-
Home
Archived Messages
Bar & Game Room
Baseball
Bits & Pieces
Boys State Info
Calendar of Events
Commanders Message
Contact Us
Documents
Events Archives
Girls State
History
Ladies Auxiliary
Links
Meetings
MEMORIES
Menu
Message Board
Officers
Photo Gallery
SAL's
Scoop Newsletter
Taps
Veterans Corner
Veterans History Project
-
|
Civilian-to-soldier
transition is difficult on several levels
-
Feb. 2008 - From Courier-Post
-
-
-
FORT DIX — There's a moment, maybe when he puts on his
uniform or drives away from his house, when Kyle Rowand transforms from an
18-year-old electrician from Gloucester City to an infantryman in the New Jersey
Army National Guard.
"They're two different people because it's two different worlds," said Rowand,
who recently returned from two weeks training in Mississippi. "You just change
your bearing. You change your frame of mind."
When Rowand is deployed to Iraq this summer with the 50th Infantry Brigade, he
will leave the civilian life for a year. Wiring receptacles will take a back
seat to a higher cause. His girlfriend Laurel says she will wait for him and by
law, so will his employer, Diversified Electric in Washington Township.
Rowand will be one of about 3,000 New Jersey National Guard soldiers (589 in the
tri-county area) leaving for Iraq this summer -- the state's largest deployment
of National Guardsmen since World War II. While the deployment will put a strain
on local employers losing workers, more than 800 companies and organizations in
New Jersey have signed statements of support for the Guard and Reserve.
In an effort to better understand what employees in the National Guard
experience in the months and weeks before they deploy, dozens of bosses and
supervisors attended a unique all-day event at the Lawrenceville National Guard
Armory and the Fort Dix Joint Readiness Center hosted by the Employer Support of
The Guard and Reserve.
"The day is designed to help employers understand what the soldiers are doing
when they're taking off work," said Hank Pierre, executive assistant of New
Jersey's ESGR committee. One thing was immediately clear to all the employers --
soldiers don't just show up on the day of deployment with a duffel bag and hop
on a plane. There's myriad tasks and assignments the troops go through, whether
it's filling out reams of paperwork or training on an eerie re-creation of an
Iraqi street, with burned out cars sitting beneath a blanket of artificial
stars.
The soldiers sit for dental exams and have to figure out who is going to shovel
snow at their house while they're gone. They get dog tags, medication if needed
and pose for front and side digital photographs, a seemingly mundane task that
could prove to be profound.
"If they get captured, we need a good picture of them," Pierre said.
Paul Rivell, one of Rowand's bosses at Diversified Electric, rode in a UH-60
Blackhawk helicopter from Lawrenceville to Fort Dix with other employers. Rivell
said it's difficult losing any employee for an extended period of time.
Rowand is one of 14 employees at Diversified Electric and it likely won't hire
anyone to replace him while he's gone.
"He has to do his duty," Rivell said.
Col. Carmen Venticinque, the state chairman of New Jersey's ESGR committee, said
his volunteer agency was created in 1972 as a way to support the employers who
lose personnel during deployments. They're also available to help mediate
between the two if problems arise when they come home. Those are rare, he said.
"New Jersey's employers have been supportive, overall, of their guardsmen and
reservists," he said.
Federal law requires that soldiers on active duty with the National Guard and
Reserve units be given their jobs and health benefits back almost immediately
upon their return. Their seniority and job status cannot change, and if their
peers got promotions or raises while they were gone, they do as well.
If a member of the National Guard is a lawyer or a surgeon in civilian life,
they'll be taking a pay cut when they serve unless their employer offers
differential pay. Basic military pay is determined by the length of time in the
service and rank, but there are nontaxable allowances for food and housing,
which fluctuate based on family size.
All state, county and municipal employees in the National Guard get 90 paid
military leave days per year, Venticinque said. Members of other reserve
branches get 30 days. State employees on active duty get differential pay, but
that is optional for county and municipal employees.
Small business owners in the National Guard have more acute problems,
Venticinque said. They may not have anyone to run the business while they're
gone and if it were a main source of income, financial issues could be
significant.
"I've had some good stories and some horror stories. It's a problem and it will
likely continue to be one," Venticinque said of small business owners.
Right now, all small business owners can do is apply for assistance through
organizations such as the U.S. Small Business Administration or The New Jersey
State Family Readiness Council, Venticinque said.
All of the paperwork and financial concerns can weigh on a soldier with a family
to support. Rowand may not have those responsibilities, but that doesn't mean he
isn't stressed.
"It's hard to be a civilian and work every day and find out you're leaving for a
full year to go to a war zone," he said. "It's hard to concentrate on working
and having that in the back of your mind."
Throughout the ESGR orientation day at Fort Dix, employers were given ample
reminders of how serious life in a war zone could be. Some were subtle, like a
wall clock that displayed Iraqi time. Others, like the booming explosions of an
improvised explosive device on an interactive computer training program, were
jarring.
But one reminder, the last of the day, will likely stay with all of them long
after their employees travel to Fort Bliss, Texas, and later Iraq. It consisted
of four "battlefield crosses," a symbolic grave marker made up of an M-16, stuck
barrel-first into a sandbag, with a helmet perched on the gun's butt and dog
tags hanging from its grip. A pair of boots sat in front of each sandbag. These
four memorials sat in the Hall of Remembrance in Fort Dix in honor of four New
Jersey National Guard members killed in Iraq in 2004.
For Tracy Outlaw, a safety manager at Waste Management in Camden and an Army
veteran, the display made it clear -- the soldiers, not employers, are making
the sacrifice.
"This is real life. They're putting their lives on the line for us," she said.
"Hopefully, this memorial doesn't grow."
|
