER WHEN THAT IS, they will return to hating each other and killing each other the way they have since they wrote the Koran."
Anderson then castigated Guard headquarters for sending an e-mail to let her know the news of the Guard extension in Iraq and called for the top officers in the Guard to apologize for not calling each family personally.
"YOU NEED TO HEAR OUR ANGUISH AND OUR ANGER," Anderson wrote.
Anderson continued that she expects the extension of the stay in Iraq will severely hurt retention and discourage soldiers from signing up again.
"You just made a whole lot of families so angry," she wrote. "You'll never get our soldiers back once we finally get them home. You have broken your own toys, sir, You have treated my husband and his soldiers like toys, pushing them around a sand box and you have broken them."
She also predicted that many of the soldiers will not be able to deal with the fallout of their long duty in Iraq as they try to get back into civilian life.
"You'd best be quick to come up with a new end date [for the active duty in Iraq] that is not very long in the future and you"d best be quick getting that news out to the families you've already mangled," her e-mail continued. "Don't leave us dangling out here with no idea about the time for very long."
Anderson signed her letter, "with great sorrow and even greater anger."
Anderson, on Monday, said she had already been disappointed about what happened after her husband had spent two years of activated Guard duty at an air base within the past few years in Minneapolis. Just over six months later he was given orders to prepare for active duty in Iraq, she said.
Anderson received a reply from the Minnesota Guard headquarters on Friday agreeing that hearing the duty-extension news via the media before the military gave it out, was "terrible."
The letter also said someone would make sure that she and her husband didn't have the same problem they had when his active duty had been extended at the air base in Minneapolis. Someone in the Guard forgot to tell the disbursement people about Hatch's active duty extension and so his military pay was stopped when it shouldn't have been, she said.
Anderson talked about the air base where he is stationed getting "rocket attacks on a regular basis," and worrying that he could be "blown to bits in his bed."
The e-mail from Guard headquarters apologized for any situation of Anderson or others not believing in the sincerity of the Guard command in trying to assist families of Guard members.
Anderson said Monday her strongest emotion is anger because the end date had been planned on for the active duty in Iraq and plans were being made for reintegrating the soldiers back to family and civilian life.
The extended stay will even mean problems for some employers who had been scheduling to fit the soldiers' return, she said.
Retired National Guard officer Tim Wilhelm of Princeton, who served in Iraq for eight months until August 2003 as chief logistician for engineers, agreed.
"It's a tough thing," Wilhelm agreed about people having their plans changed like that for when the soldiers were to return. "It's a tough issue to deal with. All the plans that people had their heart set on."
Wilhelm said it is hard on families, some with four kids and a baby sitter, and the head of household with sometimes multiple jobs.
The extension wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the kind of war the U.S. soldiers are in, Anderson said.
"They're in a place where just putting on a uniform makes them a target," she said. "They might as well have a big target painted on their back."
Anderson also sent her initial e-mail to the White House, the governor's office and to Rep. Sondra Erickson of Princeton.
Minnesota Guard spokesperson Lt. Col. Olson said in a phone interview Monday that the soldiers will adapt to their extended stay with the busy work of their duty.
It will be the families of those soldiers, he said, who will have the most difficult time adapting.
Princeton Union-Eagle
P.O. Box 278
Princeton, MN 55371
Telephone: 763-389-1222
Fax: 763-389-1728