.Jobless after Iraq
Ocala - When duty called, James Walker answered.
Once the shock wave of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks began to subside, and the nation's immediate grief and fear were overcome by the rising tide of patriotism and desire for vengeance, Walker did what many other Americans felt they needed to do - He enlisted in the military.
He joined the Army in early 2002, and served in the infantry with the 101st Airborne Division. He was there for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and a year later returned to the United States. Two years later, Walker, having achieved the rank of sergeant, was honorably discharged from the military and headed back to Ocala to resume his life.
Or so he thought.
Walker was recalled to active duty in the Army in 2006 and ordered to serve another year in Iraq.
Prior to embarking on that second tour, he was pessimistic about the outcome.
"I was scared to death," he recalled in a recent interview. "I didn't feel good at all."
Intellectually, meanwhile, he had shifted from true believer in the cause to a complete skeptic.
"When I was first there, I thought we could pull it off," he said. "But the second time, I didn't see it as winnable."
At that time, the simmering cauldron of sectarian strife in Iraq had boiled over, leaving that country's streets awash in blood. The daily death rate from sectarian killings peaked in 2006-07, topping 60 a day, according to iraqbodycount.org, which bases its numbers on reports from the media, medical authorities, international groups and local officials.
And when Iraqis weren't killing each other, their rage was directed at U.S. troops, who at that time were dying at the highest rate of the war.
The 12-month period from September 2006, when Walker was ordered back to active duty, through August 2007 was the bloodiest of the Iraqi conflict, as 1,100 U.S. troops - 26 percent of the total killed during America's 5 1/2 years there - lost their lives, as reported by casualties.org, which culls Defense Department reports for its figures.
Despite Walker's feeling that he was destined to come home in a flag-draped coffin, the inevitable he sensed didn't happen. In fact, Walker's second tour was largely uneventful - he says he got shot at a few times while in Baghdad - and though he expresses frustration that his unit accomplished little in Iraq, instead of dreading the Army, Walker wanted more. He hoped to stay on active duty.
But that desire has been thwarted by a series of bureaucratic obstacles - and in a cruel twist, the Army recently notified Walker that, by its own account of his records, he was technically a civilian during that second trip to Iraq.
Now unemployed and - like thousands of people in Marion County in similar straits - having few prospects, Walker is fearful of losing his home since his family struggles to make it on his wife's income alone.
It's difficult to determine how many Americans, like Walker, were inspired by their anger over 9/11 to serve in the military. But the answer is probably not as many as people might think.
While the military did meet its recruiting goals in the first couple of years after the attacks, that drive, especially for the Army and Marines, began to taper off as the Iraq war continued. Even military recruiters, according to news reports, struggled to identify what portion of those new recruits joined because of the 9/11 attacks or for some other reason.
As the number of new recruits dwindled, evidence of the Army's woes were found in policy changes, as outlined in a November 2007 report for the Progressive Policy Institute by Phillip Carter, a former soldier and now board member with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
Carter noted that the Army "has made ends meet" on its recruiting goals by doubling advertising budgets; tripling recruiting bonuses; raising the maximum age for recruits to 42; quadrupling the number of "moral waivers" allowed; changing medical standards; reducing educational standards; shrinking basic training; and retaining active-duty personnel with hefty bonuses - as high as $150,000 for special operations soldiers.
But bridging that gap also, as likely most evident in communities like Ocala, meant relying more heavily on National Guardsmen and reservists.
As terrorist attacks became a fading memory, pure patriotism seemed to lose its allure as a recruiting force.
In a July 2005 report, USA Today noted, "In the weeks after 9/11 military recruiters got more calls, more visits, more Web site hits, but the upsurge in enlistments was an urban myth."
Sen. John McCain, for one, thought the administration itself undermined its own cause in building support for service.
"I believe that the big mistake that our leadership of our nation made after 9/11 is we told people to go shopping and we told them to take a trip," McCain said in an October 2007 speech in South Carolina.
Yet as the Iraq war and the recruiting drought dragged on, the Army had at its disposal people like James Walker, those with prior military service who, though no longer in uniform, are still under contract to serve if needed.
Walker was part of the Individual Ready Reserve, or IRR, a component of the reserves that one Army news briefing released last month referred to as the services' "leading prior service talent bank."
First-time Army recruits sign a contract binding them to eight years of service. Typically, they spend two years to four years, and sometimes up to six years, of that obligation in the active-duty Army. The remainder of their commitment is spent in the IRR, wherein, unlike other reservists who meet for regular drills and training, the bulk of their military activity involves reporting to an annual muster, keeping their contact information current and responding to military correspondence.
In exchange for that, they are eligible to seek additional training and be promoted. And as that Army talking point noted, "They are also subject to involuntary mobilization."
According to the Army, the IRR contains about 163,000 members. Earlier this year, the Army ordered 10,000 of them to muster at select military posts, with another 14,000 expected to do so in 2009. Historically, a muster did not require them to physically report to a duty station for the one-day event, which earns them $190, but the Army seems to have changed that after what was deemed a successful muster in 2007.
The IRR, Army officials also point out, has been tapped before, including in the 1961 Berlin Wall crisis, Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm.
However, it was not until 2004, when the Army called up nearly 5,600 IRR soldiers to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, that those troops warranted any widespread attention. The IRR made news again last year when 1,200 reserve Marines were ordered to active duty.
Many troops have balked when called and sought relief from their commitment. They cite an array of reasons as to why they should be excused.
James Walker had such reasons.
Walker, who is married with four children, had a job with the domestic violence shelter in Ocala and was the Democratic candidate against Republican state Rep. Dennis Baxley of Ocala for the state House District 24 seat when he got his orders to Iraq in September 2006.
Moreover, Walker had a medical reason. Walker, now 35, said he first enlisted in the Army in 1993 as an infantryman but was released from active duty during basic training because he was injured. When he re-entered the service in 2002, he sustained a broken bone in each foot during marches because he has flat feet. Rather than discharge him again, he said, "They gave me a set of [boot] inserts and sent me on the way."
When the Army recalled him in 2006, he tried to argue that he was susceptible to foot injuries, but the Army refused to declare him medically unfit. It seemed he wasn't alone. Walker said that when he got to Fort Jackson, S.C., to train for his second deployment to Iraq, in his unit was a fellow IRR soldier who was a student at the University of Wisconsin. That soldier was receiving a check from the Department of Veterans Affairs because he had been declared 30 percent disabled from a previous knee injury.
On Sept. 30, 2008, Col. Wanda Good, commander of the Army's Human Resources Command, gave a briefing to journalists to dispel the "myth" about the utilization of IRR troops.
According to her comments, found at www.military.com, Good denied there was a massive call-up of IRR soldiers. While the IRR had long been an "invaluable asset to our nation" frequently called on for their expertise, Good noted that since 9/11 only 20,000 IRR troops had received mobilization orders - and of those, fewer than 5,000 are currently on active duty. And among those called up, just 779, or 4 percent, had failed to report for duty. The Army had already discharged almost 400 of them, Good said, and was investigating the rest.
Brandon Friedman, vice chairman of the group votevets.org, a 95,000-member organization dedicated to electing veterans to public office, and a former infantry officer in the 101st Airborne who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, agreed just a few thousand might now be serving. But the Army's lack of standards governing the IRR does not preclude those soldiers, like their active-duty counterparts, from being sent again and again to serve.
It is a situation exacerbated by our shrinking Army. Carter's 2007 study pointed out the Army has kept 50,000 to 160,000 reservists on active duty to subsidize its manpower needs. Or as Colby Buzzell, a former infantryman who served in Iraq and now as an IRR soldier, wrote in May in the San Francisco Chronicle, "I'm now going back to Iraq for a second time because people like me - existing service members - are the only people at the Army's disposal."
Yet Walker was among those who wanted to remain on active duty.
During his second tour, Walker was assigned to a civil affairs unit attached to the Third Infantry Division in Iraq. His job was to help oversee the reconstruction of infrastructure projects.
While not thrilled with being in a war zone, Walker said he relished being back in uniform and the camaraderie of his fellow soldiers, especially in the infantry. He first thought of remaining there through a job with a British contractor, doing social science research. That, however, fell through when the company lost its contract. Then he learned how bad the job market is in Ocala.
"It was time to fall back on the Army because God knows there are no jobs here," he said. That's when the real pitfalls opened up.
Walker, who had been promoted to staff sergeant, said he sought a transfer to the active-duty Army in March to do one more tour. Ironically, that was denied because his foot problems - which were not severe enough to keep him out of Iraq in the first place - disqualified him.
He subsequently sought an assignment as a recruiter in Gainesville. The Army agreed and paid for Walker to attend a seven-week recruiter school at Fort Jackson. In October, as his time there was coming to an end, Walker had no orders dispatching him to Gainesville. What happened next left him stunned.
"After much confusion and research," a Nov. 24 e-mail to Walker from the Army Human Resources Command began, "we found that you were actually only obligated to the 3 year (sic) active duty contract." Continuing, the e-mail pointed out that when Walker left basic training the first time, in 1993, "you no longer had to complete an 8 year (sic) contract. This means you have been assigned to the IRR for the last 4 years with no contract." Thus, when he was in Iraq, by the Army's thinking, Walker was a civilian.
He disputes that, of course. His position is that his 2002 enlistment contract is still valid and thus puts him in the IRR until that eight-year commitment expires. "I think the issue is somebody with the Army HR Command doesn't know how to do their job," Walker said. But he acknowledges it's a losing battle.
To rectify the "confusion," the Army sent Walker another IRR contract backdated to January 2005, when he left the service. That covers them, especially on his second tour in Iraq. Walker initially resisted for pride and principle. But last week he softened when the Army said it had another recruiting job available in upstate New York, where his wife, Courtney, has family.
So, he relented, and inked a new deal with the Army - one that keeps him in the IRR until 2030, when he turns 60. "I didn't feel strongly about becoming a recruiter, but I needed a job," said Walker, citing the family's concerns about their future since Courtney's company merged with a competitor. "I want to make my mortgage payment."
Then, a day after he signed, the Army informed Walker that the New York assignment never existed.
Friedman of votevets.org said he has never encountered a case like Walker's, but given his work with IRR soldiers who have tangled with Army bureaucracy, the tale does not surprise him.
"I roll my eyes when I hear stories like that," Friedman said. "They cast a net because they don't have a standard [for mobilizing IRR troops], and they won't publish a standard because they are afraid they couldn't get enough people. It's completely unprofessional and reflects poorly on the operation of the Army."
Walker called it a "slap in the face." "I don't even get any sympathy" from the military, he said, "not even a 'Damn, that sucks.' "
Ocala
Once the shock wave of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks began to subside, and the nation's immediate grief and fear were overcome by the rising tide of patriotism and desire for vengeance, Walker did what many other Americans felt they needed to do - He enlisted in the military.
He joined the Army in early 2002, and served in the infantry with the 101st Airborne Division. He was there for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and a year later returned to the United States. Two years later, Walker, having achieved the rank of sergeant, was honorably discharged from the military and headed back to Ocala to resume his life.
Or so he thought.
Walker was recalled to active duty in the Army in 2006 and ordered to serve another year in Iraq.
Prior to embarking on that second tour, he was pessimistic about the outcome.
"I was scared to death," he recalled in a recent interview. "I didn't feel good at all."
Intellectually, meanwhile, he had shifted from true believer in the cause to a complete skeptic.
"When I was first there, I thought we could pull it off," he said. "But the second time, I didn't see it as winnable."
At that time, the simmering cauldron of sectarian strife in Iraq had boiled over, leaving that country's streets awash in blood. The daily death rate from sectarian killings peaked in 2006-07, topping 60 a day, according to iraqbodycount.org, which bases its numbers on reports from the media, medical authorities, international groups and local officials.
And when Iraqis weren't killing each other, their rage was directed at U.S. troops, who at that time were dying at the highest rate of the war.
The 12-month period from September 2006, when Walker was ordered back to active duty, through August 2007 was the bloodiest of the Iraqi conflict, as 1,100 U.S. troops - 26 percent of the total killed during America's 5 1/2 years there - lost their lives, as reported by casualties.org, which culls Defense Department reports for its figures.
Despite Walker's feeling that he was destined to come home in a flag-draped coffin, the inevitable he sensed didn't happen. In fact, Walker's second tour was largely uneventful - he says he got shot at a few times while in Baghdad - and though he expresses frustration that his unit accomplished little in Iraq, instead of dreading the Army, Walker wanted more. He hoped to stay on active duty.
But that desire has been thwarted by a series of bureaucratic obstacles - and in a cruel twist, the Army recently notified Walker that, by its own account of his records, he was technically a civilian during that second trip to Iraq.
Now unemployed and - like thousands of people in Marion County in similar straits - having few prospects, Walker is fearful of losing his home since his family struggles to make it on his wife's income alone.
It's difficult to determine how many Americans, like Walker, were inspired by their anger over 9/11 to serve in the military. But the answer is probably not as many as people might think.
While the military did meet its recruiting goals in the first couple of years after the attacks, that drive, especially for the Army and Marines, began to taper off as the Iraq war continued. Even military recruiters, according to news reports, struggled to identify what portion of those new recruits joined because of the 9/11 attacks or for some other reason.
As the number of new recruits dwindled, evidence of the Army's woes were found in policy changes, as outlined in a November 2007 report for the Progressive Policy Institute by Phillip Carter, a former soldier and now board member with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
Carter noted that the Army "has made ends meet" on its recruiting goals by doubling advertising budgets; tripling recruiting bonuses; raising the maximum age for recruits to 42; quadrupling the number of "moral waivers" allowed; changing medical standards; reducing educational standards; shrinking basic training; and retaining active-duty personnel with hefty bonuses - as high as $150,000 for special operations soldiers.
But bridging that gap also, as likely most evident in communities like Ocala, meant relying more heavily on National Guardsmen and reservists.
As terrorist attacks became a fading memory, pure patriotism seemed to lose its allure as a recruiting force.
In a July 2005 report, USA Today noted, "In the weeks after 9/11 military recruiters got more calls, more visits, more Web site hits, but the upsurge in enlistments was an urban myth."
Sen. John McCain, for one, thought the administration itself undermined its own cause in building support for service.
"I believe that the big mistake that our leadership of our nation made after 9/11 is we told people to go shopping and we told them to take a trip," McCain said in an October 2007 speech in South Carolina.
Yet as the Iraq war and the recruiting drought dragged on, the Army had at its disposal people like James Walker, those with prior military service who, though no longer in uniform, are still under contract to serve if needed.
Walker was part of the Individual Ready Reserve, or IRR, a component of the reserves that one Army news briefing released last month referred to as the services' "leading prior service talent bank."
First-time Army recruits sign a contract binding them to eight years of service. Typically, they spend two years to four years, and sometimes up to six years, of that obligation in the active-duty Army. The remainder of their commitment is spent in the IRR, wherein, unlike other reservists who meet for regular drills and training, the bulk of their military activity involves reporting to an annual muster, keeping their contact information current and responding to military correspondence.
In exchange for that, they are eligible to seek additional training and be promoted. And as that Army talking point noted, "They are also subject to involuntary mobilization."
According to the Army, the IRR contains about 163,000 members. Earlier this year, the Army ordered 10,000 of them to muster at select military posts, with another 14,000 expected to do so in 2009. Historically, a muster did not require them to physically report to a duty station for the one-day event, which earns them $190, but the Army seems to have changed that after what was deemed a successful muster in 2007.
The IRR, Army officials also point out, has been tapped before, including in the 1961 Berlin Wall crisis, Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm.
However, it was not until 2004, when the Army called up nearly 5,600 IRR soldiers to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, that those troops warranted any widespread attention. The IRR made news again last year when 1,200 reserve Marines were ordered to active duty.
Many troops have balked when called and sought relief from their commitment. They cite an array of reasons as to why they should be excused.
James Walker had such reasons.
Walker, who is married with four children, had a job with the domestic violence shelter in Ocala and was the Democratic candidate against Republican state Rep. Dennis Baxley of Ocala for the state House District 24 seat when he got his orders to Iraq in September 2006.
Moreover, Walker had a medical reason. Walker, now 35, said he first enlisted in the Army in 1993 as an infantryman but was released from active duty during basic training because he was injured. When he re-entered the service in 2002, he sustained a broken bone in each foot during marches because he has flat feet. Rather than discharge him again, he said, "They gave me a set of [boot] inserts and sent me on the way."
When the Army recalled him in 2006, he tried to argue that he was susceptible to foot injuries, but the Army refused to declare him medically unfit. It seemed he wasn't alone. Walker said that when he got to Fort Jackson, S.C., to train for his second deployment to Iraq, in his unit was a fellow IRR soldier who was a student at the University of Wisconsin. That soldier was receiving a check from the Department of Veterans Affairs because he had been declared 30 percent disabled from a previous knee injury.
On Sept. 30, 2008, Col. Wanda Good, commander of the Army's Human Resources Command, gave a briefing to journalists to dispel the "myth" about the utilization of IRR troops.
According to her comments, found at www.military.com, Good denied there was a massive call-up of IRR soldiers. While the IRR had long been an "invaluable asset to our nation" frequently called on for their expertise, Good noted that since 9/11 only 20,000 IRR troops had received mobilization orders - and of those, fewer than 5,000 are currently on active duty. And among those called up, just 779, or 4 percent, had failed to report for duty. The Army had already discharged almost 400 of them, Good said, and was investigating the rest.
Brandon Friedman, vice chairman of the group votevets.org, a 95,000-member organization dedicated to electing veterans to public office, and a former infantry officer in the 101st Airborne who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, agreed just a few thousand might now be serving. But the Army's lack of standards governing the IRR does not preclude those soldiers, like their active-duty counterparts, from being sent again and again to serve.
It is a situation exacerbated by our shrinking Army. Carter's 2007 study pointed out the Army has kept 50,000 to 160,000 reservists on active duty to subsidize its manpower needs. Or as Colby Buzzell, a former infantryman who served in Iraq and now as an IRR soldier, wrote in May in the San Francisco Chronicle, "I'm now going back to Iraq for a second time because people like me - existing service members - are the only people at the Army's disposal."
Yet Walker was among those who wanted to remain on active duty.
During his second tour, Walker was assigned to a civil affairs unit attached to the Third Infantry Division in Iraq. His job was to help oversee the reconstruction of infrastructure projects.
While not thrilled with being in a war zone, Walker said he relished being back in uniform and the camaraderie of his fellow soldiers, especially in the infantry. He first thought of remaining there through a job with a British contractor, doing social science research. That, however, fell through when the company lost its contract. Then he learned how bad the job market is in Ocala.
"It was time to fall back on the Army because God knows there are no jobs here," he said. That's when the real pitfalls opened up.
Walker, who had been promoted to staff sergeant, said he sought a transfer to the active-duty Army in March to do one more tour. Ironically, that was denied because his foot problems - which were not severe enough to keep him out of Iraq in the first place - disqualified him.
He subsequently sought an assignment as a recruiter in Gainesville. The Army agreed and paid for Walker to attend a seven-week recruiter school at Fort Jackson. In October, as his time there was coming to an end, Walker had no orders dispatching him to Gainesville. What happened next left him stunned.
"After much confusion and research," a Nov. 24 e-mail to Walker from the Army Human Resources Command began, "we found that you were actually only obligated to the 3 year (sic) active duty contract." Continuing, the e-mail pointed out that when Walker left basic training the first time, in 1993, "you no longer had to complete an 8 year (sic) contract. This means you have been assigned to the IRR for the last 4 years with no contract." Thus, when he was in Iraq, by the Army's thinking, Walker was a civilian.
He disputes that, of course. His position is that his 2002 enlistment contract is still valid and thus puts him in the IRR until that eight-year commitment expires. "I think the issue is somebody with the Army HR Command doesn't know how to do their job," Walker said. But he acknowledges it's a losing battle.
To rectify the "confusion," the Army sent Walker another IRR contract backdated to January 2005, when he left the service. That covers them, especially on his second tour in Iraq. Walker initially resisted for pride and principle. But last week he softened when the Army said it had another recruiting job available in upstate New York, where his wife, Courtney, has family.
So, he relented, and inked a new deal with the Army - one that keeps him in the IRR until 2030, when he turns 60. "I didn't feel strongly about becoming a recruiter, but I needed a job," said Walker, citing the family's concerns about their future since Courtney's company merged with a competitor. "I want to make my mortgage payment."
Then, a day after he signed, the Army informed Walker that the New York assignment never existed.
Friedman of votevets.org said he has never encountered a case like Walker's, but given his work with IRR soldiers who have tangled with Army bureaucracy, the tale does not surprise him.
"I roll my eyes when I hear stories like that," Friedman said. "They cast a net because they don't have a standard [for mobilizing IRR troops], and they won't publish a standard because they are afraid they couldn't get enough people. It's completely unprofessional and reflects poorly on the operation of the Army."
Walker called it a "slap in the face." "I don't even get any sympathy" from the military, he said, "not even a 'Damn, that sucks.' "
Ocala
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