Multiple tours disrupt life for reserves

BY GRAHAM RAYMAN | Newsday Staff Writer

January 21, 2007

In many ways, Keith Hanna's bungalow reflects the state of his life. The beams are still exposed. Wires dangle from the ceiling. Pink tufts of insulation poke out. A camouflage sleeping bag doubles as a vanity screen for the toilet.

Hanna, 45, a reserve staff sergeant with the Garden City-based 2nd Battalion, 25th Marines, recently returned from his third tour in Iraq since the conflict began in 2003. The state correction officer from Middletown, N.Y., is one of thousands of American service members who have served more than two deployments.

"It's an old Sears kit house from the 50s," sighed Hanna, who joined the Marine Reserve at age 29 in 1990. "I started to renovate before I left, but then I was gone a year-and-a-half, and I'm just getting back to it."

The arc of Hanna's deployments reflects the larger challenge facing the U.S. military. The constant demand created by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan has made it necessary to rely on Reserve Marines like himself, a divorced man in his 40s with a 25-year-old son, doing multiple tours.

He spent five months in 2003 guarding a main supply route just outside Nasiriyah, a town in southern Iraq where another Marine unit took heavy casualties in the first week of the war.

In 2005, Hanna learned that an Ohio-based Marine Reserve battalion operating in the western Iraq town of Hit needed replacements because of heavy casualties. He lobbied aggressively for the job.

Just three months after his return from Hit, he joined 1st Battalion, 25th Marines and spent his third deployment in war-torn Fallujah, returning home in October.

Before he left for Fallujah, his commander, Lt. Col. Michael Froeder strongly advised him not to go.

"To come home for two months and turn around and go back over is not the preferred way of doing business," Froeder said.

Hanna went anyway.

"The people who were going over had a lot of questions about what it was like over there, and I felt like the only way I could answer them was to be there with the unit," he said.

Six days before the battalion was due to rotate home, Hanna lost a close friend, Lance Cpl. Christopher Cosgrove, to a car bomb.

In the course of three deployments, Hanna has developed strong views. He says Americans are asking too much of Iraqis to be ready for democracy after a few years.

"The Iraqis were always worse off than us," he said. "We expect them to settle down in three years when it took us much longer. Like we're supposed to sprinkle some pixie dust and get out. That's not going to happen."

Hanna says he has been particularly affected by the brutality of the insurgents. But the constant churn in U.S. forces, Hanna said, makes it difficult to sustain the relationships critical to blunting the insurgency.

"In Hit, we were just starting to stabilize the area; we even had people reporting insurgents to us," he said. "And then at seven months, just when they start to trust you, we're gone, and a new unit comes in, and it starts all over again."

Other than a few benign snapshots on his computer, Hanna has nothing on display to commemorate his war.

"You don't need to be reminded of it all the time," he said. "It's going to stay with you anyway for the rest of your life."

As for a fourth deployment, Hanna says it's a possibility. He wants some time first to finish his home. He recently started dating a nurse.

"I'm just not quite ready in my mind for another one yet," he said.