WASHINGTON -- More than a thousand Maryland National Guard troops are due to return from Iraq this spring, but essential programs to help ease them into civilian life are underfunded and in disarray, according to Maryland National Guard and U.S. officials.
The Pentagon has resisted funding efforts by Maryland and other states that have sought to avoid problems experienced by previously returning National Guard soldiers, including nervousness, inappropriate anger, sleeplessness, family disputes, marital problems and alcohol abuse.
That leaves the Maryland Guard scrambling to find the volunteers, donations and its own patchwork funding to help reorient soldiers from the dangerous, high-adrenalin battlefield to the joys and stresses of home, family and schools or civilian jobs.
The Maryland Guard's reintegration program is intended to help soldiers recognize whether they have problems and to know where to get help. It includes careful health assessments of the returning soldiers, and a series of seminars and workshops on everything from legal and tax problems to parenting skills, veterans benefits, marriage counseling and anger management.
The Maryland Guard already runs these programs on a small scale, but meeting the anticipated bulge of soldiers returning this spring will be difficult.
"We are operating on a shoestring, begging and borrowing and trying to scrape together money," said Lt. Col. Michael Gafney, the Maryland National Guard flight surgeon who manages Maryland's reintegration programs for returning soldiers.
Seemingly at his wits end, Gafney, who operates out of a shabby one-story building in Edgewood, said half in jest that his latest funding brainstorm is to ask organizations and corporations to "sponsor" groups of soldiers to ensure they get the assistance they need.
Weeks earlier than expected, soldiers of the Maryland National Guard's 158th Cavalry Regiment are due to begin arriving at Fort Dix, N.J. for demobilization March 2, Guard officials confirmed. The headquarters troops of the 58th Brigade Combat Team are scheduled to follow April 1, and the 175th Infantry Regiment starting April 29th, according to current plans.
After five years of war, the military has realized that it needs to make more effort to help returning soldiers than it has in the past. National Guard troops are hit even harder than active duty soldiers because they are separated upon demobilization from the comrades with whom they have developed deep bonds.
