The impact of long peacekeeping missions on National Guard and Reserves.

TOM BEARDEN: In Salem, Oregon, Mindy Hagerman has a brand new baby named Tyler. It was a difficult pregnancy, ending with a Cesarean section delivery. She also has 4-year-old daughter Bree to take care of. But her husband isn't here to help.

Leaving the family behind

MINDY HAGERMAN: Do you want me to tell them what Daddy sent you when he was over there for you to take to your preschool?

BREE: Dinosaur treats.

MINDY HAGERMAN: Candies. And what did he say? Where were they from?

BREE: Bosnia.

TOM BEARDEN: Bosnia -- that's where Bree's father is. First Lieutenant Robert Hagerman is spending nine months at Eagle Base near Tuzla, headquarters for the multinational peacekeeping force operating in the American sector in Bosnia. He flies evacuation helicopters for the 1042nd medical company. Mrs. Hagerman says she's OK most of the time, but once in a while his absence really hits her.

MINDY HAGERMAN: It's one of those things that it blind-sides you. You'll be just going -- doing something real easy and wouldn't -- you wouldn't think it would hit a little nerve, and then all of a sudden you'll think, "Oh, I remember when Rob's home, that's what we do."

TOM BEARDEN: It's tough, isn't it?

MINDY HAGERMAN: (crying) It is.

ROBERT HAGERMAN: We're going to head through the Menvez routes up to McGovern, drop off supplies. They're all loaded. We're all set.

TOM BEARDEN: Lieutenant Hagerman was lucky. He was allowed to come home for two weeks shortly before his wife delivered Tyler. But then he had to go back to Bosnia.

1ST LT. ROBERT HAGERMAN: I said my good-byes, gave them a hug and a kiss, turned around and there was no way I could look back, absolutely no way.

TOM BEARDEN: So what's new about any of this? Military families have faced these hardships for generations. But they used to be the families of full-time, active-duty career soldiers. Robert Hagerman is a part-time solider. He's in the Oregon National Guard. More and more guardsmen and reservists are facing lengthy deployments that many never anticipated. For nearly 50 years, most reserve units only went to weekend drills once a month and spent two weeks in the summer on training exercises like this one in Oklahoma. After Vietnam, the Pentagon pursued a new policy of assigning essential support units like Medivac, civil affairs, and aerial refueling to the guard and reserve instead of the active duty forces. As a result, reserve call-ups increased 300 percent over the past decade. Retired National Guard Major General William Navas:

MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM A. NAVAS, Army National Guard (Ret.): The idea here was to structure the regular forces, especially the Army, in such a way that you could not fight a war like Vietnam without the use of the citizen soldiers, the Guard and the Reserve.

TOM BEARDEN: General Navas says the policy was designed to bring the question of how to deploy U.S. troops directly to the American people.

MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM A. NAVAS: Because now the American people are starting to question, "Should we be involved in this long-term, protracted involvements?" And one of the things that makes it to the forefront is the fact that you're taking, you know, units from all over the United States.

TOM BEARDEN: The first test of the policy came in the Persian Gulf when some 265,000 reservists were called up for Operation Desert Storm. The need to activate Guard and Reserve units didn't end with the Gulf War. Peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and elsewhere proliferated. For the 1042nd, that translated into a nine-month assignment to Bosnia that began in February. Individual soldiers sometimes serve much longer. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, Charles Cragin, says in the future, reservists should expect it.

CHARLES L. CRAGIN, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs: I think there are still some out there that have not fully appreciated that this force has been transformed in the last few years. And to some extent, we don't do a very good job sometimes in our advertising. I mean, I still hear advertisements that say, you know, "Two weeks in the summer and, and a couple of days a month." That's fine as far as it goes. But I think we also have to go the extra mile and explain that these are expertise areas that we truly rely upon, and we're going to be continuing to use them.

TOM BEARDEN: Reliance on the reserves reached a new level in March when the headquarters element of the Texas-based 49th Armored Division took command of the American sector in Bosnia after extensive stateside training. It's the first time a guard unit has commanded active duty troops in the field since the Korean War.

SOLDIER: Gentlemen, the commanding general!

TOM BEARDEN: Major General Robert Halverson, the recently retired state deputy insurance commissioner, commands the 49th Armored Division.

MAJ. GEN. ROBERT HALVERSON, Texas National Guard: We built a team, brought it over here. That team is functioning very well. And if you walk around and look at how soldiers are doing their job today, you can't tell that one is a reserve component soldier and the other is active duty soldier.

TOM BEARDEN: But the general says there is one key difference.

MAJ. GEN. ROBERT HALVERSON: Most of our soldiers have never been away from their -- their families, unlike active duty soldiers. And so it's a -- it's a real challenge for the soldiers to separate from their families.

TOM BEARDEN: General Halverson says despite the hardships, morale is high. Most of the servicemen we talked to, like 1042nd commander Matthew Brady, agreed.

MAJ. MATTHEW BRADY, Oregon National Guard: I'm having a good time. It's exciting. It's something that we don't get to do in our unit other than maybe at annual training every, you know, summer. So to me, this has been a blast.

TOM BEARDEN: But some reservists and guardsmen are facing a serious problem: Keeping their civilian jobs, even though federal law is supposed to guarantee those jobs will be waiting when they leave active duty.

SPOKESMAN: Thank you very much.

TOM BEARDEN: John Hayes is the 49th division headquarters' first sergeant. He was a pilot for Petroleum Helicopters Incorporated, the largest U.S. helicopter company, flying workers and supplies to offshore oil drilling platforms.

1st SGT. JOHN HAYES, Texas National Guard: Petroleum Helicopters, when they discovered that I was going to be gone for up to two years on this deployment, they felt like that they did not have to keep my job available for me, even though I explained to them not only my interpretation of the law, I sent them a copy of the -- of the code, a copy of the act. Their response was to terminate my employment there.

TOM BEARDEN: Sergeant Hayes is pursuing legal action against the company, which denies the charge. But firings are extremely rare, and the Defense Department says most employers abide by the law.

SPOKESMAN: Do you have earplugs?

TOM BEARDEN: Some soldiers simply quit the Guard rather than deploy. Several 1042nd guardsmen left when the unit's deployment was announced. Three of them were Oregon state troopers. David Montgomery, who was not deployed to Bosnia, went the opposite way. He resigned from the State Police so he could continue flying transport planes for the Oregon Guard. He says the Department is forcing guardsmen to choose.

CWO DAVID MONTGOMERY, Oregon National Guard: I know several people in the Guard that -- or I should say that were in the Guard that wanted to stay in the State Police and they saw the writing on the wall and they made the smart decision to get out of the National Guard and support the State Police if they wanted to be state troopers. I mean, it's been made clear to me and to quite a few people that I know that if you want a future in the State Police, then you're not going to be in the National Guard or the Reserves. That's their unofficial policy. It's systemic, it's widespread.

TOM BEARDEN: Lieutenant Greg Hastings is a spokesperson for the Oregon State Police. He says he's not aware of any guard-related problems.

LT. GREG HASTINGS, Spokesman, Oregon State Police: We support the members who are part of the National Guard and any of the active Reserves of the Armed Forces. We do everything that we can to make sure that they can meet whatever commitments, or any activations that they may receive throughout the year.

TOM BEARDEN: But Montgomery says that's not true. He and another former trooper filed federal complaints against the state police. The U.S. Department of Labor is in the process of referring the complaints to the local U.S. attorney, who will decide whether to proceed in court. If long deployments are causing problems for state policemen, some small businesses are finding them potentially ruinous, like the Mobile Salvage Logging Company, a seven-person operation harvesting timber south of Salem. Robert Johnson scrambles up and down the steep hillside, attaching felled trees to a drag-line that takes them up to the top. He faced a potentially catastrophic problem when Bill Kelley, the man who operated the drag-line, deployed to Bosnia with the 1042nd, where he fixes helicopter turbines. Johnson says he would have had to shut down without Kelley, but found a replacement at the last minute. The experience has given him pause.

TOM BEARDEN: When you go looking for people in the future and somebody tells you that they belong to the National Guard or the Reserve, are you going to look at them a second time? You going to look at them a little bit skeptically?

ROBERT JOHNSON, Mobile Salvage Logging: That's a good question because I think if they're going to start putting these guys, you know, over there more, it could be a question to ask him. I know you're not supposed to, probably, but it would be a tough one because if they're going to get called away, you know, you get them trained for a while, and then all of a sudden you get them the way you want them and then they call them away, it could be a difficult situation again.

TOM BEARDEN: Even so, Johnson says Kelly's job will be waiting for him if he still wants it.

TED LONG: If you go to the chaplain --

TOM BEARDEN: Other employers say there are great advantages to hiring members of the Guard and Reserve. Ted Long is the director of the Columbia River Correctional Institute, a minimum security prison in Portland.

TED LONG, Columbia River Correctional Institution: Benefits to me are staff who get ongoing training in the specialty that most likely fits in with our mission, the joint mission of public safety with the military Reserve and Guard units, and the public safety mission of the Department of Corrections use a lot of the same -- need a lot of the same skills to get the job done.

TOM BEARDEN: But Long, who has two employees currently serving in Bosnia, says there's a limit to how supportive he can afford to be. Ten percent of his corrections officers are members of the Guard or Reserve.

TED LONG: It's possible that a comprehensive deployment or activation of 10 percent of my workforce would certainly deplete the resources we have, the large pools of candidates to temporarily work. It would have a significant, substantial impact.

TOM BEARDEN: Some guardsmen and reservists have a more immediate problem. They've had to give up much larger incomes than their temporary military pay.

MINDY HAGERMAN: I think there's someone in the unit that I want to say was an architect, or is an architect, has his own company, makes over $125,000 a year, and with the Guard, he's going down to $28,000 a year. And that's just -- I mean, that's a true sacrifice.

TOM BEARDEN: All of these issues cause some to worry about whether the Guard and Reserves will be able to recruit and retain enough people for the future. The 1042nd's Major Matthew Brady says he plans to stay in the guard.

MAJ. MATTHEW BRADY: Will it deter me personally? No. And a lot of it has to do with our ability to go back to work when we get home. Will it deter a lot of our soldiers? Yes, it will. People did not join the National Guard to go away that often. We knew what the commitment was when we raised our hand. However, what we committed to was one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer, and the possibility of going to conflict should our country need us. This is an example of when our country needed us. However, like you said, the Guard and the Reserve are being called upon more and more, and more often, to go to these kind of operations, and people are not going to stay in knowing that this is -- and the unit that we belong to, you know, it's one of those units that will be deployed more often than others.

TOM BEARDEN: But General Halverson doesn't think the guard will have a retention problem.

MAJ. GEN. ROBERT HALVERSON: I think that you will probably find some soldiers who say, "No, I don't want to do this. I don't want to take that chance." But by the same token, I think you will find others that say, "Hey, I signed on to do this. I'd signed on to serve my country. If I need to go do a deployment, I'll go do that." These soldiers who come and do this are very enthusiastic about the mission. They're going to go home much better than they were before they got here, and they're going to look forward to training. The biggest concern I have -- them accepting the slower pace of things once we go home. That's going to be a more difficult challenge.

TOM BEARDEN: Even so, the Pentagon recently announced it would limit future Army Guard deployments to six months.

1ST LT. ROBERT HAGERMAN: I think that's the far edge of what's bearable, and I think they see that as well. I will say that two and three months, four month rotations, are much more enjoyable as far as time away from home goes.

TOM BEARDEN: For the moment, the Oregon guardsmen are counting the days to their return to the Pacific Northwest this fall, and wondering when, or if, they'll be asked to go overseas again.