Soldiers not told tours extended
January 14, 2007
BY BRENDAN BERLS
Star-Ledger Staff
Three days after President Bush's plan to stabilize Iraq with more troops extended the combat tours of 159 members of the New Jersey National Guard, the news had yet to be broken to the soldiers themselves, family members said.
Many of the soldiers, who will remain in Iraq for as much as 125 days longer than planned, still thought they'd be done in March and had already begun to pack for the flight home.
That, as much as anything else, was a cause for anger yesterday as dozens of parents and spouses of the citizen soldiers vented their frustration to Gov. Jon Corzine and senior National Guard officers, who organized three town-hall-style meetings to answer as many of the families' questions as they could.
"I spoke to my son this morning. ... He's already packing. He said, 'I'm coming home in March,'" Rosa Rosado of Newark, whose 23-year-old son Joseph Leon is one of the affected soldiers, said at the West Orange Armory.
Like other soldiers to whom loved ones tried to break the news, Leon refused to believe his mother, dismissing the extension as "rumor" because he hadn't been told of it by his military superiors.
Corzine and Maj. Gen. Glenn Reith, the state adjutant general, were sympathetic in their responses to the families and offered whatever moral and practical support the state had at its disposal. But they stressed that they have no authority or control over the New Jersey troops -- or how information is disseminated to them -- as long as they remain "federalized" by the Army.
"This (extension) is involuntary, and it's absolutely unacceptable that the chain of command has not made it known to the soldiers," Corzine said. "It's flat-out wrong. I know it. I wish I could write out the orders myself, but I can't do that."
Reith said his priority Thursday, after learning of the extension the night before, had been to notify every affected soldier's family before they learned of it in press accounts. That effort had mixed results.
Laurie Schorno of Rockaway, whose son, Spc. Joseph Schorno, 24, was injured last fall by a roadside bomb, angrily described receiving an e-mail from her son on Friday in which he wrote excitedly of how he and his comrades were preparing to demobilize.
"I disagree that the families should have known first. These guys should have known," Schorno said, drawing applause. "Forget about your chain of command -- go tell these boys what they should have known three days ago."
The affected soldiers come from two units, the 2nd Battalion of the 102nd reconnaissance unit and the 250th Brigade Support Battalion. They drill from armories in West Orange, Vineland and Bordentown, where yesterday's family meetings were held.
Already deployed since 2005, including several months of training before being sent to Iraq, the soldiers will now have to stay there until late July or early August rather than late March. That means a second summer in Iraq, where temperatures can top 130 degrees.
The units are stationed at a major Army base in Balad, north of Baghdad. Corzine, a Democrat who voted against the war as a U.S. senator, visited the soldiers there in November and pinned purple hearts on several, including Joseph Schorno.
Along with Bush's plan to increase the number of American troops in Iraq by about 20,000, the Pentagon on Thursday announced a shift in policy to allow National Guard and reserve forces to be called up as units rather than as individuals.
That means some reservists who have already served in Iraq or Afghanistan will be remobilized without having spent the traditional five years at home. The duration of the call-ups, however, will be shortened from 18 months to 12 months.
The changing rules were another source of angst yesterday for the soldiers' families. Among their questions: Will the soldiers continue the same mission? Will they still get leave? Once they finally do get home, how long before they're redeployed?
For many of those questions, Reith and other senior National Guard staff did not have ready answers. But Reith promised to research each and answer every one of them.
Reith also urged families to alert the guard if any civilian employers threaten to fire soldiers over their extended absences.
None of the families spoke of any such problems at the West Orange meeting. But Rosado said her son was planning to enter the Newark Police Academy, which had a slot reserved for him this spring, and that slot may now be in jeopardy. She said she went to City Hall on Friday to see whether her son could still be accepted in the fall; she was told to write a letter.
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