Extended Iraq Tours Took A Toll On Soldiers' Families

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
USA Today
March 13, 2007
Pg. 1

A 6-year-old's plea: 'I just want my daddy home'
By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
FRIEDBERG, Germany — They expected the soldiers would be heading home by early January. Instead, fear still tormented families of the Army's 1st Combat Brigade, 1st Armored Division based here: The troops had been ordered to fight on for another six weeks.
Of the roughly 1,300 soldiers in the brigade who fought in frontline positions, about 250 had been wounded and 29 killed during their year at war.
The soldiers were in Ramadi, one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq, and some families worried their loved ones were pushing their luck. A normal Army tour of duty was supposed to last only 12 months.
As the Pentagon works to implement President Bush's plan to raise troop levels in Iraq by 21,500 and fight another war in Afghanistan, more troops — and more families — face the same painful reality.
The Army and Marine Corps say that about 11,000 troops are under orders to remain in combat beyond their initial deadlines for coming home, some for as long as four months.
The soldiers of the 1st Combat Brigade understand their predicament.
This is the story of the families who waited and worried about them — of Kelly Zickafoose, who poured her frustrations into a blog she called My Heart is in Iraq.
Of Tanya Garcia, who programmed her Yahoo Web page to pop up news from Ramadi.
Of Ginger Gunter and the magical necklace kept by her 6-year-old daughter.
Of Rose Doyle, whose son pursued his dreams from the war zone.
And of Candice Osborn, haunted by the death of another soldier and praying for a reunion with her husband.
Psychologists who study the military say an extended deployment can be particularly wrenching for families.
"The disappointments, the anger, the frustration — those are many of the emotions and behaviors that can occur," says Ron Palomares, who participated in a task force with the American Psychological Association that studied the mental health needs of soldiers and their families.
For families here, the extension meant enduring a thousand more hours of fear. It meant following rituals to tamp down anxiety and telling half-truths to children eager for their dads to come home. It meant anger at the system that kept the soldiers there and prayers for their safekeeping.
And, for one of these families, it meant the most tragic of endings.
"We're going to be on pins and needles here," brigade Chaplain Bruce Fredrickson said as the extension began.
"For sure we'll have wounded soldiers. But we can only hope and pray that we don't have any killed soldiers."
His prayers would go unanswered.
Stress of waiting, worrying pushed Army wife to brink
Dec. 25 -- Kelly Zickafoose
"I QUIT!! I'm done." Kelly Zickafoose hammered at the keyboard. Tears streamed down her face as she wrote in her blog. "I don't want to be an Army wife any more."
It was near midnight on Christmas. Lights blinked on the tiny tree on an end table in the living room of her apartment in an Army housing complex about 10 miles northwest of Friedberg. A cardboard reindeer topped the tree.
Zickafoose, 28, had just spent Christmas with her two sons, Cory, 13, and Derek, 7. In virtual reality, her husband, Spc. James Zickafoose, 27, joined them that afternoon — via instant messaging and Webcam.
James Zickafoose had never shied away from combat. But that day, he had cast a different image on the webcam. To his wife, he looked tired. "I don't really like getting shot at as much as I thought," he wrote in an instant message. "It's not as cool as I thought it would be."
She had left the webcam on so he could see the boys playing in the living room. She also held her tongue — and her tears — at his grim humor. If I get upset, then he'll get upset that he made me upset, she remembers thinking.
Their year apart had seemed to go on forever. And the extended deployment had further delayed their reunion. Now, as the boys slept, her husband signed off and left Kelly Zickafoose with thoughts and feelings she couldn't bring herself to tell him.
And so, she unleashed a stream of consciousness into her MySpace blog — a rant that began with her "I QUIT" declaration. She knew other wives might see the words, although her husband rarely visited the site.
"I hate this waiting and worry," she wrote. "I hate having to think the next moving truck" — the ones sent for the families of dead soldiers who return to the United States — "could be for me. And we would be just another family lost to the war."
She and James had been high school sweethearts at Lincoln Consolidated High School in Ypsilanti, Mich. Kelly had a child, Cory, from a previous relationship, when they started dating. She and James married after they graduated from high school.
He worked as a furniture deliveryman, and Kelly Zickafoose grudgingly supported his decision to join the war effort and enlist. She came to accept it, but this first deployment was so difficult.
Their son Derek had been taking his father's absence particularly hard. Some nights he would wake up in tears, worrying that "Daddy might die." Kelly Zickafoose tried to soothe him by saying that Dad missed him, too. But she could not bring herself to tell Derek that his father would be home soon and safe. How can I make such a promise? she remembers thinking. How could she possibly know what lay ahead?
She punched her feelings out on Christmas night line by line on her blog: "I can't bear the thought of losing you … I can't believe it took a year for me to give up … missing you and your warm, safe arms around me …You are my world. …I could never go on without you."
Kelly Zickafoose knew she could not quit being an Army wife. Still, "it feels like my heart is being squeezed so tightly," she wrote. "Oh my James, I am so sorry for telling you all of this. Sometimes it makes me feel better. Today, it's just not helping. Today is another day I wish God would take me and take all my hurt away."
On Christmas Day, at least eight more weeks remained before she would see him again.
Husband's terse message hid trauma of losing a comrade
Dec. 29 -- Tanya Garcia
The Yahoo instant messenger alert is almost a whisper — a soft "phhttt." To Tanya Garcia, 28, it's also the sweetest sound. "A shot of adrenalin, like butterflies in your stomach. Like the first time you kiss," she says.
That's because it means that her husband, Staff Sgt. Ruben Garcia, 32 — "Junior" or "JR," she calls him — is back from a mission, safe, inside the wire, on his laptop in his tent at the base in Ramadi.
When she heard the "phhttt" on the afternoon of Dec. 29, she raced across the living room of the apartment she shares with her two daughters in Butzbach, Germany, near Friedberg.
His message wasn't the sunny greeting — "Hi, baby!" — she has come to expect. Instead, it was terse, without emotion: "We're back. I need a shower. It's been a long day."
Something was wrong. Tanya Garcia knew it.
Her husband and the other soldiers had been on a mission for the past few days. Tanya Garcia knew because she and Ruben Garcia have a code. They didn't want to discuss missions on instant messenger. So she asked him if he's "going to plant flowers." If he said yes, she knew he would be in combat. He was with F Troop, a 50-man reconnaissance unit that did some of the most dangerous work in Ramadi. Its members conducted raids, escorted convoys and set up snipers' nests.
Her grandfather was a soldier, so Tanya Garcia knew something about this life. She believes it turned her grandmother into an alcoholic. At 18, she had had no desire for a military marriage. But Ruben, she recalls, was a soldier who captivated her when she met him at a nightspot in Killeen, Texas. They married in 1998.
This was her husband's second combat deployment to Iraq, and Tanya Garcia was so nervous during his first that she brought her cellphone in a zip-lock bag into the shower so she would never miss a call.
During this tour, she no longer showered with a phone. But she still slept with three near her pillow: a U.S. cell, a European cell and a wireless German landline. She knew that wounded soldiers could call from battlefield hospitals.
What had gone wrong on the latest mission? Tanya Garcia asked her husband on instant messenger. He refused to tell her.
She would learn later that someone had died. A new F Troop recruit — Pvt. David Dietrich, 21, of Marysville, Pa. — had been killed by a sniper. Dietrich was part of Ruben Garcia's team, and Garcia was standing several feet away when Dietrich was shot.
But Tanya Garcia's husband was safe, and she could sleep in relative peace. About seven weeks remained until the reunion she imagined.
 
Angel pendant kept young girl connected to distant dad
Jan. 14 -- Ginger and Abagail Gunter
Before he left for Iraq, Sgt. James Gunter gave his 6-year-old daughter, Abagail, a necklace made of rhinestones with a pendant shaped like an angel.
Anytime you miss me, he told Abagail, just rub the angel and say a prayer, and the words will fly around the world to me.
She wore it Sunday afternoon, Jan. 14, as she climbed into the family pickup with her mother, Ginger Gunter, for a 10-minute trip to visit friends near Friedberg.
Abagail had a play date, and Ginger Gunter, 27, would shop online with another Army wife. They were searching for gowns to wear at the annual brigade military ball in April.
With Abagail in the back seat of the stretch cab, Ginger Gunter slipped a CD into the stereo: What Hurts the Most by the country western group Rascal Flatts. She could hear her daughter softly singing along.
The year had been tough for both of them.
During a routine medical exam, Ginger Gunter had been diagnosed with a heart murmur, possibly because of stress, the doctor told her.
But the most profound changes were in Abagail.
As the extended deployment dragged on, it seemed as if the little girl crossed some line of tolerance for her father's absence.
Her only Christmas wish was for Santa to bring him home.
As weeks passed, she seemed to her mother to be more frustrated and impatient, asking each day when Daddy would return.
Now, Abagail had fallen silent in the back seat, and Ginger Gunter glanced in the rear-view mirror. Her daughter was crying.
"I just want my daddy home," Abagail sniffled.
"I just wish he were here."
She looked at her father's black beret, lying on the dashboard. "Can I hold Daddy's hat?" she asked her mother.
Ginger Gunter passed it back and then asked Abagail if she wanted to go home.
No, she told her mother. She would rather go play with her friend.
Ginger Gunter had increasingly relied on prayer to cope with the extension. Each night, she recited Psalm 91 and its promise: God commands the angels to guard you in all ways.
So she offered her daughter the same advice as they neared the friend's house.
"Just rub your angel, and she'll fly to Daddy," she told Abagail.
"And say a little prayer. And maybe that will make you feel better. And he might know that you're thinking of him."
Ginger Gunter glanced in the review mirror again. Her daughter's eyes were closed tight, her right hand clutching the angel.
Four weeks remained before Abagail's father was supposed to come home. Each night until then, she would sleep in one of her father's T-shirts.
About to welcome son home, mother learns an awful truth
Feb. 2 -- Rose Doyle
In Tucson, half a world away from her son in Ramadi, Rose Doyle left work just before lunchtime Feb. 2.
It was her 42nd birthday, and the telephone repair worker planned to take the afternoon off so that her husband, Kevin Doyle, could take her to lunch at the Red Lobster.
Her best birthday present, she figured, wouldn't come for a few more days. That's when her only son, Alan McPeek, 20, was to come back to Germany after almost 14 months of combat.
His flight out of Ramadi was just hours away.
The year in Iraq had changed her son. She could tell that the boy who had challenged his stepfather's authority and dyed his hair three different colors in high school had grown up.
He had taken online vocational training courses while in Ramadi. He was preparing for a career as a heavy machinery mechanic if he did not elect to remain in the Army.
Rose Doyle couldn't have been happier.
Just before she left the office, a call arrived from the U.S. government. Someone was trying to contact her boss. She thought the call was odd, and it left a knot in her stomach. Then, when she rounded the corner outside her house, she saw the U.S. government sedan parked there. Inside were casualty officers.
Her only son was dead.
Hours earlier on that same day, McPeek had been finishing his last mission when the building he and other troops were using as an outpost came under attack.
When the shooting started, McPeek and one of the new soldiers — Pvt. Matthew Zeimer, 18, of Glendive, Mont. — took up positions behind a 3-foot wall on the roof.
Other soldiers later told how they could hear McPeek calmly instruct the younger GI to stay low and return fire.
Then, an explosive slammed into the wall, killing both of them.
"The first thing that came to my mind was, 'He should have been gone' " from Iraq, McPeek's stepfather, Kevin Doyle, said later.
"He shouldn't have been there. He had already done his time."
The next day, Rose Doyle heard from her son one last time.
Alan McPeek's girlfriend came to the house with a letter that McPeek had sent her in October.
"We're getting deployed for 12 months, and we're being extended," he wrote. "That made me pretty angry. … I could do six months standing on my head. But a 14-month deployment is just too goddamn long."
Family's relief at soldier's homecoming mixed with apprehension he'll be sent back to Iraq
Feb. 14 -- Candice Osborn
On Valentine's Day, Candice Osborn, her 23-month-old daughter, Hunter, and other Army families were joyful but impatient in the base gymnasium. They were waiting for their soldiers to march into the room.
The fears that had haunted Osborn and other wives were finally gone. The moment had been a long time coming.
Weeks earlier, Candice Osborn had attended the memorial service for Pvt. David Dietrich. When she placed a rose near Dietrich's photograph, she felt guilty: Candice Osborn was thankful that it wasn't her husband, Spc. Jeremy Osborn, who had died.
A few days after the service, she went to a rummage sale at the home of Army Capt. Travis Patriquin. He had been killed in Ramadi in December, and as she strolled the hallways, she imagined Patriquin playing with his children and his widow weeping at the news of his death. It was a reminder of what could befall her own family.
And it was a reason she had the recurring nightmares — the ones in which men in starched green uniforms came to her door with the worst news.
In the weeks before the homecoming, Candice Osborn and other wives pushed aside their fears as they worked feverishly to prepare for the soldiers' return.
They cleaned their apartments. Barracks for unmarried soldiers were also scrubbed and then stocked with welcome-home treats. And exercise classes at the base swelled with wives working to give their husbands the gift of a slimmer figure.
The apartment buildings where the families lived were trimmed with streamers, stick-on stars and American flags. Welcoming banners were hung on fences around the base motor pool, one of them a banner for Jeremy that read: "We missed you Spc. Osborn. We're glad you're home safe and we love you!!!! Candice & Hunter."
Brigade soldiers were arriving at different times during February, and wives were getting only hours of notice. Kelly Zickafoose had greeted her husband on Feb. 10. Ginger and James Gunter reunited a day later. Tanya Garcia and Candice Osborn got calls on the afternoon of Feb. 13. Their husbands and other soldiers with F Troop were headed home.
They were due to arrive by 11 p.m. But midnight passed, and the soldiers still stood in a nearby parking lot, waiting for their bags.
In the base gymnasium, Hunter Osborn waited patiently, blowing soap bubbles and wearing a "My Daddy, My Hero" T-shirt.
Finally, the doors burst open and F Troop marched smartly into the gymnasium, four abreast in a single column. Cameras flashed. The audience cheered. Tears ran down Candice Osborn's face. Her husband tried to keep his military bearing, face forward, but he glanced sideways for a second and spotted Candice and Hunter.
The soldiers stood in formation until someone yelled, "Dismissed." Then, the floor was awash in families.
"There's Daddy," Hunter shouted, and husband and wife embraced.
The future is uncertain for the Osborns. Jeremy transfers in a few months to Fort Lewis, Wash., where the Stryker Brigade he joins may be deployed to Iraq soon.
The idea that her husband might go back to war fills Candice with new dread.
But on this Valentine's Day afternoon, with her husband napping after sleepless hours of travel, she drew some perspective in her diary entry.
"You never know when he will get deployed again. So you have to make the most of the time you have," she wrote.
"I just look into the eyes of the one I love and smile. He is home."
 
Oi, the reality of a military family doesn't live up to the commercials when the :cen: hits the fan. Peacetime is gravy and tours like this haven't been seen since CSM (ret) Plumley was a private jumping over Europe.
 
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