Town fights fears as guardsmen deploy again

Town fights fears as guardsmen deploy again


By Kevin Maurer and Mitch Weiss - The Associated Press
Posted : Sunday Dec 21, 2008 15:36:36 EST

HAMLET, N.C. — Christian Tyler knew exactly how to get ready for her first day of school: She slipped into her uniform, poured a bowl of Apple Jacks and plopped down on the living room couch to watch cartoons and wait for her dad.

The 9-year-old knew nothing about what was to come next.

Because her dad is a part-time soldier in the National Guard, the house, the school and the town — they were new.

All of it came together in the past few weeks as Christian’s father, Jobel Barbosa, prepared to leave home this month to train for a yearlong deployment to Iraq. She wound up with her grandmother with plans to spend her days at Ashley Chapel Elementary, where she starts with no friends and wonders during class whether her father will be safe.

“I’m scared,” she said softly. “I don’t want him to go.”

It has been nearly six years since the United States invaded Iraq, and while the war is not forgotten, the singular sacrifices of America’s all-volunteer military and their families sometimes slip the minds of civilians focused on their own pain amid the deepening economic crisis.

There are roughly 100,000 members of the National Guard and Reserve on active duty, weekend warriors who leave home to fight on battlefields half a world away. In 2009, they will include the 76 soldiers of E Company, 120th Combined Arms Battalion, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, North Carolina National Guard.

Each deployment shrouds the soldiers, their loved ones — and especially in places such as Hamlet, their communities — in uncertainty.

Christian, a nervous honor student with long black hair facing days without dad, joins suddenly single mothers struggling to take care of the kids, rookie soldiers with nervous dreams of battle and newlyweds with nightmares their spouses won’t return.

“When you pull all of them out of here, it’s not like this community will become a ghost town. But it has a ripple effect in a small town,” said longtime Hamlet Police Chief John Haywood, who grew up with many of the company’s men. “Every soldier has family and friends. And this will be on their minds until their loved ones come home.”
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