Citizen-soldiers fed up

Glen Suppes, a Hotchkiss high school teacher, father of three and a Colorado National Guardsman, has been gone for 14 months, in Iraq for 10, with two more months to go.

When he comes home, he will join a growing number of military reservists and National Guard soldiers who will leave the service when their enlistments are up.

So far, at least, an exodus is not reflected in the numbers. Nationally, officials say that recruiting and retention of troops exceed the Pentagon's quotas. In Colorado, however, National Guard and Army Reserve enlistments and re-enlistments are lagging.

The concern, however, is with the future. Many citizen-soldiers deployed to Iraq are just now returning and thousands more are headed there to replace full-time troops who are coming home after a year of duty. Whether Guard and Reserve troops who have been or will be away for a year or more stick with the military is the issue.

Officials are worried. In January, the commander of the Army Reserve, Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, warned of a "recruiting-retention crisis" in the Guard and Reserve.

"I really worry that there is a looming problem," said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy analyst for the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.

"Some people are fed up already. But I think it's actually going to be cumulative as deployments increase. The real issue is going to be what happens when people have to go back for a second time. We're not anywhere near the end of this Iraq deployment yet."

Many of the departing reservists and Guard members are simply tired of being called away from families and civilian jobs for prolonged or repeated military duty - not the short-term assignments they were accustomed to before 9/11.

In the view of some, the Pentagon has broken faith, pulling them out of civilian careers and businesses and turning their part-time military obligation into full-time duty. More and more, they say, the Pentagon is using them not as emergency or temporary forces, but as permanent substitutes - in Iraq and elsewhere - to avoid expanding the active-duty ranks.

More than 40 percent of the 105,000 troops now headed to Iraq for a year to replace regular troops are National Guard and Reserve forces.

William Foster's 40-member Marine intelligence unit from Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora was sent to Kuwait for six months last January, returned home in June and was reactivated last month. Half are back in the Middle East and the other half are expecting new deployment orders.

And when their duty is over? "I don't know anyone in my unit that's going to re-enlist, as far as my close friends go," Foster said.

Glen Suppes left Hotchkiss last January with C Company, 109th Medical Battalion of the Colorado National Guard. They waited at Fort McCoy, Wis., until April before going to Iraq, and are not expected home until late April.

"My husband was in the regular Army for three years and in the Guard for 11," said Janine Suppes. "He said if he wanted to be gone for this many months, for this kind of duty, he would have stayed in the Army."

Such assignments are a misuse of the Guard and Reserve, said Steve Robinson, director of a veterans group, the National Gulf War Resource Committee.

"The whole idea is they are not active-duty soldiers. They're citizen-soldiers and this is not their full-time job," said Robinson.

Still, the Army is beating both its active-duty and Reserve recruiting and retention goals nationally. The Pentagon needed 26,900 enlistments in regular Army and 5,475 in the Reserve through the quarter that ended in January. It got 27,119 in the regulars and 5,664 in the Reserve.

The Colorado Army National Guard was supposed to have 3,150 troops at the end of September, but had 3,062. The Army was supposed to recruit 49 new soldiers for the Reserve and 206 for the regular Army in Colorado for the four-month period through the end of January. It recruited 39 for the Reserve and 176 for the Army.

"We are really down on our USAR (Army Reserve). Usually we fill those faster and are over our percentage," said LaWanda York of the U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion in Denver.

More will be leaving as soon as they can, some Guard and Reserve members predict.

"You're not seeing a drop (in membership) now because there's a stop-loss and nobody can get out," said Jonathan Davis, a Marine reservist in Foster's intelligence unit facing his second callup since January 2003.

"What's gonna happen in 2005 and 2006 when these people's enlistment contracts are up, you're gonna see a drop in reservists."

Davis, a sales manager with a six-figure salary in civilian life, has been a Marine reservist for seven years, but plans to leave when his enlistment is up next year.

The Pentagon's "stop-loss" orders prevent troops in key occupations from leaving, even when their enlistments are up.

Michael Adams, a physician's assistant from Norwood and a captain in Suppes' Colorado National Guard medical company, was held on active duty and sent to Iraq for a year, even though his enlistment ended last April.

"Because of the stop-loss order, he couldn't get out," said his wife Sharon, a registered nurse at the Uncompahgre Medical Center in Norwood, where her husband works in civilian life.

Adams' absence left the clinic without its primary care provider, other than a doctor who visits two days a week. When Adams returns in April, his wife said, "he will more than likely get out" of the Guard.

They're not being unpatriotic by leaving, reservists and Guard members insist. Some endured the rigors of Marine boot camp to serve. Many, like Adams, express firm support for the U.S. action in Iraq.

They also are the first to admit that, yes, they did sign enlistment contracts stating they could be called up in times of national emergency.

Patrick Berner, a member of Davis' and Foster's Marine Reserve unit, lost the one-man marketing business he had founded and built when he had to deploy to Kuwait for six months January 2003.

"It's too costly," said Berner, whose enlistment ends next March. "It cost me everything my wife and I have worked for for the last 10 years."

Now, as he tries to rebuild his financial life and support his pregnant wife and 21-month-old son, the Marines have again activated his unit and he faces a second Middle East deployment.

Suppes has willingly left home many summers with the Guard to assist on wildfires in Mesa Verde and around western Colorado. He joined hundreds of Guard members who served for months on airport security duty after 9/11, his wife said.

Those more traditional callups were for shorter periods and in specialized roles, allowing Guard members to maintain their civilian lives, careers and businesses.

"There's an old saying about having the goose that lays the golden egg," said Davis. "If you keep squeezing it's neck, it's not gonna lay the golden egg for you anymore."

It's been well known since Gulf War I that reservists can and will be called up. We know a few people who actually ended up getting back into the Army full-time after their reserve duty was completed because they weren't able to keep a civilian private practice alive while they were gone. I felt a bit sorry for reservists then, but no one goes into it now with the expectation they'll never see real duty.

9/11 was not done by Iraq and Saddam Hussein...

The response to 9/11 included the toppling of two governments. The Teliban government in Afghanistan was an easy and logical choice. Iraq drew the short straw and became the other choice. It was a good choice because Saddam violated the agreements of Gulf War I and threw the inspectors out, etc.... Now, Iran is being squeezed on both sides and is having serious internal problems. And Libya is changing, as well. After another 9/11 in the US or the UK, another 2 or 3 axis governments will be toppled.

I think there's a legitimate issue here, though. These people have been mobilized once already, and now many of them are being told they're going back again. I'm sure many of them are wondering if there'll be a third or fourth time after THAT, with no end in sight.

That's not reserve, that's de facto active duty, without, as another poster pointed out, many of the benefits the regulars are entitled to.

It's certainly naive to expect not to be called. That said, nobody's obligated to make the military their entire career.

Way past time to enlarge the active component, in my view. And one of the legitimate criticisms of Rumsfeld is his blind spot on this issue.

A lot of reservists take pay cuts when they're on active duty, some handle it fine, others lives are disrupted immensely by a long mobilization. I've found that most often financial reasons are the primary de-motivator in reservists lives.

Precisely. I shorted my term in the reserves a bit, not because I didn't want to be there but because it was having a significant and adverse impact on my regular job. You can't let "one weekend a month" determine your entire career trajectory in the civilian world, otherwise you are no different than the Regular military other than by name.

IMNSHO, the Reserves should be treated more like the militia rather than the Regular Army. We'll maintain our skills in trade as well and as long as we can, but it is not our regular job. But if the shit hits the fan, we'll be there. The problem is that the military is currently a bit schizophrenic as to what the status of the Reserves actually is. The Reserves shouldn't be used every time the military needs a few extra soldiers, but only in times of dire emergency (think WW2). If they need people to live and act like Regulars, then they should grow the Regular military to accommodate that need.

The problem, ultimately, is that the Reserves are used as Regulars, to the ultimate detriment to the soldiers who chose to do this as an adjunct to their civilian life. Being a Reserve is doing what you can with the time you have. It doesn't even pay enough to cover the expenses of showing up in many cases, so the people who do it at all are showing up with the best of intentions despite their civilian lives. It is a bad precedent for the military to treat them otherwise.

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