MORE ON THE R&R PROGRAM

Our Rear Detachment briefed family members on this last night. To update the information I put here yesterday - the priorities are

1. Anyone who had an emergency leave situation but was denied leave for operational reasons.

2. New fathers.

3. Winners of a battalion lottery - which randomizes everybody else's chances of being selected.

The entire 501st FSB may send one soldier per day - home on leave.

But read on below - and find out how some soldiers say they do not want to take the leave - for their own personal reasons.

Me - I'm sure the CPT Patti will remove herself from consideration so that junior soldiers can have the slot. She hasn't told me so - it would just be like her.

“I personally don’t plan on taking leave,” Dodge said. “When the time comes, I’ll probably take a knee. I’d rather see one of my soldiers go.”

But for one officer, leave can’t come too soon.

Capt. Matt Ashburn, 28, is about to be a father. His wife, Katarina, back in Heidelberg, is due to have the couple’s first child — a girl — in six days “and hopefully, plans work out that it’s perfect timing,” Ashburn said.

He’s scheduled with the next group to get leave, said Ashburn, who’s been deployed seven and a half months with G-3 (Air) at Fifth Corps headquarters at Victory City.

Only a few hundred yards away, two soldiers were split on whether to stay or go.

“I’m not going,” said Sgt. 1st Class P. “Hendu” Hendrickson, who has been in Iraq six months with the 1014th Quartermasters, reservists from Athens, Ga.

“When I leave Iraq, I want to leave Iraq,” Hendrickson said, who is scheduled to PCS home to Atlanta next April. Going home for 15 days would mean having to say goodbye to his wife, Tricia, “and I don’t want to take my wife through it again.”

“I’m going home!” said Spc. Aaron Appleby, also with the 1014th Quartermasters. A couple weeks home in Atlanta, “sleeping in a real bed, using a real bathroom” would get him mentally ready to do his final four months, Appleby said. He added it will be difficult to get on that plane back to Iraq. “I’ll be boo-hooing!” Appleby said, laughing. “I miss the States!”