Photo courtesy of Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn’s office
Army Sgt. Kraig Foyteck, 26, was shot and killed on Oct. 30th while searching a home for suspected insurgents.

U.S. troops tire as they are asked to serve two, three or more tours.

Editor’s note: Many soldiers in Iraq find themselves facing longer tours than they had expected. President Bush’s plan to add 21,500 troops will mean extended deployments for thousands more. This story looks back at the 172nd Stryker Brigade, which has since returned home, and the toll such deployments take on soldiers and families.

By BRENDAN McGARRY

The day before he was scheduled to finally leave Iraq in August, Army Sgt. Kraig D. Foyteck got some disappointing news. He would have to stay in the country another four months.

He and the rest of the 172nd Stryker Brigade, based out of Alaska’s Fort Wainwright, were called to help stop raging sectarian violence in Baghdad.

Their mission was essentially the same as it was in Mosul: provide security, help the Iraqi security forces stand up and lead counter-insurgency operations. But in the capital, the situation was far more dangerous. Sectarian tensions were running at an all-time high, fueled by incessant Sunni and Shiite reprisal killings.

On Oct. 30, Foyteck, a 26-year-old from Skokie, Ill., was shot and killed while searching a home for suspected insurgents.

“It’s so bitter,” his grandmother, Virginia Foyteck, 79, of LaPorte, Ind., said when asked to describe her feelings about his death. “You couldn’t have asked for a better grandson.”

Foyteck was among seven brigade soldiers who were killed during the 120-day extension period, brigade spokesman Maj. Kirk Gohlke said. Another 19 soldiers were killed during the year-long deployment in Mosul.

The deaths serve as an emotional reminder of the pressures facing the U.S. military as it grapples with readiness levels — and President’s Bush plan to add 21,500 soldiers to support the war in Iraq.

“It’s something the military tries to avoid at all costs,” Gohlke said of extending soldiers’ tours. “It throws off a whole bunch of plans, not just for the soldiers and their families, but in a lot of different areas — logistics, personnel, training. In this case, it was extraordinary circumstances.

“The situation in Baghdad developed quickly and we needed to respond to it quickly,” he said. “The commanders in the unit picked the Stryker team because they were the most experienced team over there, and they were very successful in Mosul.”

The last of the Stryker brigade soldiers returned to Alaska in December. Their homecoming came as newly empowered Democrats, who won control of Congress the month before, reiterated calls for scaling back the military footprint in Iraq.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said that finding a way to change the course in Iraq is a priority.

“Most Democrats share the view that we should pressure the White House to commence the phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq in four to six months — to begin that phased redeployment, and thereby make it clear to the Iraqis that our presence is not open-ended and that they must take and make the necessary political compromises to preserve Iraq as a nation,” he said, according to a transcript of a Nov. 13 press conference he held to discuss committee priorities.

Levin said he also wants to review whether military forces are properly sized, organized and equipped to deal with current conflicts and potential threats.

According to a May 2004 Congressional Research Service report, “Military Forces: What is the Appropriate Size for the United States,” there is ample evidence that suggests American forces are stretched thin by the war in Iraq, including:

• Reserve and Marine Corps tours have lasted longer than a year (shorter tours had been the norm)
• Many military personnel have come under “stop-loss” orders that have barred them from leaving the service, have been extended in their tours, or have anticipated multiple combat tours
• No Army division has been available as a strategic reserve (air and naval forces have been shifted to cover key contingencies)

In one case, the report states, a company from The Old Guard in Arlington, Va., which provides ceremonial and contingency support for the National Capitol, was deployed to Djibouti, a small country in eastern Africa — its first deployment since the Vietnam War.

Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. active duty force never dropped below 2 million personnel, and peaked at over 3.5 million during the Korean and Vietnam wars, according to the report. From 1989 through 1999, the force dropped steadily from 2.1 million to 1.4 million, where it remains today.

The March 2003 invasion of Iraq was won quickly and with fewer divisions than expected, the report states. The post-invasion occupation, however, soon involved some 220,000 forces. A year later, the Department of Defense was involved in the “largest troop rotation” since World War II, according to the document.

Indeed, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army’s chief of staff, has warned that the Army’s 507,000-soldier active-duty force “will break” under the strain of today’s war-zone rotations, according to a recent Washington Post article.

The newspaper reported that the Army’s staffing problems stem from current Pentagon policy that says reservists can be mobilized involuntarily only once, and for no more than two years, meaning that only about 90,000 members of the 522,000-soldier Army National Guard are still available to be mobilized.

“The Army is incapable of generating and sustaining the required forces to wage the global war on terror — without its components — active, Guard and reserve — surging together,” Schoomaker was quoted as saying.

Schoomaker said the Army began the Iraq war with a $56 billion equipment shortage and with 500,000 fewer soldiers than during the 1991 Gulf War, the article states. He said he would like to grow the active duty force by 7,000 or more a year.

As of Nov. 1, 2006, the United States had 147,796 military personnel deployed in Iraq, according to the November 2006 Congressional Research Service report, “U.S. Forces in Iraq.”

Of these, 124,266 were active duty personnel and 23,530 were from the National Guard and Reserves. (The totals do not include 16,500 military support personnel in Kuwait, nor naval personnel aboard ships patrolling the Persian Gulf.)

The report cites the following breakdowns by branch: for active duty personnel, Army, 93,556; Marine Corps, 19,008; Air Force, 8,012; and Navy, 3,690; and, for reserve component personnel, Army National Guard, 14,213; Army Reserve, 6,296; Marines Reserve, 1,046; Air Reserve, 949; Navy Reserve, 629; and Air National Guard, 397.

To boost these numbers, and to prevent the volunteer system from collapsing, at least one member of Congress — Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat from New York who opposes the Iraq war — has called for reinstating the draft.

Rangel, a Korean War veteran, pointed to the Army’s failure to meet recruiting goals in 2005 despite the Pentagon increasing enlistment bonuses to $30,000 and allowing recruits to sign up for 15-month active-duty service rather than the typical four-year enlistment.

“We are only able to keep troops in the field by extending deployments, calling back veterans who have previously served in combat and placing an unsustainable burden on the Reserves,” he said in a statement last year. “These practices have devastated the troops’ morale, made life more difficult for military families, and in many cases, caused the loss of civilian jobs, homes and even marriages.”

Garett Reppenhagen, 31, said he has experienced firsthand the impact of military manpower shortages.

He was supposed to leave active duty in October 2005, but a “stop-loss” order prevented him from doing so until the following May. Whereas an extended deployment is merely an extension of a tour of duty, a “stop-loss” order is when the military holds on to soldiers after their contractual obligation expires.

Reppenhagen said the orders can add, at minimum, more than one year of involuntary service onto a military contract because they cover a period that includes the three months before and after a year-long combat deployment.

For example, a typical military contract lasts eight years — four years active duty, four years inactive duty (soldiers return to civilian life but can be reactivated for combat at any time). Technically, Reppenhagen said, a soldier could be placed under “stop-loss” three months before the expiration of his contract, activated for a year-long tour of duty, then have to serve out the final three months of the stop-loss order after returning home.

“That could extend well beyond the eight-year commitment,” he said. “Look at the conditions that occurred in World War II. The units that hit the beach on D-Day, a lot of those soldiers were there until V-Day and afterwards, holding garrison positions and other duties.

“If conditions in Iraq worsen, or if the war is extended into Iran or Syria, it’s very likely that soldiers going there now are going to be serving under a stop-loss order for two or three years, or until the war is over,” he said.

Reppenhagen, who helps run the Washington, D.C., chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, said stop-loss orders are happening at an “extreme” rate.

He said he became disillusioned with the war after reading the 9/11 Commission Report that found no connection between the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Saddam Hussein, after the military failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and after he noticed increasing privatization in the military that awarded former Halliburton subsidiary KBR billions of dollars’ worth of no-bid contracts. (Vice President Dick Cheney was the former chief executive officer of Halliburton.)

“I saw Americans’ patriotism and Americans’ values and Americans’ bravery and courage being used and abused to motivate our population to support the war effort, and it made me furious,” he said.

As evidence of the unprecedented demands being placed on soldiers, he pointed to a Zogby poll from last year showing that three-quarters of the troops had served multiple tours and had a longer exposure to the conflict: 26 percent were on their first tour of duty, 45 percent were on their second and 29 percent were in Iraq for a third time or more.

“You were only required to do one year in Vietnam,” he said. “These guys are expected to go on multiple tours and multiple rotations.”

Reppenhagen also pointed to his own experiences in the country. Once his unit arrived in Iraq, he said the military began reclassifying soldiers who were trained as cooks to grunts, or combat infantryman, to make up for shortfalls of front-line fighters.

There were also equipment shortages. Reppenhagen recalled sorting through hand-me-down ammunition that was dented and damaged from wear and tear. Some soldiers, he said, walked back-to-back while on patrol because they hadn’t yet received armor plates for the rear part of their combat vests. And he said they didn’t have enough “Israeli” bandages, a new type of field wrapping that clots wounds effectively.

“We were constantly undermined by the civilian leadership’s poor conduct of the war,” he said. “Right now, our volunteer military is in peril. It’s on the borderline of completely failing.”

Yet at least one other soldier pointed to the potential benefits of extended deployments, such as receiving priority for future assignments.

In a telephone interview from Kabul, Afghanistan, Hector Carranza, a Marine guarding the embassy there, said that by serving beyond the normal deployment, he improves his chances of being sent to destinations of his choosing, like Cuba or Ecuador.

“Soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan, we get first pick,” he said.

Carranza said the soldier he replaced had served nine months in Kabul after his tour was extended by three months.

“He liked it,” he said. “It worked out in his favor.”

Carranza said logistics largely determine the length of deployments.

“They’ll keep you because one unit isn’t in the rotation yet,” he said. “Before you leave somewhere, you have to turn over your living quarters and your weapons to your replacements. You can’t just up and leave whenever you want. That’s not the way it works.”

In addition, Carranza said soldiers in combat zones receive a host of tax-free financial incentives, including hazardous duty pay, imminent danger pay and special duty pay.

Carranza said despite the danger, he enjoys serving in a war zone. He said he enjoys working with the Afghans, including cooks, personal drivers and interpreters, who he said are “really polite people.”

“They’ll shake your hand and say, ‘Good day, sir. How’s your family?’” he said.

Carranza added that he trusts their cook, Saaid, with his life. He said Saaid took care of the U.S. embassy in Kabul during the Taliban’s rule, and recently invited some of the soldiers to spend a holiday at his home with his family. Carranza said he played with his children, including sitting his daughter and son on his lap.

“They’re starting to realize that we’re cool,” he said of the Afghan people.

Virginia Foyteck, the grandmother of the soldier killed in Iraq, said she would like to see combat soldiers get the breaks they deserve.

“It’s like 130 degrees out there most of the time,” she said. “You can’t tell me that doesn’t wear down on these soldiers. I do think they need to have a chance to get a fresh breath of air once in a while.”

She said her daughter, Connie, Kraig Foyteck’s mother, would agree. Had she the chance to speak to war planners, “I’m sure she very definitely would have said, ‘Why didn’t you let these boys to come home when they were due to come home?’” Virginia said. Her daughter has done numerous interviews with national media since Kraig was killed.

“She doesn’t want them to forget Kraig, and that’s why she does this,” Virginia Foyteck said. “But there’s a point where it has to stop. You have to be able to heal.”