"Don't forget the soldiers"

Group of Moses Lake residents plead for support of city's National Guard unit deployed in Iraq

Baghdad is not as far from Moses Lake as it seems. At least it is not in the heart of many women and children in this city.

Wives and relatives of the members of the Moses Lake National Guard unit have teamed up at home to gather support for their loved ones in Iraq.

Their campaign has led them to talk to council members, give a speech before last Sunday's concert at the Centennial Amphitheatre, and place yellow ribbons down Third Avenue, Neppel Crossing and McCosh Park, among other places.

Annette Sanchez and Machelle Ferguson from the Family Readiness Group of the Charlie Company 161st Infantry Unit of the guard have spearheaded this effort, saying they were surprised when they learned that most people did not know there was a National Guard unit in Moses Lake.

"Everybody assumes we are the ones from Ephrata," Ferguson said.

The confusion is due to the closeness in the names. The Ephrata unit is the 1161st.

The similarity led many people, Ferguson said, to decline supporting the 161st, because they had already contributed to Ephrata's unit and they thought they were one and the same.

Now that people have become more aware, the support has increased, though Sanchez said a considerable number of people did not know that there were 165 soldiers from Moses Lake's National Guard in Iraq.

One of the sources of support has been the Moses Lake City COuncil, which gave the wives an endorsement of their crusade.

"It was certainly in order," Moses Lake Mayor Ron Covey said of the endorsement by city council. "We wholeheartedly support their endeavors."

Support notwithstanding, there are still some projects the troops' relatives would like to see through.

"We have care packages ready to be sent out, but we can't afford the postage," Ferguson said. The care packages are one of the ways the wives and relatives of the troops can abate their loved ones' fears.

"My husband asks me all the time 'have they forgotten us?'" Sanchez said. "That is what the soldiers don't want, to be forgotten."

The ribbons are a way to make sure they know they are not forgotten, Ferguson said. Once some of them begin returning on leave, they will see that the city was thinking about them during their absence, she added.

Organizing the support on the home front has many facets. One of them is having somebody working at the Armory five days a week, accepting the people's donations.

"Postage money would be preferred," Ferguson said. "So we can send the care packages."

The care packages contain from toiletries to snacks to birthday and anniversary cards for the troops. These are things that are not readily available in Iraq, and that help keep the soldiers' spirits up.

Ferguson said the troops' morale was good, although Sanchez noted that they deal with bouts of homesickness, missing their families, their kids, and their homeland.

Sanchez is a mother of four, while Ferguson is a mother of three. With the television showing less than glowing news from Iraq, dealing with the war has been particularly tough on some of their children.

A classmate at school told Sanchez' eight-year-old daughter that "she hoped her daddy did not die," Sanchez recalled. While older children understand better that their father is doing his job, that does not make it any easier on their mothers.

"Some days it's okay, some days it's rough," Ferguson said. "But there is no choice. You gotta put on a good face."

"It's hard not having my companion," Sanchez added.

Sometimes, people offer support to the wives' lonely struggle. That support falls a bit short, at times.

After their speech at the Centennial Amphitheatre, Sanchez and Ferguson were criticized because they did not mention the women in uniform fighting in Iraq. The reason for that was because the letter they read at the event was from the commander of the 161st's unit, which is entirely male, hence, there was no mention of women in uniform. "We support all the soldiers, men and women," Ferguson said.

Some other times, people fail to see the magnitude of the soldiers' commitment.

" People come up to me and say 'I know what you are going through; my husband is a salesman and he is gone for a week sometimes,'" Ferguson said. "It's not the same."

With a presidential election at hand, Sanchez and Ferguson regret the fact that the support of the troops has become blurred with the support of the war and the politics behind it.

"You don't have to support the war to support the troops," Ferguson said. Sanchez agreed, noting that these soldiers, whether they support the war or not, they have no choice.

"That is their job," she said.

While their loved ones risk their lives doing their job, one of the cures for the loneliness felt by Ferguson, Sanchez and hundreds of other relatives, is the e-mails and phone calls they receive periodically from the Mideast. Still, May of 2005, the end date of their tour is a long ways away.

"Don't forget the soldiers," Ferguson said. "It's going to be a long time before they come home."