Maryland National Guard

COLLEGE PARK -- The last thing Sgt. Joshua Heskett saw before shrapnel ripped into his face was the suspicious car, one of three his Maryland Army National Guard unit had been told to watch for last August on a highway near Baghdad. "The car lurched forward and exploded, and it all went into slow motion," Heskett, 27, recalled yesterday. The car "expanded like a balloon and thousands of sparkles. ... I thought I was going to die." He spoke yesterday, minutes after he received one of nine Purple Heart medals awarded at welcome-home ceremonies for 130 members of the Olney-based Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 115th Infantry Regiment.

The deaths of five Maryland soldiers this month did little to elicit protest against the war in Iraq, and even as U.S. military fatalities climbed near 2,000 last week, military experts say they expect no public outcry. Like the death in Iraq 13 months ago of the 1,000th American soldier, this next milestone will barely register with a public easily distracted, predicts former Marine Lou Cantori. Cantori, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, likens the rising U.S. death toll to the ticking of a clock.

Bishop Darneal Johnson III of the Beacon Light Baptist Church in New Orleans stood in the rotunda of Maryland's State House yesterday before about 100 people and told his story. The 40-year-old minister fled New Orleans the day before Hurricane Katrina hit his city. He said he arrived in Maryland, his original home, with just the clothes he was wearing. "Everything you see has been given to me," said Johnson, dressed in a pinstripe suit. Johnson, who called himself a survivor rather than a victim, put a face on the thousands whose lives have been changed by the disaster.

Bridgette Dupree stood on the front lawn of the Melvin H. Cade Armory with her daughters, Alexis and Allison, staring bleary-eyed at an idling bus that Cpl. Anthony Dupree had boarded moments earlier. That's when Bridgette's cell phone rang. "Hi, baby," she said. "I miss you so much." Cpl. Dupree was one of about 170 Maryland Army National Guard soldiers deployed yesterday for a year of duty overseas. After two months of additional training in Indiana, members of the 243rd Engineering Company of Reisterstown will drive supply trucks in Iraq.

FORT STEWART, Ga. - When a roadside bomb exploded in front of the Maryland infantrymen with a thunderous boom and a blinding cloud of white smoke, the rifle-toting insurgent took full advantage. He shot at the shocked soldiers who had failed to notice the bomb hidden in plain sight. Seconds later, shouting over a hail of blank gunfire, military observers inside the mock Iraqi village pronounced the first casualties. "You're dead, baby," one told Bravo Company Spc. Victor K. Villavicencio, 23, of Gaithersburg.

The commanding officer of the British Territorial Army, Maj. Gen. Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the sixth Duke of Westminster, visited the Maryland National Guard yesterday to learn how the United States prepares for emergencies. Grosvenor was accompanied by Lord Glenarthur, a member of the British Parliament's House of Lords, for the 2 1/2 -day tour of American reserve units in the Maryland, Virginia and Washington area. During a visit to Camp Fretterd in Reisterstown, home of the Maryland National Guard and the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, Grosvenor listened to National Guard officials describe its history, organization and support of the war on terrorism.

When the guardsmen with the 629th Military Intelligence Battalion got word they would be deployed overseas for nine months, many feared they were headed for a long, hot tour on the dangerous streets of Baghdad. But instead of gearing up for war, the 47 Maryland Army National Guard soldiers are headed for peace - they're going to Kosovo to join the United Nations peacekeeping effort in the Balkans. Yesterday, the teary-eyed soldiers and their families gathered at the unit's armory in Laurel to say goodbye before the bus loaded with green duffel bags and oversized backpacks pulled away.

As part of a federal initiative to help local authorities respond to acts of terrorism, Maryland is one of 12 states to receive a 22-member Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Team funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. announced yesterday. The team will include full-time Army and Air National Guard members trained to respond to a nuclear, chemical or biological attack. The team will fall under command of the governor and will be equipped with protective and communications equipment and a mobile lab. The unit will help police, fire, and medical personnel determine the nature of an attack and provide medical and technical advice.

More than 40 soldiers from a Maryland National Guard unit in Annapolis are scheduled to leave today for New Jersey to prepare for a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Guard officials said. The six-month deployment marks the first time the entire Troop A 1-115th Calvary Forward unit has been called into service. Individual members served in Operation Desert Storm and Bosnia with other units, officials said. The unit will leave for Europe from Fort Dix, N.J., in about two weeks.

Carole Briscoe was 34 when, at the suggestion of friend, she enlisted in the Maryland National Guard. But the late start hasn't hurt her military career. After compiling a record that has won the admiration of her superiors and fellow officers, the Eastern Shore native and former shock-trauma nurse was promoted yesterday to brigadier general in a State House ceremony. She becomes the first woman to achieve that rank in a military force that traces its origins to 1774. Briscoe called her promotion "a milestone for her organization" and praised the Guard for its commitment to diversity.