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BLUFFDALE — A canceled deployment to Iraq is turning the lives of some Utah National Guard members upside down.
Some 400 Guardsmen were planning to head to Iraq in September. They've spent the past year and a half preparing for that, training and rearranging their lives. Now they'll have to put all of that on hold for one more year.
"When I first heard about it, I was very upset," Adrian Brewer said. "It was kind of like ‘what do I do now?'"
"My first thought was ‘Yay! He is gonna be here, and I will be excited,'" said Ashlee Brewer, Adrian's wife. "And it took a few days to realize that we had a lot to put back together."
The Brewers will now have to look for work so they can support their 4-year-old daughter, Cora, and another baby on the way.
"(It's) kind of like we kind of got thrown out in the ocean a little bit," Ashlee Brewer said.
The good news is Adrian Brewer will now be home to witness the birth of his next daughter this December — something he would have missed in the deployment. The Brewers are just hopeful they can make their home life work in the meantime.
"(We're) just hoping that we can stay on our feet," she said.
He helps maintain and prepare Apache helicopters for the battlefield. While he is grateful for more immediate time with his family, he's also eager to help his fellow soldiers overseas.
"I'm ready to serve and support my country anyway I can," he said.
The 211th Battalion will try to help those soldiers re-arrange their lives after the canceled deployment. They'll try to help some with jobs, also helping more than 100 students who now have to scramble to get in fall classes.
Email: manderson@ksl.com
