Maryland National Guard

Kayden Hoskins can say "Daddy" now, but she could not when her father, Spc. Tom Hoskins of the Maryland National Guard, left for Iraq in February. The 15-month-old from Havre de Grace has known Daddy mostly as a voice on the phone, a man reading her a book on a DVD sent from far away, a face in a framed photograph that on occasion she kisses. Dressed in a pink winter jacket, brown knitted hat and pink wool gloves, Kayden turned up Saturday morning with her mother, Nicole, and her paternal grandparents to join the crowd of several hundred family members and friends welcoming home troops of the 1729th Forward Support Maintenance Company.

Maj. Mark Zinno Citarella was scheduled to spend Thanksgiving in Baghdad. The commander of a public affairs unit in the Maryland National Guard, he figures he would have joined fellow officers on a chow line, serving the holiday meal to enlisted troops. But with the announcement in October that the United States would pull all troops out of Iraq by the end of the year, his unit returned to Baltimore earlier this month. Now he is looking forward to spending the day with loved ones.

At long last, Osama bin Laden is gone. I'll never forget the horror of September 11th, and I am relieved this monster of terrorism has been dispatched. It was about time. Now that our mission has been accomplished, it's time to bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, and get the Maryland National Guard out of Egypt. America's Middle East adventures should be scaled back and ended. After nearly a decade of war, the loss of thousands of lives and trillions of American tax dollars, I say enough.

Ellen Ingram Fretterd, who was known as the "first lady" of the Maryland National Guard, died of cancer Dec. 3 at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. The Federalsburg resident was 75. Born Ellen Ingram in Pike, W.Va., and raised in Seaford, Del., she was a graduate of Seaford High School. She earned an associate's degree from Chesapeake College and a bachelor of arts from what was then Salisbury State College. In 1988 then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer appointed her to the school's board of visitors.

At the end of World War II in Europe, a young American soldier was reassigned from the infantry to the military police. He was issued a new uniform, told to practice saluting and ordered to guard the former German SS headquarters in Bavaria, where the U.S. Army had set up a base of operations. As he stood at his post, proudly sporting the black-and-gray patch of the 94th Division on his sleeve, Pfc. Roland "Ron" Sluder spotted a tall, broad-shouldered man in a trench coat making his way down the corridor.

Gov. Martin O'Malley called a news conference from an unexpected location Friday: Baghdad, where he had arrived on an early-morning flight as part of a Pentagon-sponsored tour. In a conference call with reporters, the governor said he spent the day meeting and dining with troops and gaining insight into the war-zone lifestyle that should be useful in his role as official leader of 6,300 troops of the Maryland National Guard. "The reason I'm here is because it's important to the Department of Defense and it's important to our country that our governors stay engaged, given the number of National Guard troops" who are deployed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, O'Malley said.

George Frederick "Fred" Alban, a retired security guard who earlier had been a police officer, died Monday of cancer at his Westminster home. He was 71. Mr. Alban was born in Baltimore and spent his early years in Govans before moving to a Westminster farm with his family in 1952. After graduating from St. John High School in 1955, he owned a painting business with a cousin. He also served in the Maryland National Guard before being discharged in 1963. Mr. Alban joined the Westminster Police Department in 1967 and worked as a police officer, retiring with the rank of corporal in 1976.

Among the 13 people killed in the shooting rampage at Fort Hood was an Army Reserve officer who had worked in a Maryland National Guard program helping soldiers returning from war adjust to life back home. Lt. Col. Juanita L. Warman, who was 55 and lived in Havre de Grace, had been volunteering with the Maryland National Guard's reintegration program since last year and also worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Baltimore, said Lt. Col. Charles Kohler, a spokesman for the National Guard.