Mike Dutka knows the pain and worry that comes from seeing a child off to war. He’s endured it three times over the past six years, and may yet have to again.
Dutka said his son, Jared, was little more than a boy when, in the months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he made the decision to enlist in the Army as an 18-year-old. Jared had recently graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School after moving here two years earlier to live with his father.
Now a man, married, and living in Idaho, Jared returns to Oak Park next week, sandwiched between Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, to see his family.
“I haven’t seen my Chicago family in six years,” he said by phone from Idaho. He admitted it’s “weird adapting to everything,” back in the states, after an extended enlistment that included three combat tours in what the U.S. military has called “one of the most treacherous sectors of Baghdad.”
It will take some time to put things in perspective.
“You don’t really think about service while you’re there,” he observed. “You don’t think about it until you’re back here.”
His father said being around family could help. “We’re looking forward to spoiling Jared and his wife.”
Jared and Lacey Dutka will be welcomed by a family divided in their opinion of the war, but united in love and respect for Jared’s willingness to sacrifice for what he believed in.
Mike didn’t agree with his son’s decision to go off to war, but said he respects him deeply for doing so. Jared’s grandfather, Gerald, who saw combat in Korea as a Marine sergeant, supported the invasion of Iraq and thinks the country has done well there.
“I’ve always been proud I wore a uniform,” Gerald said. “I love our military.” But that doesn’t mean he was thrilled about seeing Jared head into harm’s way.
“Nobody likes to see a kid go off to war,” he said. “We knew what it probably was going to be like.”
A sense of service
Mike Dutka spoke about his son in guarded, matter-of-fact tones, struggling, unsuccessfully at times, to avoid emotional trip points.
He recalled taking Jared as a young boy to see the war memorials inside Colonel Robert McCormick’s Cantigny estate in Wheaton. Jared would gaze intently at the elaborate life sized re-enactments, as if recalling something.
“He’d say, ‘Dad, I know this stuff. I feel like I’ve been here,'” Mike recalled.
There is a history of military service in the Dutka family. Besides his grandfather, Jared’s uncle Lester was an Army Air Force Colonel and B-25 bomber pilot in the Pacific Theater. A cousin served in the Navy during World War II and a great-grandfather was in the Army during World War I.
Jared said the decision just came to him one day. “I felt it was something I needed to do. Some kind of service to country,” he said.
He was looking for something “versatile.” Most Army ratings (job categories) are narrow, but military police offered a wide range of opportunities. So he signed up for an year more than the standard four-year hitch so he could guarantee military police training.
“I wanted something that had a broad area of learning,” he said.
Except for a period when he was stationed in Baghdad’s ultra-high security “Green Zone,” Dutka was on the front lines. Iraqi militants’ favorite targets are American soldiers and Iraqi policeman. For two of his three 14-month tours, Jared, a military policeman, lived with and trained would-be Iraqi police officers.
He also provided armed security during former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s trial.
Mike Dutka said he only spoke infrequently with his son about his experiences in Iraq, but on occasion Jared voiced frustration at seeing their efforts undone.
“We build a police station, then they come blow it up,” Jared once told his dad. The human toll was discouraging as well. The Iraqis were often tough to motivate and even then success wasn’t guaranteed.
“He said it was hard to get them to stay committed,” said Mike, “and just when they’d get them trained, they’d get shot or blown up.”
A military romance
It wasn’t all toil and sacrifice for Jared. During one of his combat tours, he met Lacey, who was also serving in the Army in Baghdad. Between tours of duty, they took advantage of their geographic situation.
“He and Lacey traveled around Europe,” said Mike Dutka, “did a lot of things he probably wouldn’t have done.”
His second tour concluded, Jared and Lacey married, bought a house in Idaho and prepared to return to civilian life. Lacey was discharged in June, 2007, and Dutka was finishing his five-year enlistment training combat troops at Camp Red Devil in Fort Carson, Colo., southwest of Colorado Springs.
Then the harsh reality of a military stretched dangerously thin hit like a roadside bomb. Dutka was “stop-lossed,” a term found in the small print in all enlistment contracts, which allows the military to disregard its agreements with soldiers if their services are still needed in time of war. He was ordered back to Iraq for a third tour of duty.
Jared brushed aside questions about putting his life on hold, accepting what he said was a presidential decision.
But Mike said his son was unhappy about the Army’s decision.
“They deployed him one month before he was scheduled to get out,” his father said.
Back in harm’s way
Jared’s third combat tour was spent in Salman Pak, a Sunni-dominated town 12 miles southeast of Baghdad, a place so violent it’s considered a part of Iraq’s “triangle of death.”
“That last one was probably the worst I’d been through,” he said.
In February 2005, less than two weeks after Iraq’s historic elections supposedly signaled an end of insurgent power, car bombs and suicide attacks were being launched “almost daily” against the country’s security forces. Late that month Sunni insurgents attacked the Salman Pak police station with rifles, rockets and mortars in an hours-long battle that left 10 policemen dead and 75 wounded.
In March 2006, insurgents again laid siege to the Salman Pak police station, lobbing 14 mortar shells in a predawn attack that killed at least one senior officer and wounded at least five. In late June 2007, a month before Dutka arrived, the beheaded bodies of 20 men were discovered near Salman Pak.
Whatever Jared felt about being ordered back to war, he didn’t let it affect his performance. From July 7, 2007 to Sept. 19, 2008, Sgt. Dutka led his 12-man squad, “the Boondock Saints,” through “72 small-arms attacks, 70 indirect-fire attacks, two improvised explosive attacks and a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the Salman Pak police station.”
Dutka’s leadership during that tour earned him the highest of his dozen citations, the Bronze Star, the nation’s third highest military honor. “Sgt. Dutka distinguished himself by exceptionally meritorious conduct,” the citation reads, “as the leader of the 3rd Squad of the 59th Military Police Company.”
Beyond physical toughness, his superiors lauded his mental resolve and leadership. “Sgt. Dutka was critical in the mentorship and mental rehabilitation of soldiers faced with heavy attack from insurgents in which our [Iraqi police] counterparts took significant casualties,” read his citation, which also noted that Dutka was “the go-to non-commissioned officer for not only the platoon and our company, but even for the … battalion.”
Dutka brushed it off, saying, “It doesn’t really matter to me.”
His family, however, is a bit more impressed. “We knew he was a good soldier. But we never knew he did that many missions, 150 missions,” his grandfather, and fellow sergeant, said.
Jared was never wounded, never became eligible for a Purple Heart, at least physically.
“Maybe mentally,” he said with a quick laugh. “I caught shrapnel in my [body] armor and my goggles.”
Others wouldn’t be as lucky. On Sept. 23, four days after Jared left Iraq for what he and his family hope was the last time, 26-year-old 1st Lt. Thomas J. Brown was killed by an improvised explosive and small arms fire as he led a patrol in Salman Pak.
Respecting those who serve
While he hates the Iraq war, Mike is in awe of the sacrifices some people make for their country. And he’s painfully aware others have suffered far more than he and his family.
“I have a friend who lost his son during Jared’s second deployment,” he said, “and another friend who lost her niece early in the war. She was one of the first females to be killed over there.”
The country, Mike states, can and must do much more to show its support for the people it sends to war.
“I got a letter from my ex-wife with [Jared’s] Bronze Star citation the same week Michael Phelps got his eighth gold medal,” said Mike. “That put it in perspective for me. The way the world was making such a commotion about an athlete getting gold, when,” he hesitated, whispering, “when guys on the ground are putting their lives on the line for a piece of bronze.”
“It’s not very balanced,” he said. Even when adequate funding was approved, it seemed to go elsewhere. “They’ve spent a ton of money,” he said of the military, “but it didn’t seem to filter down to the guys on the ground.”
Mike and other family members sent rechargeable batteries for Jared’s rifle sight, and paid for body armor the military didn’t provide during his first combat tour.
Besides the ever-present danger, the temperature in Baghdad was usually several degrees higher than Phoenix, Ariz. Yet Dutka and his cohorts routinely went out with several layers of clothing on, including helmet and body armor.
Mike recalled his son e-mailing him that they were working to install air-conditioning in his squad’s Humvee-not for comfort but because “they were dangerously close to reaching temperatures that could ignite the munitions in the vehicle.”
Even now, Mike said, the appreciation for what our military personnel have sacrificed for their country is at best stinting.
“Congress is considering compensation for people who have been stop-lossed,” he said. “But it won’t be retro-active. I don’t think that’s right.”
The future remains uncertain
Mike Dutka said his family still bears the burden of nagging uncertainty regarding Jared’s remaining military obligations. Now on inactive Army reserve status, he probably won’t be called back to active duty. But he’s still vulnerable to the stop-loss provision.
“He could conceivably be called up for a fourth deployment,” said his father. “He really doesn’t want to get deployed again.”
Despite his staunch support of the military, Gerald Dutka said military leaders should accept that his grandson has done enough for his country.
“He did one tour too many,” he said. “I don’t think they should have sent him the last time.”
Mike and Gerald will spend Veterans Day thinking of Jared while they anticipate Thanksgiving.
“I’m grateful he’s home and pretty much out of harm’s way and also thankful to the people who have served, are serving, and will serve,” Mike said, his voice catching once again. “It’s a little closer to home now.”
“For me, every day is Veterans Day,” he added, “thinking about the people over there doing their job.”
“Do him justice,” Gerald said. “Don’t worry about us. Do it for Jared. He deserves it.”
Asked to describe the deserving people with whom he served in Iraq, Jared grew silent.
“I don’t know how to put it into words,” he said.
After another hesitation, he replied, “They all have a lot of heart.”