The Army National Guard
WASHINGTON– For most of the six decades since World War II, men and women have joined the Army National Guard to pay for school, to learn specialty jobs and to serve their country close to home. With the exception of a few tumultuous events – such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots — serving in the guard has been relatively safe.
It’s not anymore.
In the past few years – in events that culminated with the war in Iraq – the picture has changed. Presidents have called upon members of the Army National Guard more frequently and in larger numbers for peacekeeping missions overseas, and most recently, for war. Being in the Guard nowadays means more than patrolling state airports and keeping rioters at bay.
The threat of danger and the threat of combat are increasing for the country’s oldest division of civilian soldiers.
“This isn’t your father’s National Guard,” said Maj. Thomas Maeder, commander of recruitment and retention for the Massachusetts National Guard. “It’s not the safe branch of the military anymore.”
Not only are members of the Army Guard fighting overseas, they also are on patrol against terrorism in the United States.
And they face a new challenge: How will these soldiers – who have regular jobs most of the year — uphold their traditional role as a state militia at the same time they are defending the homeland and serving around the globe?
The Pentagon is exploring the question as part of a larger plan to restructure the military’s active-duty and reserve forces. By as early as 2005, the soldiers of the Army Guard could find themselves in an entirely different militia with two branches. Some of them would go into a homeland security force and a large group would be trained primarily for mobilization as part of the regular Army.
“One proposal is to have Guard members specifically identified as easily federalized, or long-term federal, and to have others in that more traditional role,” said Reginald Saville, spokesman for the National Guard Bureau in Washington. “But that’s way down the road.”
A modern-day militia
The Army Guard often is considered safer than other branches of the military because of its close ties to states. During peacetime, governors control the force and call on soldiers to help keep order following such emergencies as hurricanes and floods or to keep the peace at protests, such as the anti-war demonstrations held across the country in the past few months.
The Army Guard played a crucial role in the desegregation of schools in the South during the early 1960s, when two state governors – Mississippi’s Ross Barnett and George Wallace of Alabama – and mobs of segregationists tried to keep black students from registering for classes at state universities. President John. F. Kennedy sent in the Army National Guard, and the governors backed down. The soldiers of Mississippi and Alabama helped win decisive battles in the civil-rights movement without stepping outside their states.
“You don’t have to leave your community to serve your country,” Maeder said. “That’s the beauty of the National Guard; we’re in 3,000 communities across the nation.”
But lately, more Army Guard soldiers are saying goodbye to their families and friends and hello to a six-month tour of duty away from home. The recent war with Iraq constitutes the largest mobilization of Army Guard forces since World War II, with 79,198 of its 354,220 soldiers on federal active duty as of April 23.
Capt. Winfield Danielson, public affairs officer for the Massachusetts National Guard, said the large-scale federal mobilization has brought the Army Guard back in sync with its militia heritage. Some soldiers are serving overseas, while others are manning military bases across the country until the regular soldiers return. Some soldiers patrol state airports on homeland security missions, while others go about their lives as mechanics, engineers and salespeople, waiting to see if they will be summoned for duty.
“We’ve sort of returned to our roots,” Danielson said.
While the Army Guard has participated in every major conflict since World War II, its federal responsibilities have increased during the past 12 years. In 1993, President Bill Clinton sent 65 Army Guard soldiers to Somalia to protect famine relief workers from clan violence. He sent thousands more to keep the peace in Bosnia, Kosovo and Haiti in the mid-to-late 90s.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush mobilized 63,000 Army Guard soldiers to fight in the Persian Gulf War.
“We are a militia nation,” said Maeder, who served five years as a marine before joining the Army National Guard in 1980. “We depend upon our citizenry to rise when called upon, and to do it in an orderly fashion.”
In Massachusetts, about 20 percent of the Army Guard’s 8,000 members are currently on federal active duty. Approximately 1,820 soldiers have been mobilized, Maeder said, and 850 have been sent overseas, mainly to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Pakistan. Soldiers from the 747th Military Police Company, based in Southbridge, are currently stationed at an Afghan National Army training base in Kabul and at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.
The risk is paramount. Spc. John T. Rivero, a 23-year-old member of the Army Guard from of Tampa, Fla., died on April 18 when his Humvee flipped over in Iraq.
“I don’t think you can call any of it safe,” Saville said. Members of Army Guard, he said, are not just “weekend warriors.”
A new challenge
Because the Pentagon is leaning so heavily on the Army National Guard, military officers such as Maeder worry that state forces may not have enough soldiers to protect the homeland from terrorism. After Sept. 11, 2001, military police patrolled Boston’s Logan International Airport Guard soldiers continue to guard facilities that could be potential targets of terrorism, such as nuclear power plants and reservoirs.
“It’s a concern we’ve never had before,” Maeder said. “In the past, we’ve had this cushion of people. There is a concern – it’s not alarming – but we’re aware of it.”
In the meantime, Lt. Col. Bob Stone, spokesman for the reserve affairs office, said states should not be alarmed over the recent wave of Army Guard mobilizations.
“We’ve only tapped about 20 percent of the (country’s) reserve pool,” Stone said.
Danielson said the number of Bay State soldiers on federal active duty is not an immediate concern. If terrorists struck, Massachusetts would not be left to cope alone. Army Guard units from other states could help. In the event of a nuclear, biological or chemical weapons attack, the Army Guard also could draw upon its two regional civil support teams in Massachusetts and Maine to help police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians.
“We’ve got about 80 percent of our manpower still here, so we should be able to react to 99.9 percent of all emergencies,” Danielson said.
The military has also stepped up homeland security training for its reserve force. Cpl. Stephen Lefebvre of Lawrence said his Army Guard unit, the 1st Battalion of the 102nd Field Artillery, based in Methuen, has received abundant training in homeland security the past two years.
“Training has gone a lot better,” he said. “Everybody knows everybody else’s job.”
Lefebvre, 25, said the Army Guard takes training more seriously now than it did before terrorists attacked the United States.
“Sept. 11 was a real eye-opener for all of us,” he said. “Since then, people have taken a lot of homeland security as well as foreign relationships very seriously. People have been more dedicated to what we do. It becomes more tangible. You realize the reasons why you do all of this training. You put a little more into it, you take a little more pride in your work.”
One weekend a month, six months in Iraq
While military planners grapple to reshape the National Guard and Reserves for years to come, government officials such as Thomas F. Hall, the assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs, must deal with another, more pressing, problem: recruitment and retention.
Many teenagers join the reserves, particularly the Army Guard, as a way to earn money to pay for college or to learn a specialty job, such as bridge building. The question now is whether the prospect of going to war will deter prospective volunteers or discourage soldiers from re-enlisting.
Maeder thinks not.
He said the war on terrorism has spurred patriotism among young people and has brought former soldiers back to the Guard’s ranks. But Lefebvre said it’s possible that the war may hurt enrollment.
“Sometimes people don’t know what they’re signing up for, or what to expect,” he said. “But I want to believe the majority of people know they signed up for a reason.”
Maeder said those who volunteer to serve their country know the risks. And for those who are unsure, he has one piece of advice: “If you don’t want to go to war, you don’t join the military.”
“It exists for one reason, and one reason only,” he said. “We tell kids that.”
Before Lefebvre joined the Army Guard, he spent two years in the regular Army. He was stationed in South Korea for a year. He said he switched to the Army Guard so he could go to school. He recently graduated from the Northeastern Institute of Whole Health in Manchester, N.H., and is looking for a job in massage therapy.
While the full tuition subsidy was the main draw, Lefebvre said it was not the only reason he joined the Army Guard. He wanted to serve his country, and he liked the camaraderie the military provides. For Lefebvre, the one weekend of drill each month is a welcome escape.
“In the civilian world, it’s pretty cutthroat, there’s not a lot of teamwork,” he said. At drill, “I’m with great guys. I go there, and it’s a nice break from a regular 9-to-5 job.
“I like being able to accomplish things, getting out and actually doing things,” he added. “It’s knowing that what you do and what you could do for the country guarantees freedom, and knowing that you are a part of that. It’s nice to actually see that kind of thing happen.”
Maeder said the perks are attractive, but most people join the Army Guard because they want to serve their country. A recent survey of 17- to 19-year olds in the Massachusetts Army Guard showed that 55 percent of soldiers who enlisted in the past year did so to pay for college. According to Maeder, nearly 80 percent said they volunteered out of patriotism.
And the Massachusetts Army Guard roster is growing. At the end of March, enlistments had increased by about a third over the same month in 2002, he said.
But nationally, enlistments are down. Hall said the Army Guard has missed its recruiting quota for the past three months.
Pentagon recruiting statistics show that the Army Guard fell short of its monthly quota well before the United States dropped the first bomb on Iraq March 17. In the last three months of 2002, the military aimed to recruit 14,664 soldiers for the Army Guard. It missed the mark by 2,107. For that same period, recruitment was down for only one other military branch: the Army Reserves.
Military officials insist the Iraqi war has not caused the drop-off, though they offer no other explanation.
“There is certainly a concern on the part of the Army Guard,” Hall said. “They have some challenges ahead. They don’t see this as a direct reflection of Iraq or the last two years of our war on terrorism.”
Hall noted that the military experienced a two or three-year drop in recruiting and retention after the Gulf War in 1991, but said that it picked up again after that.
“Are we going to see a little dip? We might,” Hall said. “But it did come back after the Gulf War, and that is sort of the last model we have to look at.”
Hall said Guard leaders told him that enrollment is improving and they expect to meet the quota by the end of the year.
“From what I have seen… they predict they’ll be OK,” Hall said. “Now, we’ll have to see.”
Published in The Lawrence Eagle Tribune, in Massachusetts.
