While in Afghanistan, Jordan Byrd’s unit rescued several small Afghani children from a wedding party where an explosive device had gone off. Photo courtesy Jordan Byrd Between Iraq and a Hard Place After Two Active Duty Tours, Local Soldier’s Education Benefits Tied Up By Jeff Eason If you’ve been to downtown Boone this week, you can tell by the snail-like snarl of traffic that Appalachian State University has begun a new semester. Thousands of college students have returned to the High Country to continue their educational endeavors as ASU Mountaineers. One student, however, is sitting out the semester. After serving six years in the Army National Guard, an active duty year in Afghanistan and another active duty year in Iraq, 28-year-old Jordan Byrd has been told that the Army will not release educational benefits to her that were included in her original contract. So instead of hitting the books, she is hitting the hay as the new assistant stable manager at New River Stables in Deep Gap until she figures out a way to get money for her college education. As Byrd explains it, her current ordeal is just one more way that the National Guard troops are treated differently than the regular soldiers. “In August of ’96 I joined the Army,” said Byrd. “I went into the National Guard. I did a six-year contract in order to receive school benefits. Anything less and you couldn’t get your benefits. “I served those six years and right when I was supposed to be getting out, September 11th happened.” After the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C., the Army put a “stop-loss” on many National Guard units around the country, including Byrd’s unit: the 211th Military Police Company out of Clyde, North Carolina, about 25 miles outside of Asheville. “They held onto that stop-loss and they sent us to Afghanistan for a whole year,” said Byrd. While with the 211th MP Unit, Byrd had previously been sent to Panama and Germany, but the deployment to Afghanistan was her first trip to a war zone as an active duty soldier. “I got back and I was home for about four months and they sent me to Iraq for a year.” With two straight one-year stints of active duty, plus her previous six years of National Guard duty under her belt, Byrd assumed she would be good to go when she enrolled at Appalachian State for the spring 2005 semester. That’s when things got complicated. “When I finally got back from Iraq I said, ‘Hey, my contract’s up. The stop-loss has been released. I’m getting out because I want to go to school. I want to get my education completed.’ And they said okay. “I went to Appalachian State University, put in my application and talked to (the Admissions Department) and to the V.A. (Veterans Administration) rep at Appalachian State, Teresa Johnson.” Just when it looked when Byrd was ready to trade in her duffel bag for a book bag, she found out that no one in the Army would okay her contract money for release to ASU. It was if her contract had never existed now that she was out of the National Guard. “I told them it had to be a mistake,” said Byrd. “It had to be some mess up in the paperwork or something. I called Raleigh and I talked to Chief Warrant Officer Haselett. Basically, what she told me was that if I wanted to get my school paid for then I needed to stay in the National Guard. And if not, I wouldn’t get it. She said, ‘That’s just the way it is.’ I told her, ‘It sounds like you’re trying to blackmail me in some way.’” The way Haselett explained the situation, Byrd either had to stay in the National Guard and collect her benefits or get out and give them up. If she stayed in the National Guard she risked being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan once more. “I’ve got an Honorable Discharge and I’ve served two more years than I was supposed to according to my original contract,” said Byrd. “There’s no reason why they shouldn’t give that back to me. I was told that our benefits would be extended due to any time spent on active duty. So I understood that to be two years, exactly the amount of time I served in Afghanistan and Iraq together. But Haselett said that it had to be two consecutive years, no breaks. Because I had even a month break between deployments, those benefits I was promised would no longer be available to me.” Byrd feels particularly betrayed because she, like all the other student-soldiers, were told explicitly that their active duty time would be added back onto their school time, even if they were pulled into active duty in the middle of a scholastic semester. That promise, however, has not made it through the legal process regarding National Guard and Reservist soldiers. “The thing is, the law has not been changed,” said Byrd. “So that’s what I’m waiting on. But why is it taking two years for that to happen? That’s way too long. And there’s a ton of people coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq and they’re trying to get back in school.” Byrd could take the chance and borrow the money she needs to go to school right away, but if she does there is no guarantee that the Army will reimburse her later. “I have been forewarned that if I start school before I find out whether I’m going to get it paid for by the Army or get my benefits, that if I start school and do two years and then the law gets passed, they probably won’t reimburse me for what I’ve already paid for. So I’m better off waiting just a little bit to see where it goes. But I can’t wait forever.” Byrd recently told her story to National Public Radio as part of a program on the subject. Two professors on the program who also were studying the problem told her that they couldn’t give her any sort of timeline on when the law will be changed. Regular Army vs. National Guard The requirement to stay in the service to receive educational and other benefits is not one that regular Army soldiers have to worry about. The Army sets up a separate monetary account for its regular duty soldiers that they have access to for college expenses when they get out. It is just one of many ways that Byrd feels the National Guard is treated as second class. She noticed it somewhat during her stay in Afghanistan but in a more pronounced way when she was stationed in Iraq. “Afghanistan and Iraq were two totally different kinds of wars,” said Byrd. “In Kandahar, Afghanistan our mission was to go in there and take over a prison compound. We had a lot of prisoners who were Al-Qaeda and Taliban that were coming in from S.F. (Special Forces) and being dropped off. We were there to basically watch them and pursue them with M.I. (Military Intelligence). We let M.I. dot the intelligence reading and decide which guys to send to Cuba for further questioning. That’s what we did. Later on, we were sent up to Bagram to work with the 10th Mountain Division out of New York. We worked with those guys in an indoor area where we watched prisoners and did some gate work. “But when I went to Iraq it was pretty much straight road and combat missions. Everyday we were loading up and on the road. We were promised a lot of things when we got there and it didn’t happen. The National Guard got the bottom of the list. We didn’t get enough armored vehicles. We ran around for half the time we were there without any plates in our vests. We just had vests. That’s real comforting when you’re out there and things are hitting your vehicle and you don’t have any protection. While waiting for her tuition money, Jordan Byrd (left) works with regular riders like Freddie Georgia (right) at New River Stables. Photo by Jeff Eason “I think the morale of the National Guard and Reservists is low because they don’t get taken care of as much. They don’t get the necessities. It’s more important for the active duty guys to have plates before us for some reason. It’s more important for them to get armored vehicles before us. The National Guard and reservists are still out there doing the same things that active duty guys are doing. It’s no different.” Byrd experienced some harrowing times in Iraq. At one point she and about 200 MPs had to guard approximately 4,000 exiled Iranian terrorists. Another time one of her team leaders took the driving duties of a driver who had problems with sand in his eyes. The team leader hit what he thought was a rock in the road. It was a mine that exploded, killing him and injuring several others in the Humvee. “He was just a young guy,” said Byrd. “With a wife and a couple of kids back home.” But the instance that haunted Byrd most was when she almost shot down a young Iraqi girl who was holding a stick. She was on road duty and the dust and sand were blowing so hard that even with goggles on her vision was limited. “That really bothered me,” said Byrd. “From twenty-five or fifty meters away, you can’t tell if it’s a stick. Those kids have a bad habit of holding sticks just like it’s a rifle. Either someone has told them to do that or it’s because they see us all the time and our guns are up. I don’t know. Kids just do stuff like that. But from that distance, you can’t tell what’s going to happen.” Thankfully, Byrd realized it was just a little girl with a stick before she pulled the trigger. “But that was really hard for me,” said Byrd. “I came back from that mission and had to just go out for a little while and be by myself and write and listen to music.” Since returning to the States in March of 2004, Byrd has had some difficulty readjusting to civilian life and has even sought out professional help to get her life back on track. She has found that the mental transition from active duty in Iraq has been harder than her previous transition from active duty in Afghanistan. “Coming back from Afghanistan, it took me a good three or four weeks to get comfortable with the area. Like walking on grass, for instance. Over there, you only walk on pavement because you’re so used to the mines. When I came back from Iraq I didn’t want to even come out of the house. It bothered me to be around crowds because you just can’t watch everyone. You can’t see what’s going on. “It just took a lot longer. I don’t know if it was because of double deployment or if it was just because the situations were so different. I’ve got a therapist who is helping me understand that sometimes you’re put in these situations where you have no control. But you can’t dwell on that. You just have to go on.” Going on for Byrd primarily means starting her new life as a college student. But she understands that she will have to wait at least one more semester before that can happen. “I joined the Army because that was a way for me to help me benefit myself and better myself,” said Byrd. “They were going to help me pay for college. That’s one of the reasons why I went in. If you talk to most of these National Guard Reservists, one of the main reasons they go in is not for their training in the Army or Marines, it’s to get school benefits. Active duty soldiers might be a little different, but most of your Reservists are there for school.”