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.
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.