Army Town Is at a Loss Over Troops’ Delay in Iraq

With frustration, anger and stoicism, people in this Army town amid the Georgia pines grappled Tuesday with the hard new reality that fathers, spouses and their other loved ones in uniform are stuck until further notice in the sands and cities of Iraq.

“It’s horrible; it’s really devastating,” said Sylvia Eden, whose husband, Sgt. Jeffrey Eden, is with the 3-7 Cavalry, 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized). The last time she and their daughters Chloe, 5, and Bianca, 8, saw their husband and father was when he shipped out with his unit Jan. 21.

Candace Reave, another Army wife, said she came home feeling “so let down, so hurt and disappointed” after a Tuesday night meeting called by the military for wives of servicemen deployed in Iraq. “We didn’t learn anything new.”

“This is the second time we’d been given a time for our husbands to come home,” said Reave, 27, whose husband is a private first class with the 315th Scout Headquarters, 3rd Infantry Division. “We were told in May they’d be here in June. We were making welcome-home banners and I had bought tickets for my husband for a NASCAR race June 5.

“Then we were told, ‘No, they weren’t coming,’ ” said Reave, a mother of two who works at a day-care center. “They were on a mission to stabilize the area.... Then they were to come home by Aug. 1. Now it’s indefinite.”

On Monday, the Army announced that the Iraq deployment of about 9,000 troops from the 3rd Infantry Division, one of the spearheads of the U.S.-led invasion, was being extended until further notice. Last week, the division’s commander, Maj. Gen. Buford Blount III, said he hoped he could have all of his soldiers back at Ft. Stewart, the division’s home base, by September.

Now, officials at Ft. Stewart told reporters, that time frame has evaporated, and there is no new one. That is a cruel disappointment for some families, and it struck some in this town outside the base gate as unfair.

“They went over there, did a good job and now they need to come home,” Michelle Morrison, 36, manager at the Western Sizzlin Steak House, Hinesville’s oldest and largest, said during a pause in Tuesday’s dinner service. “We need to bring them back, because there are people dying over there.”

Eden, 38, said she was already suffering from depression when she got the bad news from a girlfriend. On Tuesday, she felt so emotionally down that she phoned the base mental health clinic but was told she couldn’t get an appointment before July 29.

“They told me they were only seeing soldiers coming back from Iraq,” the Army wife said. “They know what this town is going through. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

At First Baptist Church of Hinesville, about 1 1/2 miles from the base, Dora Sprinkel, church secretary and outreach volunteer, said wives whose husbands would not be coming home as expected had been calling asking for support and prayers.

To assist and comfort families, the church in this town of 30,000 decided to extend its Operation Enduring Separation, a monthly support group that provides spouses and children of absent soldiers with activities such as trips to the beach, Chinese cooking classes and lessons on how to check the oil level in a vehicle.

Despite the heartache, Sprinkel said most parishioners were taking the unexpectedly prolonged tour of Iraq duty in stride, as just another unpredictable turn in military life.

“We’re used to this and everything is going real well,” Sprinkel said.

Some of the wives of servicemen from Ft. Stewart now in Iraq had scheduled their own meeting for Saturday, but Kimberly Hernandez, whose husband, Carlos, is a staff sergeant with the 3rd Infantry Division, said she canceled the gathering, fearing it would send the wrong message.

“It became negative within the media,” Hernandez said. ‘We were just getting together to talk as wives.”

She said her two children constantly ask her when Daddy is coming home and that she is frustrated by the emotional ups and downs caused by his delayed homecoming. But she said she didn’t want to be associated with anything that might seem to be a protest.

“That’s not what it’s about,” she said. “We’re for our troops, we’re for our soldiers, we’re for our country.”

Despite being unhappy and consumed by worry for her husband’s safety, Eden also said she supports him and the commander in chief, President Bush, who ordered the U.S. military into action in Iraq. “I support my president; I support my husband 100%,” she said. “He’s committed.”

For many families, coping with the unknown of what happens next is the hardest part. Wanda Marvin, a 30-year-old mother of three, saw her husband off four months ago. Jonathan Marvin, 31, is now serving in Iraq with the 240th Forward Surgical Team of the 4th Infantry Division.

“He didn’t know when he would come back,” said Marvin, a cook at the Waffle House restaurant. “It’s indefinite right now. I’m upset because I have friends and loved ones who are in Iraq and have been there longer than my husband, and they aren’t coming back. It makes me think that my husband will be away much longer than we thought.”

Reave said her husband, Scott, 30, left Oct. 24, and that she hasn’t heard from him in five weeks. “If you’re going to give us a timeline [for the soldiers’ return], don’t give us two or three different ones,” she said. “Every time you give us a new one, it’s harder to take.”

For two years, Dominique Marabello has been married to a sergeant in the 3rd Infantry Division. An Army brat herself, she sounded disappointed but resigned to the fact that her husband, Anthony, would be separated from her and their 9-month-old son for longer than she had thought.

“My son is teething right now, and I was really hoping that his Daddy would be back before his 1st birthday on Oct. 3. It will be one year in September that they have been deployed,” she said.

“I’m upset that he isn’t coming,” Marabello said. But she said that when she gets lonely, she talks to her mother, who lives in Hinesville. “She tells me to be strong, that it will be OK,” Marabello said.

“I see my husband in my son, and that’s what keeps me going,” Marabello said. “I can’t break down. I don’t want to cry in front of him.”

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Dahlburg reported from Hinesville, Sloan from Atlanta. Times researcher Anna M. Virtue in Miami contributed to this report.