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Long Stints in Iraq Fracture Families
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Last spring and summer, 1st Brigade began receiving hundreds of new soldiers and pieces of equipment and had to rush to complete a year's training in four months. An additional 100 soldiers will arrive next month just in time to deploy and train in Kuwait.
"We had to train on weekends, train on many a night," Crissman said. The pressure to meet deadlines was so great that the division commander, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, ordered that soldiers take off certain hours each week to spend with their families.
The stress is fundamentally changing Army culture, some officers say. "I am worried . . . you will see a more single Army, very combat-focused, 'get on the team or get out,' " a senior officer said.
Worried Soldiers, Worried Families
Staff Sgt. Wendell Gee, 29, of Knoxville, Tenn., has had his share of close scrapes in Iraq. During the invasion, an Iraqi T-72 tank fired a round through Gee's Bradley.
Asked last week what helps him get through the deployments, the father of three answered: "Not dying has helped get me through it."
Even the most stoic soldiers, like Gee, who reenlisted on his most recent tour, say the Army cannot keep up this pace. The Army is not big enough, and the quality of new recruits has dropped, they say. Many worry pressure to pull out of Iraq will spell chaos and mean their comrades died in vain, but other soldiers and their spouses now say the war was a mistake.
"I look at this as a duty. You're in it for the long haul," said the brigade commander, Charlton. "Are we able to do this for the next 10 years? I don't know."
Gee's wife, Tracy, grows misty-eyed recalling hearing that the brigade would return to Iraq so quickly. "We cried. . . . We just weren't ready," she said over a fast-food lunch. Tracy, who juggles a 1-year-old and two older children with a job selling vacuums, said she has asked her husband to leave the Army.
What most disturbed her, she said, was when her 12-year-old son, Christopher, wrote in a school paper that he wanted to be just like his dad. "I don't want him to do that," Tracy said, tears welling in her eyes. "Hopefully, the war will be over by the time our children are grown."
