2,000 at attention for deployment

08/10/2005

Mark Brunswick,
Star Tribune
August 10, 2005

As many as 2,000 Minnesota National Guard troops are expected to receive mobilization notices within the next month to be deployed to Iraq.

If those numbers turn out as expected, it will be the largest single deployment of Minnesota Guard troops since World War II.

About 2,700 members from the Minneapolis-based 1st Brigade Combat Team have been put on alert, meaning they are awaiting orders about the possible deployment, and Guard officials say they expect word about exact numbers shortly. Some units from southwestern Minnesota also have been put on alert.

The deployment comes as the Minnesota Guard continues to lead the nation in meeting its recruitment and retention goals, even as the Guard nationwide and the military in general have fallen behind goals for the year as the war in Iraq continues.

MN National Guard spokeswoman Lt. Shannon Purvis said there is a reason for the state’s recruiting success.

She said it can be attributed largely to Minnesota’s ability to attract recruits who do not have any previous active military experience. She pointed to the Guard’s role as a center for community activity in many rural areas and small towns as a factor in attracting recruits to a Guard career.

“Young people see this as a really good way to contribute to their communities,” she said.

On the front lines

Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the ensuing military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than 3,200 Minnesota Army National Guard troops have been called up for full-time service. Nearly two-thirds of them have served in Iraq.

Among the 950 Minnesota Army and Air National Guard members currently deployed in Iraq are two members who have been leaders of the successful recruitment effort back home. The man who normally heads recruitment in Minnesota, Lt. Col. Kevin Gerdes, is currently commanding a forward operating base north of Baghdad.

And one of the state’s leading recruiters, Sgt. Greg Gorter, quit his job as a recruiter to join another unit that now is deployed in Iraq, even though his southwest Minnesota team led the state for five straight years and Guard officials encouraged him to continue his work at home.

Gorter now heads a squad in Baghdad, working to recruit locals there to the Iraqi police force and to improve its performance.

Gorter’s wife, Heidi, said her husband’s outgoing personality makes him successful both as a recruiter and in working with Iraqi police commanders.

“He’s very outgoing, very talkative. He has charisma and good wit. With the kids, when he was recruiting, he cared a lot about helping them out with college. He could relate to the kids on their level,” she said.

Despite the positive recruitment numbers, state officials expect the continued deployments to have an impact on the number of people who sign up or remain in the Guard.

In May, Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minnesota, held a series of forums on the growing concern not only about what the troops are experiencing while overseas but also about what they may be facing when they come back.

In two forums, one each in Rochester and Minneapolis, officials heard about the effect of yearlong deployments on civilian careers, confusion over health care benefits and how Guard and Reserve troops are supported if they are injured.

Needed at home

At a National Governor’s Association meeting in Des Moines last month a number of governors were critical of the burden of repeated deployments, saying the absence of Guard troops leaves their states unprotected against such things as natural disasters. Officials in both Idaho and Montana have talked about being unprepared for forest fires should they hit their states this summer.

Among those expressing reservations was Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who said there may have to be fixed limits on the amount of time Guard personnel are deployed out of state.

“To ask citizen soldiers to serve as frequently and as intensely as we’re asking our Guard to do is a long-term concern,” Pawlenty told the Washington Post. “There’s going to have to be some accommodation to the Guard so that we don’t indefinitely ask them to serve at this level of intensity.”

More than 400 Air National Guard members from the Duluth-based 148th Fighter Wing were mobilized in May, the largest-ever deployment of the unit.

Several members of the Guard are preparing for the latest in a series of deployments. One Guard member is preparing for his third deployment. Tom Murray is a chaplain’s assistant and knows what he will be doing when he is deployed to Iraq: assisting in worship services; ministering to the wounded, providing counsel. He knows that it will be for 545 days. He’s still waiting for more information beyond that.

Murray was deployed in Saudi Arabia shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks and also has been deployed in Bosnia. He was in active duty in the Navy from 1980 until 1990 and joined the Guard in 1996.

While Murray feels “fantastic” about the deployment, the rest of his family has mixed emotions, he said. His 11-year-old daughter remembers the previous deployments. Technologies such as video-conferencing and e-mails should make this one more palatable, he said.

“My daughter is concerned, of course, but very proud,” he said. “My ex-wife doesn’t care, my current wife is very supportive. This is what I joined the military to do.”