Who Will Protect the Guardians?
Home-Front Battles Face Guard and Reserve
By Arthur R. Vinsel, Community News Reporter

     Historically, the National Guard is derived from the state militias, composed of civilians pledged to defend the community in times of crisis. But nowadays, the roles should be reversed. With record numbers of Guard units sent overseas, disrupting and distressing family lives for six months or more at a time, it is the Guard itself that needs community support.
     What was once a haven from war, as was the case during the Vietnam conflict, is now a source of massive man- and woman-power. Nearly half the American troops in Iraq are Guard and Reserve, including 2,200 from the California National Guard (CNG) and Army Reserve. In a war where even the dead are hidden from sight—rather than publicly honored—the unexpected trials and burdens they bear are seldom thought of by anyone outside their immediate families with the exception of a network of dedicated people that works tirelessly to assist guard families in dealing with the at-home challenges: bureaucracy, banks, loan companies and even the law.
     For many, troubles begin even before leaving American soil. Going overseas is, after all, something most never dreamed would really happen. All face hardship and sacrifices seldom recognized by the country at large.
     “The issues we have to deal with…” marvels Toby Bogges, a retired career U.S. Army infantry trooper and Guardsman with 27 years in the ranks, now employed as a Department of Defense civilian contract family services counselor. “Sometimes, it’s like a soap opera. You wouldn’t believe what we come up with.”
     Bogges and his handful of regional family support workers are like shock troops trained to deal with every variety of home-front crises encountered by families of those summoned to modern war. Marriages have been broken up; homes have been lost; cars repossessed; children have gotten into trouble with the authorities due to the anxiety and stress of a lengthy separation from their duty-bound loved-ones.
    “We have a 24/7 response time. We network by cell phone, but whenever we open a case on a family we try to go where the problem is and handle it at the local level,” says Bogges, a Fresno resident supervising counselors from Merced to the Mexican border.
     He has two counselors in L.A. County—Long Beach and Glendale—and one each in other regions including Orange, San Diego and San Bernardino counties. They are either retired or standby CNG personnel. Each CNG unit has its own auxiliary support group of volunteers in the community.
     “We act as a safety net,” says Bogges. “The issues may be financial, or involve child care and custody or medical problems.
     One young enlisted female returned from recent Iraq duty requiring treatment for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in response to the indelible horrors of war, only to find more woes. The three year-old child she left in care of a once-trusted male is suffering neurological damage from shaken baby syndrome.
     “Now, we’re involved with law enforcement. We deal with a lot of overlapping jurisdictions, working for National Guard and Reserve families,” says Bogges.
     Glendale-based support counselor Brisilia Jimenez, 21, joined the CNG the week she turned 17—in a rush to embrace real adult life, she says—and has dealt with people’s reactivation issues for last 18 months.
     “There are always issues. Some families don’t know the benefits they’re entitled to, for instance,” says Jimenez. “There’s always a great deal of stress involved in deployment. Some personnel take really big pay cuts. Deployment always comes as a big surprise. They tend to say, ‘This just can’t be….’”
     “We have situations where it was so unexpected the individual has never talked to the spouse on what to do. They have to have powers-of-attorney. They don’t even know they can shop at any base commissary to really save money. Or they don’t know, as Army, they can still go to a Navy or other military commissary.”
     Jimenez, and Estelle Wimberly, the recently-hired Long Beach-based family-support worker, with 29 years of CNG duty experience, conduct dependents’ briefings at armories. The Glendale armory hosts a once-a-month meeting facilitated by a psychiatrist or psychologist to help families deal with activation issues.
     Call-ups will continue, both by entire units, and individually for those with needed military occupational specialties.
     Lt. Jonathan Shiroma, of CNG headquarters in Sacramento ticked off the most recent activations: 20-plus personnel from both the 251st CNG Financial Detachment and the 40th Headquarters Detachment in Compton; 100-plus ready combat troops in Company “A” of the 184th Infantry Battalion in Fullerton; and more than 200 in the 140th Aviation Battalion, based at the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Center, the one-time Naval Air Station now used by Guard and Reserve units, near Long Beach. They maintain and fly troop transport helicopters.
     “There will be more,” says Lt. Shiroma.