GANNETT NEWS SERVICE January 18, 2005
Deployments truly bring the war home
By John Andrew Prime
As the nation's military relies more heavily on state National Guard and military reserves, incidents in which several soldiers from the same community are killed at the same time may become more common.
"If the bulk of any unit is composed of people from the same area . . . and if they are put in harm's way, then the odds of people coming from the area being killed in larger numbers has to go up," said Shreveport, La., historian and military author Gary Joiner. "It's pure probability."
Louisiana was brutally introduced to this on Jan. 6 when a roadside bomb destroyed a Bradley armored fighting vehicle, killing all seven soldiers within. Six were from the Army National Guard's 2/156th Infantry (Mechanized) Battalion, part of the 4,000-member 256th enhanced Separate Brigade that deployed to Iraq in October for a year's service.
Three of the soldiers were from Houma, a town of about 30,000 in LaFourche Parish, La. The soldiers' remains were returned to the state last week for burial with full military honors.
Four days later, another Bradley fell victim to a terrorist's bomb, and two central Louisiana soldiers, members of the brigade's 3rd Battalion, were killed, and several were injured.
Repeated nationally as more National Guard units are thrown into the fray, these losses could have an impact disproportionate to their numbers, said John Pike, founder of the Web-based GlobalSecurity.Org, created in 2000 to provide nonpartisan information on military, political and terrorism-related issues.
"The affected communities are going to be deeply traumatized," he said, citing his hometown, Springfield, Tenn. "L Troop, 278th Cavalry is from there," he said. "They haven't had anybody hurt, but there's a whole big bunch of soldiers gone from there, and only 15,000 people in the town."
About 120,000 citizen-soldiers and airmen are currently deployed all over the world, and the National Guard and reserves will soon make up a full 50 percent of the combat force in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Department of Defense.
"This war is going to break the Guard," Pike warns. "(Leaders) are going to have to rethink what the Guard does, because people are not going to want to join it. This war in Iraq will go on at least two more years to get Iraqi security forces set up, and American forces are going to have to make up the difference in the meantime. . . . Joining the Guard will be seen as a ticket to Iraq, and people will say 'I'm not going to do it.' The community calamity element is just a part of it."
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