Many Guard soldiers eager to serve on border
11:46 PM CDT on Friday, June 30, 2006
By DAVID McLEMORE / The Dallas Morning News
AUSTIN – Staff Sgt. David Martinez is an island of calm as some 200 camouflage-wearing soldiers mill around in an airless cavern of a building. Hurry up and wait is the Army’s favorite pastime. He’s been through it before.
The 26-year-old staff sergeant was among the 3,500 Texas National Guard troops of the 56th Brigade Combat Team who returned in December from a yearlong tour in Iraq. Now, he’s one of thousands of Texas guardsmen who will head south for Operation Jump Start in support of the Border Patrol along the Mexican border.
Like all the others, he volunteered. As other states struggle to meet a goal of having some 2,500 troops on the border by the end of the month, Gov. Rick Perry said Friday that Texas was on track, activating more than 700 Texas Army National Guard troops and more than 300 Texas Air Guard troops under Operation Jump Start orders.
Less than half that total are physically on the border, National Guard officials said Friday.
The group gathered at Camp Mabry from Guard units across the state will be among the first of the 1,200 Texas Guard soldiers eventually sent to the border for road building, surveillance and establishing observation posts. Tours will range from 90 days to a year.
Many of them, like Staff Sgt. Martinez, don’t have to go.
The reasons for volunteering to spend a year on the Rio Grande range from patriotism to a sense of duty – and, for some, boredom with civilian life. For most, it’s simply a way to serve.
“After coming back from Iraq, it really opened my eyes to what we can do to help people. That’s why I wanted to do this. I think we’re all just trying to help our country,” Staff Sgt. Martinez said.
“My time in Iraq was rough on my mom and, at first, she couldn’t understand why I was going back on active duty so soon,” the Laredo resident said. “But she understands that I’m a soldier. And I know she’s a lot happier that I’m not going back overseas.”
The Guard’s border mission is a state deployment and does not trigger limits to federal deployment of National Guard troops, such as to Iraq, to no more than 24 months. But the Guard Adjutant General of Texas has ordered that those who completed a recent tour in either Iraq or Afghanistan not be involuntarily called for Operation Jump Start.
At this point, the Texas Guard’s Operation Jump Start is an all-volunteer force.
“Even though Texas has had major deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and we still have 4,000 soldiers overseas, we’re going to meet our goal to have all the Guard’s obligation in the state filled by Texas troops,” said Col. Bobby Canon, task force commander for the Texas Guard.
“Most of these people are taking pay cuts for this mission,” Col. Canon said. “But they are all responding to this mission because they want to serve.”
Personal motive
One recent combat veteran, Spc. Filemon Cuellar, 26, has a more personal motive for volunteering for the border mission.
“My grandfather came to this country as an illegal immigrant, and the country was very good to him,” he said. “I feel like I’m giving something back for my grandfather.”
Spc. Cuellar joined the Guard after he returned to San Antonio following a tour in Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division two years ago. A health care adviser for Humana Tri-Care, he was called up with the Guard for disaster relief following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year.
He acknowledges that his wife, left at home with a young daughter, wasn’t too happy at the prospect of losing him for a year along the Mexican border.
“She’s ex-military too and now, she backs me up,” Spc. Cuellar said. “I simply felt my country needed me.”
William Trejo, 27, of Dallas, a counselor with at-risk children of Katrina refugees, decided to join the National Guard last year – his first-ever encounter with the military.
Now, Pfc. Trejo will put his brand-new medic skills to use somewhere along the Rio Grande.
“I wanted the experience. And going to drills each month just wasn’t enough,” he said. “And for the kids I work with, it’s a way to teach them by example to do the right thing.”
At their Oak Cliff home, Alicia Trejo said she wasn’t too crazy about her husband’s enlistment in the Guard in the first place. And he didn’t make her feel any better when he came home recently with what he called good news and bad news.
“He said he’d be gone a year to the border. And that he volunteered. For me, they were both bad news,” she said. “I know it’s going to be a tough. … I’m suddenly both Mommy and Daddy. But my real concern is for his safety. The border is a very dangerous place, and I worry about that.”
Sgt. Alvaro Alvarez, 37, a 16-year Guard veteran from Laredo, left his job as a postal worker to take part in the mission, which meant a nearly 50 percent cut in pay. But it’s something worth doing, he said.
“This may sound stupid, but I love my country, and I don’t see this as a military exercise. It’s a necessity,” he said. “A lot of people forget we’re at war. But we don’t.”
Minimizing impact
The volunteerism and the Texas Guard’s decision to make the tour longer than the usual two-week training period helps minimize the impact of back-to-back mobilizations, said Christine Wormuth, international security specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“If Guard soldiers are volunteering for the mission, then they’ve made the judgment about the effect on their families and their employers,” Ms. Wormuth said.
The challenge for both the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security is to make sure that border security doesn’t become an open-ended job for the Guard and that the soldiers feel they are having a positive impact on the mission, she said.
“A year from now, if the Guard soldiers don’t see their efforts have had a meaningful impact on border security, the eagerness to volunteer may change,” she said.
Sgt. Troy Watson, 35, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice corrections officer at Mule Shoe, sees Operation Jump Start as a continuation of the war on terror, and he wanted to be a part of it. After 14 years in the Guard, including a tour in Iraq with the 1st Infantry Division, he’s ready to go.
“I spent time fighting the bad guys over there,” he said. “Now I can help stop the bad guys at the border. I think that’s a good way to spend the next year.”
His employers have been supportive of his Guard deployments, but he knows that his co-workers will continue to advance on the job while he’s gone. “I’m comfortable with that,” he said. “It’s a small sacrifice for what we’re going to accomplish.”
Sgt. Watson then walked into another room and stood before a recruiter, raised his right hand and re-enlisted for another six years.
“These days, when you sign up for the Guard, you know you’re going to be deployed somewhere,” Col. Canon said. “But when other states are having trouble meeting recruitment goals, the Texas Guard doesn’t.”
For the sixth straight year, the Texas National Guard exceeded its annual end-strength goal of 17,095 by 179 soldiers, with three months left in the fiscal year. Texas is one of 43 state National Guard units nationally to meet or exceed goals this year.
Recently, Texas Guard officials announced they had recruited 1,749 soldiers, more than half the goal of 3,090 for the fiscal year.
In the field house, Staff Sgt. Martinez takes his place in line, ready for another round of paperwork. He’s keenly aware that the Guard mission is solely to support the Border Patrol and that his skills as a forkl
ift operator may be more useful than his experience as a cavalry scout.
“There’s still some danger about the mission, especially in Laredo, but it’s not as dangerous as Iraq. They won’t be shooting at us. We hope, anyway.”
BORDER TROOPS
483 – Troops physically on the border in the four border states
1,000 – Troops deployed to the Texas border now*
2,000 plus – Troops training somewhere in the four states
1,750 – Pledged by nonborder states, although just 150 of those are deployed
2,500 – Goal by end of June
6,000 – Goal by end of July
*Many of these troops may not yet be physically on the border but have received their orders. The number of actual troops on the border was not immediately clear.
NOTE: Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, an arm of the Pentagon, said Friday the Guard had deployed more than 2,500 troops “in the four Southwest border states” supporting the mission.
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