National Guard Allows Army Vets Who Feel Deceived to De-enlist

BY BRYAN DENSON
c.2004 Newhouse News Service

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Joe Talik marched to the Army
National Guard recruiter's office here last week and
filed papers to de-enlist.

Talik thought he had worn his last camouflage uniform
when he concluded nearly five years of service with
the Army last year. But he signed up with the National
Guard six weeks ago after recruiters told him -- and
his worried mother -- that he might be on a list of
soldiers the Army was planning to recall for duty in
Iraq.

"They made it sound like (the Guard) was a safe
haven," said Talik, 26, who's working his way through
college with two jobs. "I really feel like someone
should answer for the deceit."

Oregon's Army National Guard signed up Talik and 108
other soldiers from the Individual Ready Reserve
during a recruitment effort in mid-May. The ready
reserve is composed of 111,000 soldiers across the
nation who have served Army hitches but remain
eligible under their military contracts to be called
to duty for up to eight years after their service
began.

In what appears to be an unprecedented move, National
Guard units across the nation are allowing ready
reserve enlistees who feel misled by the recent
recruiting effort to file papers that, if approved,
will void their contracts, said Lt. Col. Richard
Guzzetta, chief of the Army National Guard's
recruiting retention force in Crystal City, Va.

"It's the right thing to do," he said. "Nobody would
want someone to be in the military -- especially our
military -- that didn't want to be. It's a voluntary
force. There's not a draft out there."

Oregon National Guard officials say Talik is one of at
least nine ready reserve soldiers who have filed
paperwork to void their enlistments.

Guzzetta said the great majority of ready reserve
soldiers who signed up for the National Guard in May
have no plans to opt out of their contracts -- and for
good reason.

Early last week, as Guard recruiters warned during
their recruiting blitz, the Army announced plans to
notify 5,600 members of the ready reserve that they
might be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.

The military's plans for National Guard and Individual
Ready Reserve troops have put reluctant soldiers in
play across the nation as the Pentagon -- with
diminished forces after the Cold War ended -- decides
how to maintain more than 140,000 soldiers in Iraq and
20,000 in Afghanistan.

Like many soldiers, Talik views the overseas
deployments of the National Guard and ready reserve as
little more than a de facto draft.

"In some ways it's worse," he said. In the past, he
said, the draft picked soldiers at random but looked
past those -- such as himself -- who had already
served hitches in the military. "In my opinion, they
paid their dues."

It is unclear whether the Army will allow Talik to
remain out of uniform if he is allowed to de-enlist
from Oregon's Army National Guard. His combat
specialty is driving armored vehicles in forward
positions, a skill much in demand in Iraq.

The Army National Guard unit in which he enlisted six
weeks ago -- B Company, 141st Support Battalion -- has
not been alerted for deployment but is eligible for
call-up, according to Lt. Col. Scott Haynes, the
Guard's head Army recruiter in Oregon.

Oregon's Guard is in the midst of its heaviest
deployment since World War II. By late fall, an
estimated 1,300 of its troops will be in Iraq.
Hundreds of others have served there and returned.

The world seemed a safer place when Talik entered the
Army on May 5, 1998. Back then, soldiers served their
hitches and returned to civilian life. But terrorism
changed all that. Three months after Talik began
serving in the Army, terrorists bombed U.S. embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania. They followed with the bombing
of the USS Cole in 2000 and the devastating Sept. 11
attacks.

Talik did not escape serving in a combat zone. He
drove an armored Humvee in Macedonia during the war in
Yugoslavia, hustling through daily air raid drills.

Talik ended his service at Fort Lewis, Wash., on Jan.
31, 2003, six weeks before U.S. and allied forces
invaded Iraq. He spent some time with his mother in
Salem, then moved to Portland, where he enrolled at
Portland Community College.

Then on May 15, an officer with the Oregon National
Guard phoned Talik's mother, Lorisa Gardiner, 57, a
freelance book editor. The officer, she recalled, told
her that her son had 48 hours to enlist in the Guard
or would be fair game for deployment to Iraq by the
regular Army. The news left Gardiner worried and
perplexed.

"You'd think that after a person has already been in a
combat zone ... they'd be exempt," she said.

Talik signed up for the Army National Guard the next
day. He later said he thinks recruiters took advantage
of him and other ready reservists. Talik strongly
supports soldiers but thinks the war in Iraq is
unjustified. He has no plans to add his body to the
mix -- even if that means facing imprisonment.

"I'm done, personally," he said. "I'm just not going
to be involved in something I just absolutely,
fundamentally disagree with."

July 15, 2004


(Bryan Denson is a staff writer for The Oregonian of
Portland, Ore. He can be contacted at
bryandenson@news.oregonian.com.)

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