Heading home

Published 12:01 am Friday, June 24, 2011

He’s on his way home.

Army 1st Lt. Joshua Urness just completed a yearlong deployment to Afghanistan. By Sunday morning, the 2005 Monroe High School graduate is due to join his wife and baby daughter at his base, Kentucky’s Fort Campbell.

“Selfishly, I’m very glad about that,” said Hol

ly Urness, Joshua’s mother.

Afghanistan, she said, is “constantly dangerous.”

Holly Urness, a former Monroe middle school teacher, and her husband, Russ, now live in Ellensburg. We talked as President Barack Obama prepared to speak about bringing Americans home from Afghanistan. He plans to pull out 33,000 U.S. troops by fall of 2012 — nearly 11 long years after war in Afghanistan began — with the first 10,000 home by the end of this year.

“The tide of war is receding. Fewer of our sons and daughters are serving in harm’s way,” Obama said at the White House on Wednesday.

Joshua Urness, 23, will be home well ahead of that first wave of 10,000. He has been in harm’s way since last July, when he arrived in Afghanistan as a security forces commander. A member of the 2-44th Air Defense Artillery, part of Fort Campbell’s 101st Sustainment Brigade, Urness was leader of a 19-man security force.

“The way he described it, he was like a Secret Service detail to support convoys and escort visitors. He called it the magic school bus,” his mother said.

The job Urness did earned him a Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service. It was presented recently at Camp Leatherneck, the Marine Corps base in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province where his Army unit also stayed.

The medal citation, signed by Army Col. Michael Borg, said “Lt. Urness commanded over 60 combat ground moves covering 8,000 miles in Afghanistan’s most dangerous provinces, Helmand and Nimruz.” The missions included escorting, without any casualties or vehicle breakdowns, more than “20 distinguished visitors including 14 General Officers,” the citation said.

Holly Urness sees those successes as “a combination of prudence and the grace of God.”

“His real concern, he was able to bring home all his guys,” she said.

His job in Afghanistan is over — for now. It’s unlikely he’ll face another overseas deployment for at least a year, his mother said. Joshua Urness joined the Army through the Reserve Officers Training Program at Washington State University. He graduated from WSU in 2009 with a master’s degree in global security studies.

That impressive resume leaves the door open to a bright future. Job one will be getting to know his daughter. His wife, Jessica Crusen Urness, gave birth to Isabella Rae last Dec. 2 while Joshua was home at Fort Campbell on leave. “Babies show up when they want to. She arrived with two days to spare,” Holly Urness said.

As a new father, Joshua received a hand-knitted blanket sent to Afghanistan by the Blankets for Deployed Daddies program. The idea is that a father’s unique scent, on a blanket sent home, helps an infant know his or her father during his absence.

Holly Urness teaches at Wahluke High School in the Grant County town of Mattawa. The school has a Knit Wits club that makes the blankets. With her dad heading home, Isabella will have the blanket as a keepsake honoring his service.

Holly Urness knows that reactions to Obama’s plan are mixed. Many Americans and lawmakers favor faster troop withdrawals, while some military leaders would leave more forces longer in Afghanistan.

“From everything I’ve heard about the situation, I would be very concerned to see too rapid a withdrawal,” she said. “In a warrior culture, I think we have to demonstrate strength.”

She approves of “a gradual pull-down,” but isn’t convinced that Afghanistan will be permanently changed by the U.S. effort that has cost more than 1,500 American lives. “We were able to find Osama bin Laden, and make an impact to root out the most extreme al-Qaida,” she said. “But honestly, I don’t see them becoming a democratic system.”

She keeps close to her heart families whose loved ones are still in Afghanistan. She knows their fears too well.

“It turns out I’m a woman of prayer,” she said.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; muhlstein@heraldnet.com.