The occasion was the 1st Cavalry Division’s first town hall meeting for families back home.
This meeting Tuesday night at Club Hood was with the recently deployed First Team that left for Iraq in January.
Julie Hache and Alisha Charles are going through their husband’s second deployment, so they are somewhat accustomed to the separation.
Mrs. Charles, who is married to Spc. Shawn Charles, said it’s a lot smoother this time around.
“This time we’re not newlyweds,” she said.
They were still anxious to hear what Bolger had to say.
But before he came to them from Iraq, Lt. Col Jeff Sauer, the division’s rear detachment commander, answered a question on all of their minds.
When will the 4th Brigade Combat Team - which left two months before the Army reduced tours from 15 months to a year - come home from Iraq?
“The Army has curtailed those last three months,” he said, before emphasizing that there have been instances when units returning from Iraq were called back while they were en route to their home base.
“It’s only home when you are off the plane,” Sauer said. “We all know that this can happen.”
He did, however, dismiss rumors that these soldiers would ship from Iraq to Afghanistan.
“That will not happen,” Sauer said. “We are not moving.”
When Bolger and Malloy were beamed in from Iraq, the talk meandered from the topic of timely mail delivery and rest for the troops to the telltale cast on Malloy’s right arm, which Bolger joked was a military secret.
To the issue of stop-loss, Bolger said there are about 2,400 soldiers in the 1st Cav who have been affected by stop-loss, which is a $500 stipend approved by Congress last year that would be awarded to soldiers called back up after they had met their military obligations. There was some question for a while whether they would get the money. In the end, it was decided they would, but Bolger didn’t know when.
“Getting money from the federal government is simple if you are a shady business,” he said. “The rest of us are still having challenges.”
The meeting turned more serious when Bolger talked about the soldier’s mission and how family support back home matters.
In Iraq, the First Team is scattered from the Iranian border, where the 4th BTC is combating the cross-border insurgency threat, to Kirkuk and Mosul where they are conducting security and training for Iraqi Police Forces.
“Every important mission is being done by the 1st Cav,” Bolger said.
And, Malloy said, those missions could only be accomplished by the continued support of the family unit.
“This thing is not over yet. This is still a very dangerous place,” Malloy said. “We’ll be getting things done over here.”
