Illinois soldiers now in the middle of Egypt tension

Like swirling riptides, there are two undercurrents pulling and pushing the crisis in Egypt.

Israel and the Suez Canal.

A half-world away, 440 Illinois National Guard troopers are right between the two – literally.

They are stationed on the Sinai Peninsula, with the main chunk of Egypt to the west, Israel to the east and the Suez Canal just to the north a bit.

The Illinois Guard's 2nd Battalion, 123rd Field Artillery Regiment deployed to Egypt last May to take up positions with an international peacekeeping force overseeing the terms of the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Now, the home state soldiers find themselves surrounded by anything but peace – and they aren't scheduled to come home until May.

“I didn't want to see him gone for a year, but knowing it was Egypt and it was a peacekeeping mission was comforting,” said Cara Muncy, whose husband is among the Illinois soldiers stationed in Egypt.

Sgt 1st Class Herbert W. Muncy, 38, of Joliet, is a lawman by trade. Platoon sergeant Muncy had been an Aurora policeman and a Kendall County deputy sheriff before going to work four years ago as a correctional officer at Stateville Prison in Joliet.

As do many members of the Illinois National Guard, Muncy volunteered with a unit miles away from his home in suburban Chicago. The 123rd Field Artillery Regiment is based in Milan, Ill., near the Quad Cities on the west side of the state.

He is among more than a dozen soldiers from metro Chicago, many from North Riverside, who are in that unit and deployed to Egypt. None of them could have known that they would end up in a tense region where rioting has taken hold of Cairo and Alexandria with violent demonstrations demanding a regime change.

As always in the Middle East, the conflict is fueled by a hatred of Israel and disagreement about how Egyptian officials – and its major ally, the United States – are aiding Israel. Egypt is second only to Israel in the amount of foreign aid provided by the United States.

The second undercurrent of concern for American officials, the Suez Canal, is for now operating normally. If the 4 million barrels of crude oil shipped through the canal or an adjacent pipeline every day are interrupted, the stakes will be increased.

Those 440 “peacekeepers” from Illinois could find themselves at the forefront of a much more daunting mission. Some protesters have threatened to move violence to Sinai, where several buffer zones of Egyptian military units and international peacekeepers are stationed.

Sgt. Muncy and many of the others have been in conflicts before. Muncy was an active Army soldier for 8 years and saw action in Bosnia, according to his wife. In 2007 he was part of a Springfield unit deployed to carry out a mission in Iraq.

“I last heard from him on Thursday evening and Friday morning,” Cara Muncy told me. “Both cell phone and e-mail.”

But then, along with the rest of Egypt, service was cut by government officials who seemed intent on trying to control the flow of information – especially through social media networks.

“I know they're safe and that they are far removed,” she said. “I don't think they're in any of the chaos ... but it's always uncomfortable not hearing from him.”

The couple met while both worked as deputies in Kendall County and dated for years before getting married last October during Herbert's brief home visit from Egypt.

Cara works with a “family readiness unit” that communicates the latest information from overseas to loved ones back in Illinois. Until the past week, there wasn't much to report.

Even now, as the world watches street violence, prison breakouts and real time political shifts in a story that dominates news cycles, the official line from military officials in Illinois takes a much more reasoned approach.

“The Illinois National Guard Soldiers stationed in Sinai are professional, highly trained and able to respond to a variety of incidents,” a news release from the guard stated. “If the situation in Egypt changes, the Multinational Force and Observers or the Illinois Army National Guard is capable of taking appropriate measures to safeguard American troops.”

When the unit was sent to Egypt eight months ago, commander Lt. Col. Maurice Rochelle of Flossmoor said, “This mission does not have the immediate tensions of Iraq or Afghanistan.”

Maybe it didn't then.

But it does now.

•; Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC 7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by email at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie