Guard, Families Say Their Goodbyes

Some Md. Soldiers Headed to Iraq For Second Tour

Amid sobs and waving American flags, hundreds of Maryland Army National Guard soldiers bid goodbye to family and friends yesterday and prepared to deploy to Iraq, part of the Guard's largest deployment from the state since World War II.

At the White Oak Armory in Montgomery County, more than 100 soldiers from Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion, 175th Infantry Regiment boarded buses that would take them to Fort Dix, N.J., for training before heading overseas in about two months.

Many of them had returned from a year's deployment in Iraq as recently as May 2006.

"There's a lot of stress," said Janet Connolly, whose husband, 1st Sgt. Don Connolly, was among the soldiers leaving. "They just got back a little over a year ago, and we were expecting to have them home longer than this."

The scene of soldiers leaving for war on the eve of the Memorial Day weekend was replayed at armories in Frederick, Dundalk, Towson and Elkton as 640 soldiers from the battalion departed -- about half of the 1,300 Maryland troops the Guard called up for this deployment.

"It's a large mobilization -- the largest we've had in Maryland since World War II," Brig. Gen. Grant Hayden, deputy commander of the Guard's 29th Infantry Division, told the soldiers and family members at White Oak.

The deployment comes as Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) has criticized the heavy reliance on Guard troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 5,900 members of the Maryland Army and Air National Guard have been called into federal service since the Sept. 11 attacks, about 1,400 of them to Iraq. In Virginia, about 7,900 guardsmen have been called up, with about 2,900 going to Iraq. About 160 Guard and reserve troops from the District are mobilized around the world.

Eighty soldiers from the Maryland National Guard's 126th Aviation Regiment will hold a mobilization ceremony Tuesday at Aberdeen Proving Ground in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan.

As part of the 29th Infantry Division, the deploying Maryland soldiers are members of a famed unit that landed in the first wave at Normandy in 1944. Don McKee, who was there with the 175th Infantry at Omaha Beach and was later wounded, addressed the soldiers of Bravo Company yesterday.

"You're citizen-soldiers just like we were," McKee told the troops. "All residents of Virginia and Maryland should rightly be proud of you."

McKee said the soldiers deserve stronger backing from politicians: "The political support you are receiving here does not meet the support you need, in my opinion."

In 11 months during World War II, the 29th Infantry suffered more than 20,000 casualties, including 3,700 soldiers killed in action. Five Maryland guardsmen have been killed in Iraq -- two in combat and three in a convoy accident, said Quentin Banks, spokesman for the Maryland Military Department. A sixth died while training in the United States.