Simply an outrage

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Guardsmen start arriving home

Another 85 members of the N.C. National Guard's 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team returned home Monday from deployment to Iraq, meaning about 700 of the brigade's 4,000 soldiers have come back so far.

Members of the 30th have been returning a planeload at a time to Fort Stewart, Ga., where they go through medical and dental screenings and get briefed on their insurance coverage and other issues.

All 4,000 soldiers should be home within the next several weeks, said Capt. Katherine Zyla, spokeswoman for the Guard. Once processing is complete at Fort Stewart - usually taking a week or more - soldiers are put on buses and sent back to the armories where their units are based.

Helping soldiers vote

During a conversation with Chief Warrant Officer Henry L. Cooke of Durham one afternoon in the dining facility at Forward Operating Base Caldwell, one thing was evident: He cared about a soldier's right to vote. Cooke, 55, said that he asked nearly everyone he met whether they were registered to vote and whether they needed help with absentee voting.

Now the 30th Heavy Separate Brigade's 230th Support Battalion is taking on the voting mission. The unit's newsletter, the "Workhorse," noted that the battalion's commander, Lt. Col. John Frank of Wake Forest, "is ensuring our votes count by aggressively getting voting information out to the soldiers."

Each company in the battalion has a Voting Assistance Officer who has already passed out the Federal Post Card Application to every soldier interested. The FPCA registers soldiers and also requests an absentee ballot to be sent to Iraq. All of them must be mailed from Iraq by Sept. 15.

Soldiers report post-traumatic stress

Fort Bragg paratroopers returning from Iraq suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder at almost the same rate as Vietnam War veterans, according to a military survey.

The survey of about 1,300 paratroopers from the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division 2nd Brigade that have returned from a year of service found 17.4 percent of soldiers have post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. The 3,000-soldier brigade was part of the invasion force and spent most of its time in Baghdad.

The numbers are similar to those published in a New England Journal of Medicine study that found that 16 percent of Iraq veterans reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression or severe anxiety.

Guard using blank ballots

At least half of the nearly 5,000 N.C. National Guard troops serving in Iraq didn't get absentee ballots in time to ensure that they would be counted, said the officer in charge of the N.C. guard's voter education there.

"I can tell you that from experience because I didn't get mine, either," Lt. Michelle Locke, 30, of Fayetteville said Thursday in a telephone interview from a base northeast of Baghdad.

Those who still wanted to vote in the Nov. 2 elections -- nearly all of them, she said -- received special all-write-in ballots that the military shipped to Iraq in case of such a problem.

Widowed veteran guides outreach to wounded soldiers

Soldiers often say they serve in the military to make a difference in other people's lives.

Wesley Bauguess makes a difference in soldiers' lives.

Her focus is on the soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division who get sent back from a deployment injured or sick. Though many organizations are dedicated to helping those soldiers, the Wounded Warrior Committee that Bauguess oversees concentrates on making them more comfortable during their recovery at Army hospitals with useful items emblazoned with the logo of the storied 82nd.