Staff Sgt. Jo m Jackson had much on his mind as he checked portable-radio batteries beside the partially flooded Louisiana Supcrdome three nights after Hurricane Katrina.

The single father's five children were safe with his parents in Texas; however, his house in New Orleans was under water, prompting a series of troubling questions. Could he and his kids ever return to their home? How would he support them in a city where there were no longer any jobs? What would he do?

But all that seemed to take a back seat to the task at hand.

Sergeant Jackson is a National Guard soldier. He had been called out for what had morphed into a catastrophic storm. He was attached to the Louisiana Army Guard's engineer task force. Anc he was determined to complete his duty.

"This is stil a great country," said the man who had served in Iraq and who, once again, had put his personal life on hold to help others.

And so it was with the more than 50,000 other National Guardsmen w 10 quickly left behind families, homes and civilian jobs to respond to Katrina. Some, like Sergeant Jackson, were from the affected states. Many of them were already on duty when the Category 4 hurricane roared ashore near the Louisiana-Mississippi border Aug. 29.

But the bulk of the force came from elsewhere in a spontaneous nationwide movement of personnel involving all 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia. Never had so many Guardsmen traveled so far, so fast and from so many states and territories to respond a natural disaster.

It was an unprecedented Guard response necessitated by an unprecedented calamity. Much of the attention in the Katrina's wake has focused on the flooding in New Orleans. But it was the Mississippi Gulf coast that took the direct hit. The hurricane's 145 mph winds and 30-foot storm surge flattened whole communities, some several miles inland. Houses, apartments, businesses, highways and bridges simply disappeared.

The total affected area covered 90,000 square miles-or about twice the size of Pennsylvania. Inside, tens of thousands were homeless, some of them trapped inside or on top of what used to be their homes. Hundreds of thousands more were without power, food, water and medicine. And with telephone lines and radio, television and cell-phone towers and repeaters down, most were also disconnected from the outside world.

Within four hours of the storm's passing, Guardsmen were in the air and water rescuing people throughout the affected region, according to National Guard Bureau and state officials.

Over the hours and days that followed, a rapidly growing number of Guardsmen also evacuated people from low-lying areas and conducted house-to-house searches for others isolated by debris or rising flood waters.

In Louisiana and Mississippi alone (Katrina also affected Alabama and Florida), Guardsmen saved more 11,130 lives, including 4,200 in New Orleans, according to NGB figures. They also assisted in evacuating 70,000 people stranded in the now infamous Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center and helped move 100,000 others throughout Louisiana.

In addition, Guardsmen secured communities without power, provided medical care, set up shelters, and distributed food, water and ice. The NGB figures here are also historic. In the four weeks after Katrina struck, Guardsmen provided 8.2 million Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), 6.5 million gallons of water and 49 million pounds of ice to people in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Over the same period, they also cleared debris off at least 4,000 miles of roadways and helped the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers install temporary roofs on 10,000 homes in Mississippi alone and repaired the breached levees in New Orleans. And this is only a portion of the Guard accomplishment list in the two states.

"This was," says Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, National Guard Bureau chief, "one of the National Guard's finest hours."

Untold Story

The Guard response to Katrina is not only unprecedented, it's also a story largely untold, lost in the "blame game" that began about the same time the storm cleared the Gulf and the now includes officials from New Orleans to Washington and beyond.

But Guard leaders are confident that the story, as, they see it, will be told.

"When the finger pointing is all done, and pundits have s 3oken and the editorials are written," Lt. Gen. Danie .James III, Air Guard director, told the 127th General Conference last month (story, page 35), "you will DC very, very proud of the story that will emerge about how we, as a family, took care of those commur.ities on the Gulf Coast."

This may take a while because the Guard's Katrina story defies easy labiding. It wasn't directed by Washington so it was outside the "federal response." Calling it simply a "state response" is another misnomer. Instead, it was collective response of all the states.

By their owi admission, Louisiana and Mississippi officials were overwhel Tied. The two states called Guardsmen on state active du y Aug. 25, the day Katrina clipped southern Florida as a Category 1 hurricane. Combined, they had more than 5,000 on duty when the storm intensified to Category 4 and hit the Gulf Coast Aug. 29.

With each laving a combat brigade in Iraq, Louisiana and Mississippi exercised agreements with neighboring states for additional Guard personnel and equipment the next day as, they surveyed :he damage while conducting search and rescues.

Initial assessments were grim, far worse than Camille (Magazine Archives, page 23), the legendary 1969 hurricane that had long >een the benchmark for Gulf Coast storms. Maj. Gen. Harold A. Cross, Mississippi adjutant general, called the destuction in his state "almost unbelievable" in a video address 10 the 127th General Conference. Things then went from bac to horrific when isolated breaches in the New Orleans levee system intensified Aug. 30, eventually submerging 80 percent of the city.

More than 11,000 Guardsmen were involved in the response by Aug. 31, but Louisiana and Mississippi concluded that more were needed-tens of thousands more, in fact, than the state's combined personnel end-strengths of about 23,000 soldiers and airmen.

State officia s called NGB that morning for help in identifying available Guard forces and equipment around the country under the Emergency Mutual Assistance Compact (EMAC), which facilitates the movement of resources from state to another during an emergency (box, page 31).

General Blum quickly convened a video teleconference with all the adjutant; general. He explained what Louisiana and Mississippi needed immediately. States across the country volunteered and began preparing troops for movement in hours, not the days or weeks associated with many deployments.

"There wasn't a single question [from the adjutants general] about [depl ayment] orders or personnel status [state or federal]," says a senior NGB official familiar with the teleconference. "It was, 'What do you need? How soon do you need them? Where co you want them?' And they just started [the forces] flowing."

"There was no mobilization process, there were no deployment orders" General Blum told the 127th General Conference in a taped message. "There was just a need, and the National Guard responded."

Within 96 hours, the number of Guardsmen along the Gulf Coast ballooned from 11,000 to more 40,000, about 19,000 of them arriving via Air National Guard C-130 transport, according to NGB. The number on the ground grew to more 45,000 at the height of the operation Sept 10. Some were shifted to Texas later in the month in anticipation of Hurricane Rita. Another nearly 5,000 Guardsmen assisted the relief elsewhere around the country.

But while personnel status may not have been an issue with the adjutants general, it was contentious elsewhere.

Most Guardsmen mobilized for Katrina in a state activeduty status but quickly shifted to Title 32 (federally funded but under state control). This is an administrative change with no bearing on the job at hand or overall command and control. Regardless of their state affiliation, Guardsmen fell under the command of the two adjutants general, Maj. Gen. Bennett Landreneau in Louisiana and General Cross in Mississippi.

Many in Washington, however, wanted greater control of the operation. President Bush was under increasing political pressure to show a more visible federal presence in first few days just after the storm. The White House urged Gov. Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana and Gov. Haley Barbour in Mississippi to turn Guardsmen in their states over to federal military authorities. The same request was made of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas before Hurricane Rita arrived. All three refused.

The president could have unilaterally federalized the Guard. He didn't, in part, say NGB officials, because General Blum convinced the commander in chief that such an action might halt a massive Guard response that had gone largely undetected by CNN.

What CNN did notice was the smaller federal military response under the direction of Lt. Gen. Russel Honor the First U.S. Army commander. By Sept. 9, the last of his approximately 5,000 active-component troops on the ground arrived m the Gulf region.

Many Stories

The Guard Katrina story isn't a single narrative but an anthology of thousands of stories. Every soldier and airman and every unit and task force has their own. So does every storm survivor they came across. A few combined offer a revealing picture.

In Mississippi, Guard helicopter crews from around the country each flew up to 15 missions a day to provide a critical air bridge to isolated communities in the immediate aftermath of Katrina.

Throughout the Mississippi Delta, thousands of people couldn't reach relief-distribution points; many didn't have cars, and countless roads were impassable. Helicopters at the Air National Guard Combat Readiness Training Center airfield in Gulfport, Miss., were their lifeline.

Crews generally flew to known supply points. But, in areas where they couldn't land, they also provided aid to those who waved or displayed a distress signal by plotting the positions and sending help from the ground.

"I heard a lot of helicopters one day," said Shirley Lott of White Cypress Lakes, Miss. Her community of 300 had one road in and out. "I couldn't do a sign in the yard because of all the debris." So she climbed atop her home and wrote "Help" on her roof.

"It wasn't long before the first Black Hawk stopped down there and downloaded some food and water" Ms. Lott said.

After that, Ms. Lott and her husband become logistical leaders in their community. She coordinated the reception of supplies at nearby Mint Julep Airpark and her husband drove through the community distributing military rations, water, ice and baby products.

On Sept. 8, she greeted aircrews with two trucks and told a New York Guard aircrew that parents in the community were running low on diapers and baby formula. The pilot scribbled notes attentively.

"This should last us several days," Ms. Lott told the crew delivering the iupplies. "It's wonderful," she said of the relief drops. "It.'s overwhelming."

"This is the reason why I joined the National Guard," said Ohio Army Guard Sgt. Foster Kennedy, a light-wheeledvehicle mechanic who helped load the aircraft and deliver the supplies. "'. wasn't going to miss a chance to help. We're here to help our own."

A group of Guardsman returned to Nebraska from New Orleans late las t month with a unique rescue story. But instead of rescuing people, their story involved saving an estimated $50 to $100 million in cash and currency.

Members of the Nebraska National Guard Counter Drug Task Force helped the U.S. Treasury Department rescue the money from a looded Loomis, Fargo & Co. building in New Orleans. Unit members dubbed the mission "Ocean's 13," as a sequel to the recent heist movie. "I saw some amazing, amaz ng sights," said Spc. Tyler Miles, a member of the Nebraska Army National Guard 134th Infantry Detachment (Long Raige Surveillance) who helped move the cash and coins out of the vault. "It was definitely a trip of firsts."

Lt. Col. Tom Brewer, task force commander, said the unit was approached by Treasury officials to help secure a perimeter around the building and to assist in hauling the cash away. Because of the nature of the mission, secrecy was paramount.

After arriving on scene, one team of soldiers jumped into the water and broke open the gates doors. Once the vault was breeched, Treasury and Loomis officials began to quickly load the fetid bricks of cash into plastic bags and hauled them to vehicles outside.

The inside of the vault looked like "King Solomon's minebags of [coins], money stacked everywhere," Colonel Brewer described the scene to an Omaha World-Herald reporter.

"Every September llth," said Specialist Miles, "we're going to remember moving all that money. "

New Orleans could've erupted in chaos and lawlessness if not for the calming presence of Guardsmen like the members of Oklahoma's 45th Infantry Brigade.

After a three-day convoy from Kingfisher, OkIa., they arrived Sept. 4 in New Orleans and immediately began easing the fears of those who couldn't or wouldn't honor the mandatory evacuation order.

The unit set up in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Orleans Parish. The store had been looted and the soldiers were there to ensure there wasn't further looting or arson. They then moved to De La Salle High School and began roving patrols.

Local reaction was initially mixed before turning overwhelmingly positive, unit members said.

"The first reaction of disgruntled citizens to the initial wave of soldiers was 'What took you so long?"' said Spc. Justin Oxford. "They now are saying we are really nice, and [they] tell us what a good job we are doing."

While security was their primary mission, unit members included humanitarian assistance with their patrols, distributing cases of MREs and water to clinics, hospitals and individual residents.

One day they came across an 88-year-old deaf women, who had ridden out the storm.

"She was wondering what was going on and if they were there to kick her out of her house," recalled Spc. Scott Jones. "We were there to see if she needed any food and water. All she wanted was a newspaper so she could know what was going on in New Orleans."

An hour later, the soldiers returned with the newspaper. She gave them all hugs and thanked them for helping the people of New Orleans, Specialist Jones said.

Another hurricane survivor expressed express his gratitude in a different ways.

"One resident we met gave me his phone number and email address so we could stay in touch," said Pfc. Chad Gatz, "and that whenever we are in New Orleans we would have a place to stay."

Master Sgt. Bob Haskell, Capt. Steve Alvarez, Capt. Kevin Hynes, 2nd Lt. Sarah Dickenson and Spc. Joe Bungert contributed to this report.

© 2005 National Guard Association of the United States Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.