Sgt. First Class Jason Bergman called it “just another mission.” The platoon sergeant from Fenwick Island, who spent time in Saudi Arabia in 2002 and 2003, will head back to the troubled Middle East region next month – this time to serve as a military policeman in Iraq.
Sgt. First Class Jason Bergman with a fellow National Guard member at Fenwick Island Town Hall.Bergman is currently in the midst of a 10-day training regimen before he and roughly 150 others in the 153rd National Guard Military Police Company out of Delaware City leave for Iraq next month.
“It’s back to basics,” said Bergman, who will be in charge of 40 men on his unit’s mission. “To make sure everybody comes back home is my objective.”
Bergman, a fourth-year Fenwick Island police officer, will leave his wife and a 9-year-old daughter at home when he leaves on June 15 for Delaware City, then the Army’s Fort Dix in New Jersey and ultimately Iraq on June 18, according to current schedules.
He called the separation from loved ones the hardest part of leaving, adding that his daughter does not completely comprehend the scope of her father’s mission or the length of the deployment. Most members of the 153rd have families, Bergman said, but most also already have experience. Some 60 percent, he and another officer estimated this week, are veterans, having already served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
“They have experience and an idea” about how the pending trip will be, said Bergman, but “separation from the family is the hardest for the men.”
Bergman enlisted into the U.S. Army 14 years ago, to earn money for college, and he served more than eight years on active duty. He has served with the Army National Guard ever since. In the nearly six years of that duty, he has assisted in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, helped contain Arizona’s border with Mexico and guarded an Army base in Saudi Arabia, in 2002 and 2003, to support the launch of the Iraq war.
“I got off active duty to be a policeman,” Bergman said. “Then the war started.”
His latest deployment is scheduled to last 12 months, beginning on June 18. Bergman said the unit’s specific mission has not yet been released. Delaware Guard officials received notice on the morning of April 19 that they would be deployed for the second time, the first having been in Saudi Arabia.
“These soldiers are military police (and) experts in providing force protection, along with facility and battlefield security,” said Col. Scott Chambers, brigade commander of the Delaware National Guard’s 72nd Troop Command, in a guard release announcing the deployment last month. “Because of their unique skills and experience, they were handpicked to serve.”
Bergman and the 153rd will be deployed as a part of President’s George W. Bush’s “surge” plan to add extra forces in Iraq, with hopes of controlling a situation some have called uncontrollable. The “surge” plan has been largely unpopular among Americans but Bergman said he focuses on his job and tries to ignore the unpopularity and the politics that have tainted the war.
“They’re not in the foxhole with me,” Bergman said. “When we’re ordered to go somewhere, we go. We’re soldiers; we’re not politicians.”
Fenwick Island officials have set up a bank account and are raising funds to buy phone cards that Bergman can use to contact his wife and his daughter while he is deployed. Call (302) 539-3011 for more information on the effort.