Guard members scrambling now that Iraq deployment is called off

WEST JORDAN — Members of the Utah National Guard's 1-211 Attack Recon Battalion have been preparing for as long as a year to deploy to Iraq in September.

The Apache attack helicopter battalion's deployment was scrubbed at the last minute, leaving about 400 Guard members in a scramble to reconnect with their lives at home while also having a "warning order" they will instead go to Afghanistan in about 13 months.

"What am I going to do now?" was the first thing to go through Spc. Angela Christiansen's mind when members got word on Thursday the deployment had been scrubbed. "I have no idea since I was focused completely (on deploying) since June."

As unnerving as deploying to Iraq might have been, unhitching from deployment plans "is more frightening because it's more uncertain," she said. "I quit my job. I was renting an apartment. I left that. I was staying with a friend temporarily, so now I have nowhere to live."

Sgt. David Driscoll has a house he can't live in because he leased it for the time he expected to be gone. Now he's trying to find something else near where his children are going to school. Spc. William Price, an Apache crew chief, took a year off school to get ready for the deployment. He has been out of school long enough that he will soon have student loans coming due without the combat-zone-enhanced full-time military paycheck to cover those costs.

Pfc. Emily Veylupek scrambled as soon as she got the news so she could get back into school. "I missed the deadline to apply" at the University of Utah, she said, where fall classes began Monday, so she's trying to register late at Salt Lake Community College.

Pfc. Adrian Brewer's wife, Ashlee, is expecting the couple's second child. "My first thought was, 'Yea, he is going to be here, and he will be here. And it took a few days to realize we had a lot to get put back together.'"

Financial concerns "are very big for us right now," her husband said. His military orders and full-time pay end Sept. 2.

About one-third of the battalion's 400-plus members are college students. About one-fourth of the soldiers work for the Guard full time. The rest, including some of the students, make their livings at civilian jobs. About a third of those have immediate employment problems.