A 'stop loss' family copes with deployment
From Jeff Flock
CNN
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One of Sgt. Jeffrey Butz's daughters points at her father in a video playing on their television at home.
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A soldier's plans to spend his retirement raising his kids are on hold, and he is in Iraq.
Protests in Amarah, Iraq, continue in the wake of civilian shooting deaths.
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SPECIAL REPORT
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FORT HOOD, Texas (CNN) -- Army 1st Sgt. Jeffrey Butz looked forward to retirement in June after 20 years in the service. Now he is headed to Iraq for a one-year tour of duty, his retirement ordered on hold.
Butz, 37, told his family about the change of plans after Thanksgiving dinner, said his mother, Lee Butz, of West Lafayette, Indiana.
"He said, 'Well, I have some bad news,'" she said. "We knew what he was going to say."
Butz is one of thousands of service members whose retirements or separations from the military have been delayed over the past two years by so-called Pentagon "stop loss" orders.
The orders result from the stress of global deployments on the military since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The most recent were issued by the Army earlier this month to keep troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan from retiring or leaving military service for up to 90 days after they arrive home.
Butz's wife, Blanca, is stoic: "With the Army, you do what they tell you to do," she said.
But her husband's deployment a week ago last Saturday is not without its hardships.
Jeffrey Butz was looking forward to raising the 2-year-old twin daughters he and his wife spent eight years trying to have. He was considering opening an auto collision repair shop, an endeavor related to his Army job experience.
What makes it especially hard on Blanca is that she has developed scleroderma, a hardening of the skin that is causing her to slowly lose the use of her hands.
"To think they've worked so hard to have those babies and then Blanca gets sick and he has to go off ... I mean, it's one thing after another," Lee Butz said.
Jeffrey Butz has served in Germany, South Korea and Bosnia. He rode from Kuwait into Iraq with the 1st Cavalry Division during the Persian Gulf War, his mother said.
This time was different, Lee Butz said.
She was so upset that she wrote a letter to her hometown newspaper, The Lafayette Courier and Journal, that questioned the Bush administration's decision to go to war in Iraq.
"I asked [Jeffrey] why he was going to Iraq. It's important that I support him and respect his feelings, and I know when to keep my mouth shut as I protest this bogus invasion," Lee Butz wrote. "His answer was unsettling. 'Because some guy told me I had to.'
"So now, besides being proud and extremely terrified, I am incredibly angry. My son is not being sent to Afghanistan to fight the so-called war on terror. ... His answer would have been much different had that been the case."
After spending some time in Kuwait, Jeffrey Butz will head to Baghdad with the 303rd Military Intelligence Battalion, which is a part of the 504th Military Intelligence Brigade.
Before he left, he made a videotape for his daughters, Jenna and Julia, that shows him playing with them and giving them a bath, something he did every night.
Army 1st Sgt. Jeffrey Butz and his wife, Blanca, in a family photo.
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He also has their names tattooed on his forearms. "He wants to be able to see 'em all the time," Lee Butz said.
During a viewing of the video soon after their father left, they yelled in unison, "Daddy!" and Jenna tried to climb inside the TV to be with him.
He wasn't there, of course, but Julia knew where he was when asked by her mom.
"Baghdaddy," she said. "I love you."
