Brig. Gen. John Ma, commander of the 9th Regional Readiness Command, and Maria Helmly, wife of Army Reserve chief Lt. Gen. James Helmly, monitored a training session yesterday at Bellows Air Force Station designed to teach volunteers who will help prepare Army Reserve soldiers and their families for separation during mobilization.
Army offers support
to reservistsSeminars help soldiers and families
prepare for their deployment
Maria Helmly had been married for only three weeks when her husband went to the war in Vietnam as a captain with 101st Airborne Division nearly four decades ago.
"For the first two months he was gone, there was no pay," Helmly said yesterday. "I did not know where to turn to. I didn't know where to go. In fact, I had to write to him in Vietnam, and he had to take care of it."
Today, her husband, Lt. Gen. James K. Helmly, is chief of the Army Reserve, and more than half of the 200,000 citizen soldiers under his command have been mobilized for the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Included in that group are 625 soldiers of the Pacific Army Reserve's 411th Engineer Combat Battalion. Another 550 from the Army Reserve's 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry, are on the verge of being activated this summer for duty in Iraq.
For the past two years, Maria Helmly has been meeting with the families to help them cope with the difficulties of a loved one suddenly being in the military. Yesterday, she participated in a three-day conference held by the 9th Regional Readiness Command and the Pacific Army Reserve designed to prepare Army Reserve soldiers and their families for separation during mobilization.
"What we have now," Helmly said, "is so much more than what I had when my husband went to war. The soldiers are now better prepared and the families are better prepared."
In the past, she said, reservists were told that they would be activated for six months, and then, just before they were supposed to come home, they would be extended for six months. Then another extension would be tacked on.
"Now, they are told up front they will be gone for 18 months, where at least 12 months will be 'boots on the ground'" -- the Army lingo for combat duty.
"If a soldier has to worry about what is going on at home," Helmly added, "they can't concentrate on their mission and they can get killed or hurt."
Since her husband took command two years ago, Helmly has visited 13 of the Army Reserve's 14 commands. Because each Army Reserve command spans wide geographical areas -- some cover five or six states -- Helmly said the Army Reserve has initiated Family Readiness Academies, which help train volunteers so there are people in every unit who can assist families during a call-up.
Volunteers are given information ranging from pay to medical benefits and are encouraged to develop newsletters and even Web sites to keep those at home informed.
Helmly noted that there has been a growing dependence on the Reserve and the National Guard.
"Reservists at one time thought," she added, "that they would always be pulling duty where they signed up. They thought they would fulfill their full Reserve career working only in one spot. ... Now these soldiers have been activated, and some have been activated more than once."
Once a unit is activated, the Army Reserve calls on its Deployment Cycle Support Teams to hold more detailed briefings for the deploying soldiers and their family members.
Kim Goffar, who has been the 9th Regional Readiness Command family program for the past three years, said she knows what it is like to be left at home.
Her husband, Maj. Stephen Goffar, spent one year in South Korea and she was left back in the islands. She also has been on active duty serving with 190th Maintenance Company during the 1991 Gulf War.
Col. Clyde Yoshimura, deputy commander of the 9th Regional Readiness Command, told a session of volunteers yesterday that the July 2 alert of the 100th Battalion as an unit of the Hawaii Army National Guard's 29th Infantry Brigade is a lot different than what occurred nearly a year ago when the 411th Engineers were alerted.
The 411th had a longer warning period before the actual alert order was issued. Yoshimura said the 100th Battalion probably will not do its mobilization training at its home stations -- Fort Shafter or Schofield Barracks -- like the 411th did.
Instead, the 100th Battalion will probably spend only a few days at Fort Shafter checking equipment and doing initial processing work, Yoshimura said, before moving to its mobilization station, where it will spend several months.
Although no official work has been released, the 29th Brigade will probably do its pre-deployment training, with emphasis on individual soldiering skills, first at Fort Bliss in Texas and then do more advance training as a brigade at the Joint Readiness Center at Fort Polk, La.
Laura Balon-Keleti, who is the family readiness coordinator for the 100th Battalion's Headquarters & Headquarters Company, which her husband, Capt. David Keleti, commands, said the thought of her husband going to war never entered her mind when she married him eight years ago.
Since then, her husband was deployed to Bosnia for six months in 2002.
"I've been prepping myself," said Balon-Keleti, a quality management analyst with Kapiolani Women and Children's and Pali Momi hospitals, "because of all the deployments involving reservists. They tell us it is no longer a matter of whether it will happen, but when."
