Toledo Blade January 23, 2008
Toledo staff sergeant, 53, volunteers to go to Iraq for a 3rd deployment
By Joe Vardon
Joyce Santibanez said her husband promised he would only fight the war in Iraq once.
Since Staff Sgt. Rudy Santibanez, of Toledo, made that promise before his 2003 deployment, he volunteered to go to Iraq a second time in 2005, rode in two vehicles hit by roadside bombs, and underwent shoulder surgery and months of physical therapy.
Imagine Mrs. Santibanez’s dismay, then, over her husband of 29 years volunteering to go to Iraq for a tour of duty — a tour for which he is leaving to train tomorrow.
“It’s hard for me,” she said. “I don’t want him to go at all. He’s already been there twice. I try to talk him out of it, but it doesn’t do me any good. He loves being a soldier.”
Sergeant Santibanez first fought in Iraq with the Toledo-based 323rd Military Police Company in 2003, then volunteered to go back in 2005 with the Norwalk, Ohio-based 612th Engineering C Company.
Now he’s gearing up to go with the 583rd Military Police Company out of Youngstown. The unit will leave from Youngstown on Sunday for Fort Dix, N.J., where it will train for two months before a 10-to-12-month deployment in Baghdad.
Also serving the 583rd is Staff Sgt. Daniel Wells, 40, a teacher at Toledo’s East Broadway Middle School who is preparing for his second tour of duty.
Sergeant Santibanez, 53, and his wife have three children and two grandchildren.
An employee at the Chrysler stamping plant in Warren, Mich., he can’t really explain why he’s volunteering to put his life on the line for the third time in Iraq other than to say he feels it’s what he’s called to do.
“I’m still wearing a uniform and, as long as I am wearing a uniform, I feel like I need to be a part of our operations over there,” said Sergeant Santibanez, an Ohio National Guardsman for over 20 years. “It’s a hard thing to explain.”
Sergeant Santibanez is undeterred from returning to Iraq despite a tumultuous second tour. On his second day of training for an assignment, his Humvee hit an improvised explosive device, which threw him from one end of the vehicle to the other.
He returned to the field after weeks of recovery, and his company spent a few months at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.
In August, 2005, the sergeant’s vehicle again hit an improvised explosive device, this time slamming him against a door and reinjuring his shoulder.
Sergeant Santibanez knows that despite his injuries, he was lucky.
On Saturday, a 26-year-old soldier with ties to the Lima, Ohio, area was killed when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb.
“I try not to even think about that stuff,” the sergeant said. “You try to block it out, but you can’t block it out 100 percent. My mind’s going 100 miles per hour right now. But all you think is that you can make it [home], you’re gonna make it home.”
Soldiers like Sergeant Santibanez are not uncommon, said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a military information Web site.
Mr. Pike said that because the war is in its fifth year, many U.S. soldiers have fought in Iraq at least twice, and some have volunteered for their second or third tours.
“At the end of the day, being in the military is about combat,” Mr. Pike said. “Anybody not prepared to be in combat doesn’t belong in the Army. We want an Army composed of people who run toward the sound of gunfire.”
Spouses such as Mrs. Santibanez, however, want a military consisting of soldiers who return home.
She said the recent news of 2001 Wapakoneta High School graduate Army Spec. Jon Michael “Mike” Schoolcraft III’s death in Iraq shook her, especially with her husband preparing to leave.
Specialist Schoolcraft was serving his second tour in Iraq when he was killed in Taji, just north of Baghdad.
He had married his wife, Amber, on Nov. 17 in Wapakoneta, Ohio; arrived in Kuwait on Dec. 8; deployed to Iraq on Christmas; and turned 26 on Dec. 27.
“[The news] just came at a bad time, but I guess there’s never a good time for that,” Mrs. Santibanez said.
Mrs. Santibanez, 53, said she never prepares herself for the possibility her husband could die in combat.
An employee of First Solar Inc. in Perrysburg Township, she said she works 12-hour shifts, baby-sits her grandchildren, and stays busy to keep her mind off the war.
But both husband and wife spoke to The Blade about the “what if” conversation they had recently — a discussion about what Mrs. Santibanez should do if her husband doesn’t make it back.
He told her he wants to be buried in his uniform and combat boots next to his stepfather, who Sergeant Santibanez said fought in Korea and Vietnam.
The sergeant also told his wife about the couple’s life insurance policy, and gave instructions on other financial matters.
Mrs. Santibanez said they’ve had bits and pieces of the same conversation before, but never in such detail.
“My wife can handle the homefront,” Sergeant Santibanez said. “It was just a conversation you have to have. I’ll be OK.”
© Copyright 2008, The Blade
