For Guard Unit’s Kin, No End to the Grieving

The soldiers had already started sending home their DVD players, decks of cards and extra deodorant. The National Guard had organized a party so kids could paint welcome-home banners.

The mood here in southeastern Wisconsin was almost festive: After an endless year in Iraq, the 157 soldiers of the 32nd Military Police Company were coming home.

But last Friday, phones began ringing in the homes of the soldiers’ spouses, parents and siblings. Spc. Michelle Witmer, one of their own, had been killed when her Humvee came under fire on a routine patrol through Baghdad. Shaken, the families of the 32nd reminded one another that the rest of the troops were already packing.

Then the phones rang again.

On Easter Sunday, the soldiers of the 32nd had learned that they would not be coming home next month as planned.

The Pentagon had promised American forces in Iraq that they would spend no more than 365 days in hostile territory. But this week, officials said they would order more than 10,000 troops to stay on beyond their yearlong tour. The 32nd was one of the first to get that order.

“We were so close to getting them home intact. Then to rip our hopes away like that.... We were devastated,” said Krista Sorenson of Waterloo, Wis.

Her husband, Sgt. Denis Sorenson, had planned to be home by May 10 for their daughter’s eighth birthday. He had missed her seventh.

“I have felt and thought of every terrible emotion you can think of,” the sergeant wrote his wife, hours after learning that he would not make it home for Justine’s birthday. “We were so close. I never saw this coming.”

News of the 120-day extension angered families already strained with grief over Witmer’s death.

Many of the soldiers’ relatives felt they knew the long-haired 20-year-old from New Berlin. She and her older sister, Rachel, both served in the 32nd. Her identical twin, Charity, was also in Iraq, with a medical battalion. The soldier-sisters, who joined the Guard to help pay for college, had been featured several times on local TV and in the papers.

Their parents even posted the girls’ letters online: Michelle’s description of the filthy Iraqi police station where she worked the night shift; photos of the disabled children she cuddled at a Baghdad orphanage; her request for a care package of lemonade mix, flip-flops and “anything that is frivolous ... [to make me] feel like a girl again.”

“We’d gotten to know the sisters through all the coverage of the family. We were grieving,” said Janet Gatlin, who lives in this lakeside town midway between Milwaukee and Madison. “Then to get the news of the extension. It was like, ‘This can’t be happening.’ We’re living a nightmare.”

Her husband, 2nd Lt. Anthony Gatlin, broke down when he told his wife that she would be alone for another summer.

Several officers from the 32nd had been boarding a plane for Kuwait to plan the unit’s demobilization when the extension order arrived, Gatlin told her in a phone call. The officers were pulled off the plane. They were told not only that they’d be staying in Iraq, but that they’d also be redeployed south of Baghdad.

It had taken months for the soldiers to turn a bombed-out palace into a comfortable base. Using their civilian skills in plumbing, construction and engineering, they had restored electricity and water. They even set up a microwave, in which they tried -- not very successfully -- to make pizza. Now they face moving, most likely to a tent camp, without air conditioning or e-mail access.

“That’s the first time,” Janet Gatlin said, “that my husband has ever cried to me on the phone.”

When the 32nd was activated on March 15, 2003, their orders called for a year of active duty.

But last summer, the Pentagon set out a new policy: A year of active duty meant a year of “boots on the ground” in hostile territory. The two months the 32nd had spent mobilizing, training and deploying to Iraq did not count. Anxious relatives back home circled a new date on their calendars: May 9. That would mark precisely one year since the 32nd had touched down in the Middle East.

The boots-on-the-ground policy had been designed to boost troop morale by setting a fixed date for homecomings. For the men and women of the 32nd, it seemed to work. As their one-year deadline approached this spring, the soldiers excitedly told their families to stop sending mail. They’d soon be back to hear all the news in person.

“The concentration of the unit has shifted to packing up,” one soldier noted in a dispatch for a family newsletter.

“As we start to count down the days, the excitement can be heard in voices behind tired and tested eyes,” another wrote.

Michelle Witmer was no less buoyant. For months, she had been working 12-hour shifts in a police station that often resembled an emergency ward, with bloodied Iraqis staggering in seeking first aid for gunshots, stab wounds and broken bones. Patrolling a treacherous neighborhood, she had several close calls with improvised explosive devices. Members of her unit had earned more than 20 Purple Hearts for combat injuries.

“Time does not fly,” she wrote her dad.

Last month, however, Michelle’s mood brightened as she began planning for her homecoming. “There is finally a light at the end of the tunnel!” she e-mailed.

Back in Wisconsin, soldiers’ relatives booked summer trips to Disneyland or planned long-delayed honeymoons. They debated what to bring when they met the troops’ plane: Pizza? McDonald’s? Cheesecake?

Justine Sorenson came up with a long list of all she wanted to do with her dad: Show him how well she could read. Show him how she’d learned to hit a softball. Show him her American Girl doll. Hug him.

“I just want to see him come off that plane,” she said.

Amid the frenzy, a few families managed to hold their excitement in check.

“I’ve been a military wife for 20 years,” said Keleen Soldner of Racine. “I know to plan for the worst.” But few listened to her warnings.

Jessica Lopez, for one, was too busy planning her wedding. She had married Staff Sgt. Agustin Lopez in a hasty courthouse ceremony just before he deployed. Now they wanted a formal church wedding. Lopez reserved a date: June 12. She bought her dress, hired a florist, ordered a cake. She mailed the invitations.

Then she learned of Witmer’s death.

Then she learned of the extension.

And now she’s calling caterers, asking for refunds -- all the while holding a running conversation with God.

“If I make it through the next 120 days without him,” Lopez begs, “if I stay strong, if I give up however many thousands we spent on the wedding, will you please, please bring him back alive?”

Like other family members, Lopez says she’s proud of her husband, believes in his mission and supports him -- and the military action in Iraq -- 100%. Then she thinks of the Witmers.

She believes Michelle would still be alive if the 32nd had returned home in March at the end of its original one-year tour. She wonders whether this second extension is a bad omen. She fears another phone call.

Adding to the stress is the uncertainty. The 32nd has not received a written order that confirms the extension. And no one’s sure how to interpret the verbal command that came down over the weekend. Do the 120 days start now, or after the first year of duty is up May 9? Will the Army count only days on the ground in Iraq, or will the soldiers get credit for the several weeks it can take to travel home? Is 120 days a maximum? Or could the tour of duty be extended yet again?

On the unlikely chance that there’s still time to reverse the order before it’s sent in writing, relatives have bombarded local politicians with pleas for the unit’s return this spring.

“We want our husbands home,” Gatlin said. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

But she’s not letting herself hope. “I can’t bear to be disappointed again.”