Questions about the final months of Tim Walz’s 24-year National Guard career have triggered a flurry of questions and confusion among military members and veterans, and Wednesday drew a sharp accusation from Walz’s vice presidential opponent, Republican J.D. Vance. In a bitter attack at a rally in Michigan, Vance claimed Walz “abandoned” his guard unit in 2005, just before a deployment to Iraq.
“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did?,” Vance said Wednesday in Shelby Township, Michigan. “He dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him.”
Accusing a 24-year veteran and former command sergeant major of abandoning his troops by ducking combat is a grave insult in the veteran community, and strikes deep emotions in many. By Wednesday afternoon, a conservative influencer had called for veterans to post pictures of themselves while deployed under the meme “Me not being Tim Walz,” drawing hundreds of responses.
But attacks on veteran service records are not new in politics.
At least one soldier who knew Walz as well as any has defended him — despite not being a fan. Joseph Eustice, whose personal Facebook page today has anti-Walz posts, held the same job as Walz — command sergeant major of 1st battalion, 125th Artillery Regiment.
When the retirement controversy flared up in 2022, Eustice told local media that Walz fulfilled his duty.
“He was a great soldier,” Eustice told the Star Tribune. “When he chose to leave, he had every right to leave.”
Several other soldiers from Walz’s unit echoed that sentiment, including a former brigadier general.
Eustice speculated the controversy could be stoked by sour grapes by a soldier who was passed over for the promotion to command sergeant major that went to Walz.
Still, the assault on Walz’s retirement appears to have caught the Harris-Walz campaign completely unaware. A Minnesota government spokesperson for Walz told Task & Purpose of Walz’s retirement, “In May 2005, Walz retired to run for Congress following 24 years of service.” They did not address whether Walz knew a deployment was pending or if he actively sought to avoid it.
Tim Walz’s retirement timeline
The timeline of Walz’s service and the deployment of his unit, the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery Regiment, is relatively clear, through public records, news accounts and press releases at the time:
- In 2003, Walz and the unit mobilized to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Turkey and Europe. Walz was stationed at Vicenza, Italy and returned to Minnesota in April 2004. He was promoted to command sergeant major of the battalion soon after returning.
- Walz retired from the Minnesota National Guard in May 2005 after 24 years of service, according to documents posted online that appear to be his NGB Form 22, a Report of Separation and Record of Service. Walz previously retired after 20 years of service but returned to service after Sept. 11, he wrote in a Winona Daily News opinion piece, re-enlisting for four years. However, his NGB Form 22 indicates his “terminal reserve/military service obligation” date was September 2007.
- The 125th Field Artillery Regiment received initial call-up orders in July 2005 and deployed for training in Mississippi that fall as part of the 34th Infantry Divisions’ 1st Brigade Combat Team.
- The 125th deployed to Iraq in March 2006, 10 months after Walz had separated from the unit.
The timeline laid out in official documents does not cover several factors common to nearly any military unit. Walz, as a senior member of the unit’s leadership, likely knew a deployment was in the unit’s future before the July 2005 activation order. Extended deployments and National Guard activations are often planned across the Army a year or more before formal orders are issued. But the May 2005 date on which Walz’s retirement became official was likely many months after he had ‘dropped his papers’ to inform his chain of command he intended to retire, beginning the process.
Which came first, and how he approached his decision, would be for Walz to address.
Adding to the confusion is reporting, confirmed by Walz in public statements in years since, that he had suffered significant hearing loss by the end of his career, which he underwent corrective surgery for once out of uniform. A hard-of-hearing senior NCO is a well-loved military cliche, but in reality, the military has strict rules on hearing levels required to deploy. A Minnesota government spokesperson for Walz told Task & Purpose that Walz’s hearing was not a factor in his retirement decision.
A second issue for Walz may be his retirement rank. He served as the 125th’s command sergeant major, an E-9, the Army’s highest enlisted rank. But, according to the Minnesota Guard, his retirement status and benefits was reduced to that of an E-8 because he did not complete training required of all E-9s.
“Soldiers who do not finish the course revert back to their prior rank,” a National Guard spokesperson told Task & Purpose. “This is what we refer to as an administrative reduction and not punitive in nature.”
Walz’s military experience is being touted by Democrats as a strong part of his appeal to voters and a testimony to her personal values and commitment to defense and veterans issues as a lawmaker. Patrick Murphy, a former Under Secretary of the Army and the first Iraq war veteran to be elected to the United States House of Representatives, told Task & Purpose that Walz will absolute get veterans to vote for the Harris-Walz ticket.
“There are 900,000 veterans in Pennsylvania ready to run through a wall for Tim Walz,” Murphy said.
But Vance’s attack, echoing accusations Walz faced in his 2022 race for Governor, characterized that retirement as a kind of betrayal — and an echo of attacks that military veterans have faced in previous political races.
‘Swift boat’
Vance’s attacks on Wednesday echo a wide range of Republican officials and other conservatives who within hours of Walz introduction rushed to announce they are eager to “swiftboat” Walz.
“Swiftboat” is a political short-hand for the 2004 media campaign that attacked Democrat John Kerry’s combat experience as a Navy officer aboard riverine patrol boats in Vietnam, known to their crews as Swift Boats. That campaign, run by a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, was run by Chris LaCivita, who is now a co-manager of Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign.
LaCivita has posted at least three times about Walz’s retirement in the last day, more than any other topic about the new Vice Presidential candidate.
The attacks on Walz’s service go back to his run for Minnesota Governor. In November 2018, two retired Minnesota Guard command sergeant majors, including one that took over Walz’s position as command sergeant major, wrote a paid endorsement letter to the editor of the West Central Tribune, a Minnesota newspaper. They described Walz’s retirement ahead of his battalion’s Iraq deployment as quitting and leaving the battalion’s soldiers “hanging” and “without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war.”
Wednesday, the attacks appeared to be gathering steam among veterans online.
Command Sergeant Major ‘reduction’ to Master Sergeant
During his final year at the 125th, Walz was promoted to Command Sergeant Major, the highest-ranking enlisted soldier in the unit, directly responsible for a wide range of health, welfare and readiness issues for every soldier. However, prior to retiring, Walz failed to complete a 750-hour course in the Army’s Sergeants Major Academy, which would have included 86 hours in residence at Ft. Bliss, Texas. Completing the course is mandatory for E-9s, though completing the training after being promoted is not uncommon. But without the training, Walz was not eligible to retire as a full E-9 and his retired status and benefits were ‘reduced’ to E-8 after he left service.
The Minnesota Guard confirmed to Task & Purpose that Walz was properly promoted and served in the E-9 role, and “retired as” an E-9, despite the later reduction. His campaign website for earlier races has said: “When he retired, Tim was the highest-ranking enlisted National Guard soldier in southern Minnesota.”
Jeffrey Frisby, former master sergeant for the Arkansas National Guard and executive director of the Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States said similar situations still occur.
“I don’t know that we would put on that rank, but we would definitely serve in that position,” he said. “I do think that that still happens and I do think that people serve in capacities above their rank but above their official military pay grade to serve in a leadership position still today.”
A gap in a leadership position like CSM could’ve meant that “if they didn’t put someone in there to manage those tasks, to oversee those soldiers, oversee that training, then something was gonna get missed and something might not have been done to standard,” Frisby said. For CSMs in particular, he said, they manage transportation, food, lodging, and “soldier care” issues.
“They might have missed training events and training timelines so to have someone in that leadership role is very important, even if you’re just an acting position,” Frisby said. “Even though he wasn’t eligible for that command title, we would probably still put him in that role and let him serve in that capacity because somebody in that chain of command thought this was the right guy for the job.”
UPDATE, 8/7/2024: this story has been updated to include the 1/125th’s 2003 deployment to Italy in the timeline. An misstatement of Walz’s rank as a command sergeant major was also corrected.