Guard wants policy clarified Mainers unsure how changes affect them

AUGUSTA – A day after announcing no Maine National Guard forces would be part of a new wave of 21,500 troops being sent to Iraq, state officials were scrambling Friday to determine whether a Pentagon policy change would affect Maine’s service members.

The policy change reported late Thursday rescinded a 24-month time limit Guard and Reserve troops can be required to serve on active duty and raised questions about whether Maine units could be subject to further deployment.

“What I can say is that we are actively pursuing this,” Maj. Michael Backus, director of public affairs for the Maine Guard, said Friday. “We have been spending all day, and that is the priority right now, to get that clarified.”

The Guard had yet to receive official notification of the new policy Friday night, and state officials were still unsure whether it was intended to be permanent, or just temporary because of President Bush’s order to send more troops to Iraq to try to stabilize the country.

Maj. Gen. Bill Libby, Maine’s adjutant general, announced Thursday that he was told most of the 21,500 additional troops to be sent to Iraq would be coming from active-duty units of the Army and Marines, along with a brigade from the Minnesota National Guard.

Because most of Maine’s Guard members already had served the maximum 24 months, they would not be called again, he said, shortly before the policy change was announced.

Uncertainty is perhaps one of the most frustrating factors service members face, said Maj. Mike Henderson of Dover-Foxcroft, who served a tour in Iraq with the 1st Battalion 25th Marine Regiment, a Maine Reserve unit.

Although Henderson, who returned from Iraq in November, said he does not think he will be deployed again anytime soon, thoughts of being reactivated linger.

“There’s a little piece in the back of my mind that says OK, I’m just getting re-established in my civilian job, I’m getting back into my kids’ lives, so yeah, it’d be disruptive,” said the married father of three daughters.

While he said his wife is accustomed to the military lifestyle, Henderson’s children are just beginning to understand his duty.

“My oldest daughter knows, she can read the paper and she read the headlines today and immediately asked, ‘Dad, you’re not gonna have to go again, will you?'” Henderson said.

When told about the policy change Friday, Jessica Johnson of Holden also wondered what impact it might have on her husband, who is deployed with the Brewer-based B Company 3rd Battalion 172nd Mountain Infantry.

Every morning her three young boys wake up and place a yellow ribbon on the calendar for each day their father, Sgt. Brett Johnson, has been gone.

“[An extension] wouldn’t be what we’d want to happen, but to support him as much as we can, his family is here and ready for when he does come home,” Johnson said Friday.

The Maine National Guard Family Assistance Center, which serves Guard families, had not received any phone calls Friday from concerned families, according to Sgt. Barbara Claudel, the center’s program coordinator.

Chaplain Earl Weigelt, the state mobilization chaplain, also said no Guard members or families had contacted him for support Friday.

“I think it’s too early at this point to really speculate,” Weigelt said. “I think people are in the wait-and-see mode.”

U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins both issued statements Friday noting their opposition to the troop surge and concern regarding the Department of Defense policy change.

“Maine’s National Guardsmen have done their duty and served their country courageously in both Iraq and Afghanistan over the past five years,” Snowe said in a statement.

“I am deeply troubled by the Department of Defense’s plans to make hundreds of Maine Guardsmen eligible for involuntary redeployment to meet the demands of a troop level increase in Iraq which I do not believe will address the fundamental causes of violence in that country,” she added.