Guardsmen say they feel like prisoners
COMPLAINTS RISE OUT OF TRAINING FOR DUTY IN IRAQ

Los Angeles Times | November 25 2004

DONA ANA ARMY CAMP, N.M. - Members of a National Guard battalion preparing for deployment to Iraq said this week that they are under lockdown and being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by Army commanders at the remote desert camp where they are training.

A number of the Guard troops also said that the training they have received is so poor and equipment shortages so prevalent they fear their cas-ualty rate will be needlessly high when they arrive in Iraq early next year.

They said they think that their treatment and training reflects bias against National Guard troops by commanders in the active-duty Army, an allegation Army commanders denied.

The 680 members of the 1st Battalion of the 184th Infantry Regiment were activated in August, and are preparing for deployment at Dona Ana, a former World War II prisoner-of-war camp 25 miles from its large parent base, Fort Bliss, Texas.

Members of the battalion, with headquarters in Modesto, Calif., said in two-dozen interviews that they are allowed no visitors or travel passes, have scant contact with their families and that morale is terrible.

"I feel like an inmate with a weapon," said Cpl. Jajuane Smith, 31, a six-year Guard veteran from Fresno, Calif.

Several soldiers have fled Dona Ana, vaulting over barbed wire, the Guard troops interviewed said. Others, they said, might go AWOL, at least temporarily, to be with their families for Thanksgiving.

Army commanders noted that the military is shoring up its strained ranks by turning "citizen-soldiers" into front-line troops. About 40 percent of troops in Iraq are reservists or National Guard troops.

Lt. Col. Michael Hubbard of Fort Bliss, said the military must confine the soldiers largely to Dona Ana to ensure that their training is complete before they are sent to Iraq.

"A lot of these individuals are used to doing this two days a month and then going home," Hubbard said. "Now the job is 24/7. And they experience culture shock."

But many of the soldiers said the problems go much deeper. Military analysts agree that tensions between active duty soldiers and National Guard troops have been made worse by the needs of the war in Iraq.

The concerns of the guardsmen at Dona Ana are the latest in a series of incidents involving allegations that a two-tier system has shortchanged reservist and National Guard units compared with active-duty counterparts.

In September, a National Guard battalion undergoing accelerated training at Fort Dix, N.J., was confined to barracks for two weeks after 13 soldiers reportedly went AWOL to see family before shipping out for Iraq. Last month, an Army National Guard platoon at Camp Shelby, Miss., refused its orders after voicing concerns about training conditions and poor leadership.

In the most highly publicized incident, in October, more than two dozen Army reservists in Iraq refused to drive a fuel convoy to a town north of Baghdad because the trucks they had been assigned were not armored for combat duty.

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