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Article Published: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 - 12:00:00 AM PST

Guardsmen coming home

By Charles F. Bostwick, Staff Writer

PALMDALE -- The Antelope Valley will welcome home on Monday more than 60 National Guardsmen back from a year in Iraq.

The Palmdale-based tank company's soldiers landed Sunday night at Vandenberg Air Force Base and are spending six days at Camp Roberts in Central California before getting home Monday by buses.

"It would be awful nice if they saw a strong Antelope Valley community stepping out to say 'welcome,"' Mayor Jim Ledford said.

A short welcome-home ceremony is planned for Monday between about 11 a.m. and noon Monday at Poncitlan Square, on 9th Street East south of Palmdale Boulevard.

City officials from Palmdale and Apple Valley, where some of the men live, will welcome them. Organizers are trying to arrange for the Palmdale High School band to perform.

Before the guardsmen's arrival, their wives will be at the nearby Chimbole Cultural Center for a meeting with Guard officials, and city parks staffers will do arts and crafts projects with their children, city spokeswoman Barbara La Fata said.

The unit -- Company B of the 185th Armor Regiment's 1st Battalion -- is returning to California after spending more than one year on active duty, most of the time in Iraq.

The company was among more than 900 California National Guard soldiers who were in Iraq as the 185th Task Force.

The 185th's soldiers guarded truck convoys and did other security duties, and also dug wells and repaired culverts, restored hundreds of miles of roads, reconstructed bridges and rebuilt a school.

Five 185th troopers were killed in combat: two were shot in ambushes, one died in a mortar attack, and two were killed by improvised explosive devices, Lt. Col. Doug Hart said.

None of the dead was from Palmdale. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger attended the unit's send-off at Fort Irwin near Barstow last March.

Schwarzenegger issued a statement about the unit's return: "Your mission was a successful one and because of your efforts, Americans and Iraqis have greater freedom and democracy. I want to thank you on behalf of all Americans for helping safeguard this incredible gift of liberty we often take for granted."

Charles F. Bostwick, (661) 267-5742 chuck.bostwick@dailynews.com

Palmdale troops headed home

Guard soldiers from 185th Task Force receive a hero's welcome

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press on Wednesday, February 16, 2005.

By JAMES C. LOUGHRIE
Valley Press Staff Writer

WELCOME HOME! - Sgt. Michael Jackson, a member of the 185th California Army National Guard, is welcomed home by his family, wife Wendy, son Jasper and daughters Elyssa and Amanda Jackson during a ceremony Tuesday at Arrowhead Stadium in San Bernardino.

RON SIDDLE/Valley Press

SAN BERNARDINO - As they marched into the baseball stadium Tuesday, the soldiers heard cheers probably louder than had ever been bellowed from those seats.

California Army National Guard soldiers from the 185th Task Force received a hero's welcome at Arrowhead Stadium in San Bernardino. About 200 of them reunited with their families after serving one year in Iraq, some coming home to babies they've never met.

For three Antelope Valley women waiting for their husbands to return home, Tuesday was an eagerly anticipated day because it would make their families whole again.

The three men, Master Sgt. Rick Casper, Sgt. Mario Juarez and Sgt. Michael Jackson, originally served with the National Guard unit out of Palmdale, but were transferred upon activation.

While they each had a two-week leave to reunite with their families, this is the first time the three men could return home for good since they were activated in November 2003.

"I want to go to the Outback and have a Blooming Onion," Mario Juarez said while embracing his wife Cristina, about the first thing he wanted to do.

"It just feels so good," he said about reuniting with her permanently. "It's a moment we've been waiting for since day one."

About two hours before their reunion, Cristina Juarez had been sitting on pins and needles waiting for her husband.

"I can barely contain myself," Cristina Juarez said. As she sat in the stadium seats near third base, Juarez reflected on the past 1½ years since her husband was called into active duty.

"I don't even know how I got through with it," she said.

While the two normally live in Palmdale, for the last year, Sgt. Juarez lived in Iraq and Cristina Juarez lived in London.

An anthropology student, Cristina Juarez knew if she just stayed home while her husband was gone, she would feel lonely in the house by herself.

So she entered study abroad courses and spent a semester in London.

The time there, she said, was well worth it when he received a two-week leave.

Mario Juarez met his wife in London and the two traveled to Spain and Switzerland during the leave.

Since he has been gone, the two stayed in contact by phone calls. Cristina Juarez said her husband would make her laugh and lessen the danger he was in overseas.

"He'd say, 'I'm just camping with the boys.' "

When the two would speak, Cristina Juarez said he would spend the majority of their conversation asking about her.

"He was more worried about how I was going to get through this," she said.

Sgt. Michael Jackson (not the entertainer) was surrounded by his three children when he said what he was doing over the next few days.

"Let's see," he said while looking at his children. "I'm going to a rock concert, going fishing and playing miniature golf," he said, looking at a different child for each activity he listed.

Though he was half the world away, he said the time went by fast, until he heard he was going home.

"This went so fast until we started packing," he said, with the excitement of seeing his family again making the days more difficult to pass.

Before she saw him again, his wife, Wendy, stood wearing a custom-made T-shirt containing a welcome back message to her husband.

When he was with the Bravo unit out of Palmdale, Wendy Jackson was one of the key communicators with other Guard wives as to what was going on. In between making welcome home signs, talking to other Guard wives and planning festivities to welcome back the troops, she has had little time to think about what this day would mean to her.

"I think I've just been so busy with trying to plan this, I don't think I've had time to think about him coming home," she said.

Wendy Jackson is one of the people organizing the homecoming celebration for the rest of the Palmdale-based Bravo unit, which is expected in the coming weeks.

She'll be one of the people at the National Guard Armory on Friday at 2 p.m. when civic groups interested in helping plan the welcome home bash are invited to come lend their support.

"We want to make sure they get the welcome home they deserve," she said.

Rick Casper was speechless after he saw the cadre of people waiting for him.

"It's something I thought I would never see," he said.

When the men were called into active duty, they had to place their lives on hold.

Casper knows this well, because he was in the middle of getting married.

His then-fiancée Phyllis was in the middle of preparing the event, with location, meals and guests already set.

Before transferring with the San Bernardino unit, he was training with a Los Alamitos-based unit when he had to receive permission from a general to attend his wedding.

Phyllis Casper, who spent less than a month with her husband of more than a year, waited Tuesday with about 20 people. Rick Casper's father and stepmother came in from Lake Havasu, his brother came from San Francisco and several friends from Palmdale, Lancaster and Santa Clarita made the trek to San Bernardino.

"We never just call him Rick, it's 'Hero Rick,' " Sharon Ventrice, a friend, said.

Phyllis Casper, with Ventrice and friend Barbie Aston, were three of a dozen people who met regularly to pray for servicemen overseas.

Some of the members, such as Casper and Aston, whose son was in Iraq, were affiliated with the military.

Others, like Ventrice, have no family in the military but were there for their friends.

The three women held up hand-made signs with pictures of Rick Casper in his uniform.

"I just can't tell you what a relief it is," Phyllis Casper said. The day she received the news from her husband last week that he would be home, she also received a phone call from her son, Spc. Russell Pearlman.

Pearlman, with the 82nd Airborne Division, was shot in the leg during Fallujah combat and is being medically discharged for the bullet wound and shrapnel in his leg.

"I think I'm going to have some closure now that everybody's coming home," she said.

jloughrie@avpress.com

Our National Guard comes marching home

1498th National Guard company (separate page)

National Guard readiness center near Lancaster's Fox Field.

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press on Sunday, July 25, 2004.

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

They are not named Johnny (well, a couple of them are). And they are not saints, (well, maybe a few are in the running). But thank God all of our local National Guard troops deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom have come marching home. So far.

This weekend, the city of Paso Robles honors troops of the National Guard assigned to the 1498th Transportation Company. Dozens of Antelope Valley GIs served in this unit, which combined companies that were drawn from Lancaster, Riverside and Sacramento.

Today, other Antelope Valley units of the Guard and Reserve are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Palmdale's armored warriors of Bravo Company, 1/185th of Task Force Tacoma are based north of Baghdad. Summer heat of 125 degrees bakes their armored vehicles and body armor.

From Edwards Air Force Base, Reserve air crew from Detachment Bravo of Marine Aircraft Group 46 are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Other reservists have deployed from Air Force ranks at Edwards.

Paso Robles citizenry picked this weekend to honor our local Guard soldiers from the first unit in this area to be deployed as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Community groups answering a local radio call-in raised more than $5,300 to throw a shindig for the Iraqi campaign veterans.

It would be great to see a similar effort by our Antelope Valley communities. Last year our local chambers of commerce raised thousands of dollars to equip our Guard soldiers.

The combat truckers who served the first lousy year of guerrilla war in Iraq logged more than 2.2 million miles of bad road while families anguished daily about the fate of their loved ones.

Arriving with the Guard combat truckers as an embedded journalist last year, we deployed with the mistaken impression the war was over and the mission would be a clean-up operation.

Local troops arrived just as car bombs and Improvised Explosive Devices started killing GIs daily in nasty towns like Fallujah, Ramadi and the southern outskirts of Baghdad. As Carol Peterlin, wife of Capt. Paul Peterlin, noted, the lives of all these soldiers would change forever.

It is a different war from Vietnam, different from Korea, and not the low casualty, highly effective lightning war conflicts that marked the 1990s. Our military technology edge that carried our troops speedily to Baghdad has not helped in a vicious war of attrition with a cruel foe.

GIs from the 1498th won three Bronze Stars for Valor, and have been awarded three more Bronze Stars, Meritorious. Ten Purple Hearts for wounded are on the awards list. Also, 114 Army Commendation medals, and 140 Army Achievement medals for GIs who did their job.

The troops returned home with mixed feelings. They wondered about a command structure that knew how to win lightning war, but was adrift over how to secure peace.

They wondered why they drew short rations on bottled water and meals. They wondered why they were sent to war with lousy maps, poor communications gear and outdated body armor.

They wondered why leave was canceled during their hard tours.

They wondered why families and local chambers of commerce had to raise money to buy cheap, efficient handie-talkie radios that could save lives. Why didn't Army command provide the gear?

And they wondered why when they arrived in the desert at Camp Victory with temperatures rising above 150 degrees (yes, Fahrenheit 150), why some units had air-conditioning for tents, and others lacked same. Our troops waited through summer to get some air-conditioned tents.

This isn't whining. The privations were hard. The desert is as hot as Korea was cold.

Better planning would have helped troops in the desert, just like it would have helped troops at Chosin. Troops in the "rear" never lacked for water rations, abundant food or air conditioning.

Our Guard troops arrived wearing Vietnam-style flak vests that would do little more than catch shrapnel splinters. State-of-the-art vests that can stop a bullet didn't arrive until December for Guard troops in combat support roles. Ditto for armored Humvees. A national scandal.

Stealth bombers save lives by sweeping enemies from the battlefield. But body armor for ground troops is essential.

Guard and Reserve carried out Military Police and transport assignments. They were, for all practical purposes, combat infantry who happened to be driving trucks or Humvees. Without losing a life to the Killed in Action ledger, "our" troops engaged in at least a dozen major hostile actions and those 10 Purple Hearts are pinned on for righteous wounds.

A national conversation boils on whether invading Iraq helped the war on terrorism or diluted it. Argument swirls over whether we are using these gallants as shields against future terror or targets in a shooting gallery. Many wounded are amputees maimed by remote-detonated bombs.

Debate rages about whether Guard and Reserves have been used well, or misused, by leveeing them to serve longer in a combat zone than regulars, and by cutting so deep into the ranks of Guard and Reserve to deploy soldiers who are often the age of the parents of the regulars. And sometimes the age of grandparents. Employers are impatient for return of citizen soldiers.

There were the available reserves assigned to tap for homeland defense, to aid states in natural disasters such as fires, and to be a second line of defense. The question arises continuously about why we are using so many Guard and Reserve because the regulars are spread so thin.

History will judge, and perhaps harshly, but this should be said. These citizen soldiers fought one of this nation's wars with the full faith required and they deserve the credit for that. My joy and pride is to share company of these honorable soldiers, who, all came marching home. This time.