As Iraq war wanes, National Guard families still struggle

As Iraq war wanes, families still struggle

By Kevin Maurer and Mitch Weiss - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday May 2, 2009 8:55:48 EDT

[Editor’s Note: The 30th Heavy Brigade of the North Carolina National Guard returns to Iraq this year, including the 76 combat engineers of E Company. Most of them are from Hamlet, a close-knit community long abandoned by the good jobs that made it a prosperous railroad town. The Associated Press has followed several members of E Company and their loved ones in an occasional series as the unit trained for combat.]

HAMLET, N.C. — Spc. Jobel Barbosa had spent the past hour with his family in a parking lot after a public ceremony marking his unit’s deployment to a war that’s coming to an end. It was time to go.

As other National Guardsmen boarded a white bus behind him, Barbosa hugged his mother, two sisters, his daughter, his girlfriend and their baby girl, then turned to join the other troops. His four-day leave, the last time he would see his family for a year, was over.

“It takes everything I got to keep it inside,” he said.

While the gaze of generals has drifted east to Afghanistan, the last waves of American troops are headed into Iraq. Among them: 4,000 soldiers of the North Carolina National Guard’s Heavy Brigade Combat team, including the 76 men of Barbosa’s bomb-clearing unit, E Company, which departed days ago from its base in tiny Hamlet.

It is six years since the U.S. invaded Iraq, and fewer soldiers are dying there. That does little to console the families of those just shipping out — the troops’ absence at home causes as much strain there as their presence in a faraway combat zone.

“We’re praying nothing happens,” said Barbosa’s mother, Rosa Lamourt. “But you can never be sure.”

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As Iraq war wanes, families still struggle