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8 to 10 percent won’t get leave

May-21-2004 » Filed Under: Iraq News

More R&R info.

[Link to Full Article]
By Steve Liewer, Stars and Stripes

The loss of thousands of Rest and Recuperation slots for troops in the Middle East during May and June has been met mostly with stoic resignation, say some deployed soldiers and family readiness group leaders in Germany. [...]

On April 25, Coalition Joint Task Force 7 — the name of the unit overseeing allied military operations in Iraq until it was realigned last week as Multi-national Force-Iraq/Multi-national-Corps-Iraq — quietly notified units it would be dramatically cutting back R&R slots between May 1 and June 15.

Col. Bob Ortiz, the coalition’s personnel commander, said the chartering of two 250-seat jumbo jets per day to ferry soldiers on leave from Kuwait to Germany and the United States was postponed until mid-June because of “operational requirements and the extension of 15 to 20 thousand troops in Iraq,” according to a statement released earlier this week.

Instead of 500 seats aboard charter aircraft, Ortiz said the task force planned to buy about 60 tickets per day aboard commercial aircraft departing from Kuwait City International Airport — a reduction of more than 85 percent for the time period. He estimated the cuts could cost 8 percent to 10 percent of troops in Iraq their midtour leave.


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