Maine Sunday Telegram April 01, 2007
Multiple duty tours no longer unusual
By Josie Huang
Fresh off his first tour guarding convoys on Iraq's perilous roads, Jason Swiger did what felt natural: He re-enlisted.
Financial security, adventure, honor -- the Army represented all of it to Swiger, who started dreaming of becoming a soldier as a skinny, excitable boy growing up in South Portland. If service to his countrymen, including those opposing the war, meant more deployments to the front lines, so be it.
"Mama, those are the people I want to fight the hardest for," he told his mother, Valorie Swiger.
He completed two tours in Iraq without incident, prompting soldiers in his unit to call him their good-luck charm. But last Sunday, eight months into his third tour, a suicide bomber struck his unit in the bloody Diyala province. Swiger, whose family said he was handing out candy to children at the time, was among four soldiers killed.
The 24-year-old Army sergeant is now one of Maine's 31 losses from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also belongs to a growing segment of service members killed on a repeat tour.
Four days after Swiger's death, Sgt. Edmund McDonald of Casco, who also was on his third tour, died in Afghanistan when his vehicle accidentally tipped over, his family said.
In February, Staff Sgt. Eric Ross, a Maine native on his second tour in Iraq, was killed in combat operations. At least three other soldiers from Maine have died during second deployments since late 2005.
As the war enters its fifth year, the military is recycling troops from a limited pool of volunteers. In response to President Bush's call for a troop increase, many active-duty service members are heading for their second, third or fourth tours, each time renewing their risk for injury or death.
"People are leaving the bases and doing patrols -- and they're doing that just about every day," said John Pike, a military analyst at GlobalSecurity.org.
It is unknown how many of the more than 3,500 troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan had been deployed before. Some media reports put the death toll around 800, but the Pentagon said it could not provide casualty figures for repeat tours.
War critics such as the Center for American Progress accuse the Bush administration of overusing the Army and subjecting soldiers to battle fatigue. The military's Mental Health Advisory Team found that troops returning for another tour are more likely to suffer from acute stress than first-timers.
But military analysts say the government has little alternative to multiple tours of duty. There is a lack of public support for a draft like the one for Vietnam, when men served yearlong tours. And no one wants to resort to the World War II strategy of deploying troops for the entire conflict.
"If this war had some definable end, you might be able to speed that end by sending a massive number of troops over there and get it over with, but that's just not the case," said Richard Kohn, a military historian and visiting professor at Army War College and Dickinson College.
TROOP DEMAND STRONG
As it works now, Army soldiers are supposed to be on the ground in Iraq for a year, with two years of rest and recuperation between deployments.
But the length and intensity of the war mean these objectives are often missed. This week, the head of U.S. Joint Forces Command said some soldiers may have to serve for as long as 16 months at a time, while others may have less than a year between rotations.
Repeat deployments are not reserved for active-duty units. Some National Guard members and reservists have volunteered to serve at least a second tour. That's the case for about 40 of the nearly 1,800 Maine Army National Guard members who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
During no other conflict has there been such a dependence on citizen-soldiers, who account for about a third of Maine's war casualties. They have helped to relieve the strain on active duty forces by performing many of the same duties, and some military analysts predict they will be needed in large numbers in the near future.
"In 2005, the National Guard made up more than one half of all forces in Iraq, and in 2006 it was almost all active-duty," said MacKenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow of the Heritage Foundation and former military issues staffer for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. "In 2007, I suspect you'll see Maine (Guard) units called up again."
Already, the Bangor-based Company C of the 126th Air Ambulance, a highly skilled unit that provides medical transport by helicopter, has been alerted to a likely second deployment to Iraq in January.
The National Guard's schedule of deployments is the same as for the Army -- one year in the war zone, two years at home.
There is the question, however, of how much longer the military can treat its citizen-soldiers like active-duty troops. A federal commission studying the National Guard is warning that the current rate of deployment is reducing its ability to respond to national crises and could hurt recruitment.
From 2003 to 2005, that appeared to be the situation in Maine, with more people leaving the Army National Guard than joining.
But the trend has reversed. For the past six months, the Maine Guard has outperformed recruitment projections, and with 226 new soldiers as of mid-March, is more than halfway toward meeting its annual recruitment goal.
Maine Army National Guard Sgt. Kenneth Merrifield has served two tours in Iraq and last year signed up for another six years. He is a just year away from his 20th anniversary with the Guard, when he becomes eligible for a military retirement package.
He considered re-enlisting for three years. Then the Guard offered him a $7,500 bonus to double that commitment.
"It might go for a family vacation or something around the house," said Merrifield, who lives in Wells with his wife and two young children.
FINANCIAL INCENTIVES
Analysts say financial incentives have helped thwart a mass exodus from the military and to retain seasoned service members who can train the newest troops. The Army advertises up to $40,000 in bonuses for active duty recruits, and half that for its reservists. Additional bonuses are available based on an applicant's level of education.
The money can be a big boost for some households, even though the trade-off of a deployment to a war zone can strain family life and cause problems for citizen-soldiers' employers, who are legally required to keep their jobs for them, said Master Sgt. Barbara Claudel, who assists military families as director of the Maine National Guard Family program.
Claudel said the upside of repeat deployments is that most families know what to expect.
"The first (deployment), they just see the news and all the horrible things that are happening," Claudel said. "The second time, they realize that a lot of the things they see on TV is not necessarily all that's going on. It's a bigger country than Baghdad and the hot spots."
Lt. Col. James Campbell, a military fellow at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and an active duty officer in the Maine Army National Guard, said at a time when most of the population has never served in the military, civilians may have a hard time understanding how soldiers and their families put themselves through multiple deployments.
But he said the life of a soldier is really not that different from other public servants, such as firefighters. "It's a way of life you choose like any way of life," Campbell said. "This one just involves significant danger."
Swiger's wife, Alanna, understood the risks. Growing up in North Carolina as the daughter of a career soldier, she also understood her husband's desire to go on multiple tours with his brigade, the 82nd Airborne Division, based at Fort Bragg, N.C.
Besides, they had survived separation just fine before. During Swiger's second tour from July 2004 to Feb. 2005, he wrote her a letter every day and sent boxes of poems and drawings.
As his third deployment approached, they didn't talk about what could happen to him but focused on planning a wedding before he had to leave in August.
That they dropped the traditional "till death do us part" as they exchanged their wedding vows under a trellis, however, spoke volumes.
"We didn't want something like this to separate us," she said.
Staff researcher Julia McCue contributed to this report
© Copyright 2007, Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc.
