National guard troops may see extended tour in Iraq

<p>At least four-thousand Georgia Army National Guard soldiers may spend up to four extra months in Iraq as part of President Bush's troop increase announced last month.</p><p>That includes the citizen soldiers of the First Battalion, 214th Field Artillery based in Toccoa. The unit is working with a National Guard brigade from Minnesota and could be in Iraq until August.</p><p>The Minnesota brigade replaced Georgia's 48th Infantry Brigade at Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq in April 2006.</p><p>The 214th Field Artillery is based at Camp Cedar Two and been operating as a security force.</p><p>A spokesman for the 214th -- Sergeant Gary Heffner -- says news of the extension came as a -- quote -- "little bit of a shock" for the Georgia soldiers.</p><p>But Heffner tells The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a telephone interview from Camp Cedar Two that everyone knows there's a job to do.</p><p>In all, more than 25,000 National Guard soldiers are deployed in Iraq. More than 200,000 reservists have been in Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001.</p><p>Besides the 214th, Georgia has another unit -- Company H, 121 Infantry -- in northern Iraq.</p><p>Brigadier General Lawrence Ross -- commander of the 78th Troop Command under which the deployed units fall -- says a transportation company from Bainbridge will travel to the war zone in the summer.</p>