Sat, Apr 17, 2004 page7

• Iraq tours extended, homecomings must wait

  • NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  The triumphant display of fighter jets over the nearby town of Leesville has been postponed.

  So, too, has the celebratory parade down Third Street and the floats featuring decorated veterans and musicians playing big band music. At the Landmark Hotel, just up the road from the entrance to this expansive Army base, the military wives who had traveled cross-country for promised reunions with their husbands are packing their bags and heading home.

  For Eboni Abrams, the "welcome home" signs and the march of red, white and blue ribbons up and down Colony Boulevard feel like cruel taunts, now that her husband, Specialist Roy Abrams, is spending an extra three months in Iraq along with 2,800 other troops who were supposed to return to Fort Polk in the coming weeks.

  "I feel bad, real bad, like I have a hole in my heart," said Abrams, 25, who was looking forward to a surprise vacation to Disney World for her husband this weekend.

  Across the country, thousands of military families who expected joyous reunions in the coming weeks are now trying to grapple with dashed hopes and renewed fears that their loved ones will have to face several more months of perilous duty in Iraq.

  In Utah, family members whose relatives are in the 1457th Engineer Battalion of the Utah National Guard had expected them home within days. They were told at a tense meeting in Spanish Fork on Thursday that after 14 months in Iraq the battalion's tour would be prolonged.

  In announcing the extended tours of duty, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the 20,000 troops who are to remain in Iraq for up to three months were needed to quell the latest surge in violence and to protect supply convoys that have come under increasing attack in the past two weeks. General John Abiziad, the top US officer in the Middle East, said earlier this week that he needed an additional two brigades of troops to keep the number of US troops in Iraq at about 130,000.

  The extension effectively cancels the Pentagon's plans for reducing troop levels to about 115,000, or lower, this spring, and breaks a department commitment last fall to limit troops' time to 12 months.

  "We regret having to extend those individuals," Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.

  "But the country is at war and we need to do what is necessary to succeed," he said.

  The Pentagon's order affects a wide range of troops, from infantry and helicopter crews to military police and logistics specialists, in both Iraq and Kuwait.

  The extensions affect about 11,000 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division, based in Germany, 3,200 troops from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment and an unspecified number of soldiers from other posts.

  Lieutenant-General Richard Cody, the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations, said that about 6,000 Reserve and National Guard soldiers from 20 states will have their tours extended, raising new concerns among some experts on military personnel.

  Major Ron Elliott, a spokesman at Fort Polk, said the extension had come in the middle of the Second Armored Cavalry regiment's "flowing" back home, with about 700 servicemen having arrived at Fort Polk and 2,800 still in the Iraq or Kuwait, all of whom were expected to be back by May 11.

  "In part, it's because of their expertise and their combat experience" that they were chosen to stay, he said. Some had already reached Kuwait for the journey home and were turned around before they could board planes.

  Here in Leesville, the homecoming party, billed as the "Louisiana Homefront Celebration," was scheduled for June 19 and had been in the works since the fall.

  Mayors from across central Louisiana and the area's congressional delegation had been involved in planning a series of events.

  The festivities were expected to draw tens of thousands of people to downtown Leesville, a town of 7,000 whose livelihoods are integrally linked to Fort Polk.

  Jessica Halverson, whose husband, a second lieutenant, has been in Iraq for more than a year, said it was important not to complain.

  "I was disappointed, of course, but you give yourself a few hours to feel sorry for yourself, but then you put on your good face for everybody else and just keep on," Halverson said. "You've got to have a lot of strength to be a military wife, and how you react affects the other wives."

  After being forced to cancel a planned family holiday at the beach, Halverson said she took her 3-year-old daughter, Emma Kate, to the zoo and to the movies to keep her mind distracted from the disappointment.

  "It's kind of like a blanket of sadness for the first couple days," she said.
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