Latoya Wright said goodbye to her fiance in January and began counting the days until he would return home from serving his country.
Staff Sgt. Pierre Ligonde shipped out with the rest of the D.C. Army National Guard's 547th Transportation Company on a 12-month mobilization as the nation built up to war with Iraq. For more than two months, the unit trained at Fort Eustis in southeastern Virginia before orders came in April sending them to Kuwait and then into Iraq.
Ron and Elaine Pitts of Knoxville, Md., say their son, John, has had his Army Reserve tour extended six months from his initial deployment in the war.
(Ricky Carioti -- The Washington Post)
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Now, Wright, 26, fears, the long winter months when Ligonde was separated from their home and their 2-year-old daughter, Nakhyla, do not count. The Army put out word recently that the 12-month clock for units in the Iraqi theater started ticking only when units arrived in the region. It's up to commanders in Iraq to decide when the 547th and other units will return. Soldiers from the unit have been told that they might not come home until April instead of their expected return in November.
With nearly 130,000 Army National Guard and Reserve members called up to active duty here and abroad, the Army's decision affects not just families but businesses and local governments across the nation. Fire stations and police departments are holding open jobs for the troops sent overseas. Businesses, too, are waiting for employees to return.
Dave Doherty wants the information technology director of his company to come back from Iraq. Doherty, president of Dataworld Inc. in Bethesda, lost the Army reservist shortly after the attacks Sept. 11, 2001. After about a year, he returned to work but was called up again after a few weeks.
The company has just 10 employees, so having one gone for the better part of two years hurts, Doherty said.
"He's our computer guy," he said. "We were in the middle of a big network upgrade and moving from one office building to another. And he was in charge of that. It came at a very bad time."
Now he has no idea when his employee will come home. In the meantime, he has hired consultants to help. He received a $100,000 low-interest loan from the Small Business Administration, which has developed a loan program for companies that have lost employees activated for military service.
Many of the reserve units that have been called up are military police, and many members are drawn from local law enforcement agencies. Anne Arundel County has 21 employees on reserve duty, including 13 from the police department. Fairfax County has 38, most of them from the police and fire departments.
Companies are required to save positions for reservists and Guard members who are activated for duty. But when disputes between employers and reservists arise, they turn to people such as Fred Samuelson, an ombudsman for the Department of Defense.
As the military has moved from combat in Afghanistan to the war in Iraq and now to a peacekeeping mission there, calls from reservists or employers have risen, from 11,000 in fiscal 2001 to 17,000 last year.
Samuelson fears that the extended tours of duty are going to do more than strain relations between employers and employees.
"The people over there knew they were going to have to put their rear end on the line at some point," he said. "But everyone expected to be there for six months and then come back. . . . That's not happening. And it sure as dickens is going to hurt in the long run because people are going to think twice about joining the Guard and reserve."
As of Wednesday, 128,568 Army Guard and Reserve members had been mobilized in support of operations overseas and in the United States, out of 350,000 troops in the Army National Guard and 205,000 in the Army Reserve. The National Guard has a dual state and federal role and can be called to federal service by the president, while the Reserve is a federal supplemental force for the active-duty military. Both are made up primarily of civilians who hold jobs in the private sector.
