thedrifter
01-21-07, 07:49 AM
MULTIPLE TOURS: RETURNING TO THE WAR
MANY SOLDIERS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN ARE ON REPEAT DEPLOYMENTS
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN
Newsday Staff Writer
January 21, 2007
Last March, Marine Sgt. Julian Arechaga came to a crossroads in his young life.
The 23-year-old Baldwin native already had been a team leader in a platoon that spent months in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2004 in search of al-Qaida and Taliban members. In 2005, he served as a squad leader in Fallujah, Iraq - a city torn apart by firefights, car bombings and roadside explosions.
Arechaga, then at Camp Lejeune, N.C., could have walked away from the Marines when his enlistment was up. He spoke of returning to Long Island, becoming a police officer, going to college. But his squad was set to go once again to Iraq, and he was worried about whether they were ready, especially the newest ones.
"I don't think he felt confident that the unit was up to standards," said Justin Slep, 23, a former Marine who served in two deployments alongside Arechaga. "He didn't feel comfortable leaving his Marines. So he extended voluntarily."
On Oct. 9, just a few weeks into his third deployment, the man who survived firefights on the Afghan steppe and dragged wounded civilians off an Iraqi street shrouded in flames and humming with gunfire was killed by that most random of weapons - a roadside bomb.
As the war in Iraq nears the four-year mark, the stories of Americans like Arechaga returning to combat for second and third tours have become commonplace. One of every three GIs deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan has served more than one tour - a higher percentage than at any time since the Vietnam era.
Nearly 800 Americans have died while serving at least a second tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, more than 25 percent of the total U.S. casualties, Pentagon figures show. Arechaga was one of 118 who died while serving a third.
And with President George W. Bush's call for 21,000 more troops in Iraq, the number of GIs serving at least three tours is sure to increase, experts say.
"I'd say it's near certain that this troop increase will cause additional Army and Marine Corps units to also undergo three [or more] deployments," said MacKenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation who has written about Iraq troop deployments.
Many, like Arechaga, voluntarily extended their service or re-enlisted, while others returned with units during their regular enlistment. The 3rd Infantry Division in Georgia is about to deploy on its record third tour, said Eaglen.
Stayed in to go to school
Marine Sgt. Elisha Parker, a combat engineer from tiny Camden in upstate New York, was 21 when he died on May 4 on his third Iraq deployment. His family said Parker and another Marine were clearing a road with a mine sweeper when they detected a buried bomb. As they moved back, the bomb was detonated by remote.
Parker, who signed up while still in high school, could have avoided the third deployment. His contract was about to expire. Instead, considering a career in the Marines, he decided to extend the contract so he could go to a school for combat engineers. He knew it could mean another deployment.
"He would have served his commitment by July of 2006, but going to the school extended it," said his mother, Donna Parker.
On Christmas leave in December 2005, Parker got back together with his girlfriend and told his family that he had decided to return to civilian life after his current commitment, his mother said. By then, he had been given a squad to train, and he already knew that he was going back.
Repeat tours are fueled by several factors. The available pool of soldiers has shrunk with the end of the draft and the cutback in troops in the nation's standing army - from 2.1 million to 1.4 million in the wake of the Cold War's end in the 1980s.
"The crucial difference is that in Vietnam, you were using draftees," said John Gates, a retired history professor at the College of Wooster in Ohio and expert on the Vietnam War. "Now, you're using volunteers who are in for the duration, and they obviously keep being sent back. It's a manpower problem."
Paul Rieckhoff, director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said multiple deployments have had a profound effect on service-members, their families and the health of the military.
"In the history of the volunteer army, you've never had this kind of pace," said Rieckhoff, a former national guardsman and author of an Iraq War memoir. "Unlike Vietnam, there's this feeling that you're never entirely out. The overall pool of people hasn't increased, but you keep increasing the demand."
Indeed, Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker on Dec. 14 warned that the active-duty force "will break" under the strain unless the military is expanded.
Bigger bonuses to re-enlist
To make re-enlistment more attractive, the military has increased bonuses. The Marine Corps, for example, increased the maximum bonus from $30,000 to $40,000, said Maj. Trevor Hall, assistant commander of enlisted retention for the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va. Bonuses for re-enlisting in Iraq or Afghanistan are tax-free.
The maximum payment is reserved for those with special skills, such as bomb defusers or Arabic speakers. The average re-enlistment bonus in 2005 was $15,000. Since 2001, 3,864 Marines have re-enlisted in Iraq, while 277 have re-enlisted in Afghanistan.
A prior deployment does not appear to discourage re-enlistment. In fiscal year 2006, 486 of 504 riflemen who re-enlisted had a prior deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, Hall said.
By extending his career rather than making the longer-term commitment of re-enlisting, Julian Arechaga did not receive the bonus - though like many, he may have intended to re-enlist in theater to earn it tax-free.
Arechaga was born in Baldwin in 1983, eight years after his sister, Sheyla, who described their father as stern and overbearing.
"It was not a good environment," she said.
Their father moved out when Arechaga was in third grade, and the family lived in a ranch-style house that had been illegally divided into three apartments. During the week, Arechaga's mother, a native of Puerto Rico who did not speak English well, worked as a dental technician. On the weekends, she cleaned houses.
Amid all this, Arechaga veered off course, his sister said. In middle school, he started drinking beer and getting into fights.
Around this time, Sheyla began dating her future husband, Russ Randazzo. They once asked Julian what was bothering him. "Nobody cares about me," he replied.
After that, Sheyla and Russ started to look after him, taking him to school and even going to parent-teacher conferences.
After he was involved in a fight in 10th grade, Sheyla took him out of Baldwin High School and enrolled him in Oceanside High School. Six months later, Arechaga had turned a corner. He made the honor roll and was showing promise on the wrestling team.
"He always had that potential in him," his brother-in-law said. "It was just a matter of finding it."
In his senior year, Arechaga spoke with a Marine Corps recruiter. He was a little unclear about what he wanted, and something about the military drew him in. Perhaps, his sister said, he finally felt a sense of belonging - a sense of family.
Walking for days
Arechaga's first deployment, to Afghanistan, ran from February to September 2004. Lugging 100-pound packs, the squad walked for days and slept in poncho liners. On one mission, they didn't shower for 69 days.
"It was the hardest, most rigorous thing I've ever done," said Slep, of Three Springs, Pa., who works as a guard at a military installation. "We got sent into areas that people wouldn't want to have nightmares about."
Even as the unit departed for Camp Lejeune from the Afghanistan deployment, they had already begun to train for the Fallujah assignment. Typically, Marines perform seven-month tours, followed by up to a year stateside, but Arechaga's unit had just four months to prepare, said Christopher Futch of Florida, another of Arechaga's former comrades.
Slep recalled that the unit was still in Afghanistan, when they were notified.
"We said, 'Oh that's great,'" Slep said. "We're still on our combat tour, and we're already getting slammed with another."
The Fallujah deployment, from March to October 2005, was in many ways even more dangerous than Afghanistan, Slep said. With the temperature routinely rising well above 100 degrees, the city bristled with snipers, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs.
After a car bomb attack, Slep recalled, Arechaga helped drag wounded off the street into houses as gunfire crackled around him.
"He didn't even think about it," Slep said. "He had a father mentality. We knew we had to take care of a lot of people, and we grew up real fast."
After Fallujah, the unit had more time to prepare, but open slots were being filled by less experienced Marines. Slep and Futch, both married, had decided to leave. Others had also completed their contracts.
"He knew that when we left, we basically took the last bits of leadership. They were getting guys who hadn't been over there."
"With Julian, he just enjoyed being a Marine too much," said Mark Hammond, who also served with Arechaga.
So the boy who had struggled without a father devoted himself to filling that role for his squad.
"I was mad at him at first, but I understood," Russ said. "Growing up the way he did, he didn't have much. He felt good about being a leader."
In August, just before Arechaga left for Iraq, Sheyla and Russ visited him at the Camp Lejeune apartment he shared with his wife of only a few months, Felecia.
"I said to myself, 'All right, he's grown up, he made it,'" Sheyla said. "'He's not my little brother anymore.'"
There was a last phone call the Sunday before he died.
"He was preparing us, saying that 'You know what? It's bad over here,'" Sheyla said.
BACK TO BATTLE
About one-quarter of U.S. fatalities in Afganistan and Iraq involved soldiers on a multiple deployment.
(Data through October 2006)
DUTY CALLS... AGAIN
Of the 1.4 million total U.S. military deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, 30 percent involved service members who had previously deployed there.
(Data through Sept. 30, 2006)
All Defense Department deployments
Total Single Multiple
1,403,730 982,867 420,863
Total killed 3,096
2,305 Killed on first deployment
649 Killed on second deployment
142 Killed on third deployment or greater
SOURCE: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Ellie
MANY SOLDIERS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN ARE ON REPEAT DEPLOYMENTS
BY GRAHAM RAYMAN
Newsday Staff Writer
January 21, 2007
Last March, Marine Sgt. Julian Arechaga came to a crossroads in his young life.
The 23-year-old Baldwin native already had been a team leader in a platoon that spent months in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2004 in search of al-Qaida and Taliban members. In 2005, he served as a squad leader in Fallujah, Iraq - a city torn apart by firefights, car bombings and roadside explosions.
Arechaga, then at Camp Lejeune, N.C., could have walked away from the Marines when his enlistment was up. He spoke of returning to Long Island, becoming a police officer, going to college. But his squad was set to go once again to Iraq, and he was worried about whether they were ready, especially the newest ones.
"I don't think he felt confident that the unit was up to standards," said Justin Slep, 23, a former Marine who served in two deployments alongside Arechaga. "He didn't feel comfortable leaving his Marines. So he extended voluntarily."
On Oct. 9, just a few weeks into his third deployment, the man who survived firefights on the Afghan steppe and dragged wounded civilians off an Iraqi street shrouded in flames and humming with gunfire was killed by that most random of weapons - a roadside bomb.
As the war in Iraq nears the four-year mark, the stories of Americans like Arechaga returning to combat for second and third tours have become commonplace. One of every three GIs deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan has served more than one tour - a higher percentage than at any time since the Vietnam era.
Nearly 800 Americans have died while serving at least a second tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, more than 25 percent of the total U.S. casualties, Pentagon figures show. Arechaga was one of 118 who died while serving a third.
And with President George W. Bush's call for 21,000 more troops in Iraq, the number of GIs serving at least three tours is sure to increase, experts say.
"I'd say it's near certain that this troop increase will cause additional Army and Marine Corps units to also undergo three [or more] deployments," said MacKenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation who has written about Iraq troop deployments.
Many, like Arechaga, voluntarily extended their service or re-enlisted, while others returned with units during their regular enlistment. The 3rd Infantry Division in Georgia is about to deploy on its record third tour, said Eaglen.
Stayed in to go to school
Marine Sgt. Elisha Parker, a combat engineer from tiny Camden in upstate New York, was 21 when he died on May 4 on his third Iraq deployment. His family said Parker and another Marine were clearing a road with a mine sweeper when they detected a buried bomb. As they moved back, the bomb was detonated by remote.
Parker, who signed up while still in high school, could have avoided the third deployment. His contract was about to expire. Instead, considering a career in the Marines, he decided to extend the contract so he could go to a school for combat engineers. He knew it could mean another deployment.
"He would have served his commitment by July of 2006, but going to the school extended it," said his mother, Donna Parker.
On Christmas leave in December 2005, Parker got back together with his girlfriend and told his family that he had decided to return to civilian life after his current commitment, his mother said. By then, he had been given a squad to train, and he already knew that he was going back.
Repeat tours are fueled by several factors. The available pool of soldiers has shrunk with the end of the draft and the cutback in troops in the nation's standing army - from 2.1 million to 1.4 million in the wake of the Cold War's end in the 1980s.
"The crucial difference is that in Vietnam, you were using draftees," said John Gates, a retired history professor at the College of Wooster in Ohio and expert on the Vietnam War. "Now, you're using volunteers who are in for the duration, and they obviously keep being sent back. It's a manpower problem."
Paul Rieckhoff, director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said multiple deployments have had a profound effect on service-members, their families and the health of the military.
"In the history of the volunteer army, you've never had this kind of pace," said Rieckhoff, a former national guardsman and author of an Iraq War memoir. "Unlike Vietnam, there's this feeling that you're never entirely out. The overall pool of people hasn't increased, but you keep increasing the demand."
Indeed, Army Chief of Staff Peter Schoomaker on Dec. 14 warned that the active-duty force "will break" under the strain unless the military is expanded.
Bigger bonuses to re-enlist
To make re-enlistment more attractive, the military has increased bonuses. The Marine Corps, for example, increased the maximum bonus from $30,000 to $40,000, said Maj. Trevor Hall, assistant commander of enlisted retention for the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va. Bonuses for re-enlisting in Iraq or Afghanistan are tax-free.
The maximum payment is reserved for those with special skills, such as bomb defusers or Arabic speakers. The average re-enlistment bonus in 2005 was $15,000. Since 2001, 3,864 Marines have re-enlisted in Iraq, while 277 have re-enlisted in Afghanistan.
A prior deployment does not appear to discourage re-enlistment. In fiscal year 2006, 486 of 504 riflemen who re-enlisted had a prior deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, Hall said.
By extending his career rather than making the longer-term commitment of re-enlisting, Julian Arechaga did not receive the bonus - though like many, he may have intended to re-enlist in theater to earn it tax-free.
Arechaga was born in Baldwin in 1983, eight years after his sister, Sheyla, who described their father as stern and overbearing.
"It was not a good environment," she said.
Their father moved out when Arechaga was in third grade, and the family lived in a ranch-style house that had been illegally divided into three apartments. During the week, Arechaga's mother, a native of Puerto Rico who did not speak English well, worked as a dental technician. On the weekends, she cleaned houses.
Amid all this, Arechaga veered off course, his sister said. In middle school, he started drinking beer and getting into fights.
Around this time, Sheyla began dating her future husband, Russ Randazzo. They once asked Julian what was bothering him. "Nobody cares about me," he replied.
After that, Sheyla and Russ started to look after him, taking him to school and even going to parent-teacher conferences.
After he was involved in a fight in 10th grade, Sheyla took him out of Baldwin High School and enrolled him in Oceanside High School. Six months later, Arechaga had turned a corner. He made the honor roll and was showing promise on the wrestling team.
"He always had that potential in him," his brother-in-law said. "It was just a matter of finding it."
In his senior year, Arechaga spoke with a Marine Corps recruiter. He was a little unclear about what he wanted, and something about the military drew him in. Perhaps, his sister said, he finally felt a sense of belonging - a sense of family.
Walking for days
Arechaga's first deployment, to Afghanistan, ran from February to September 2004. Lugging 100-pound packs, the squad walked for days and slept in poncho liners. On one mission, they didn't shower for 69 days.
"It was the hardest, most rigorous thing I've ever done," said Slep, of Three Springs, Pa., who works as a guard at a military installation. "We got sent into areas that people wouldn't want to have nightmares about."
Even as the unit departed for Camp Lejeune from the Afghanistan deployment, they had already begun to train for the Fallujah assignment. Typically, Marines perform seven-month tours, followed by up to a year stateside, but Arechaga's unit had just four months to prepare, said Christopher Futch of Florida, another of Arechaga's former comrades.
Slep recalled that the unit was still in Afghanistan, when they were notified.
"We said, 'Oh that's great,'" Slep said. "We're still on our combat tour, and we're already getting slammed with another."
The Fallujah deployment, from March to October 2005, was in many ways even more dangerous than Afghanistan, Slep said. With the temperature routinely rising well above 100 degrees, the city bristled with snipers, rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs.
After a car bomb attack, Slep recalled, Arechaga helped drag wounded off the street into houses as gunfire crackled around him.
"He didn't even think about it," Slep said. "He had a father mentality. We knew we had to take care of a lot of people, and we grew up real fast."
After Fallujah, the unit had more time to prepare, but open slots were being filled by less experienced Marines. Slep and Futch, both married, had decided to leave. Others had also completed their contracts.
"He knew that when we left, we basically took the last bits of leadership. They were getting guys who hadn't been over there."
"With Julian, he just enjoyed being a Marine too much," said Mark Hammond, who also served with Arechaga.
So the boy who had struggled without a father devoted himself to filling that role for his squad.
"I was mad at him at first, but I understood," Russ said. "Growing up the way he did, he didn't have much. He felt good about being a leader."
In August, just before Arechaga left for Iraq, Sheyla and Russ visited him at the Camp Lejeune apartment he shared with his wife of only a few months, Felecia.
"I said to myself, 'All right, he's grown up, he made it,'" Sheyla said. "'He's not my little brother anymore.'"
There was a last phone call the Sunday before he died.
"He was preparing us, saying that 'You know what? It's bad over here,'" Sheyla said.
BACK TO BATTLE
About one-quarter of U.S. fatalities in Afganistan and Iraq involved soldiers on a multiple deployment.
(Data through October 2006)
DUTY CALLS... AGAIN
Of the 1.4 million total U.S. military deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, 30 percent involved service members who had previously deployed there.
(Data through Sept. 30, 2006)
All Defense Department deployments
Total Single Multiple
1,403,730 982,867 420,863
Total killed 3,096
2,305 Killed on first deployment
649 Killed on second deployment
142 Killed on third deployment or greater
SOURCE: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Ellie