Yes. They disagree with those who attacked Walz.
Walz has faced such attacks before, including in his re-election campaign in 2022, when
his GOP opponent questioned his decision to leave the service in 2005. Walz’s campaign responded with
a letter signed by 50 veterans praising his record and leadership.
“Governor Walz secured additional funding for new veterans homes,” read the letter, a copy of which the Harris campaign shared Wednesday with NBC News. “In his first term, Minnesota was one of just seven states initially selected by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to participate in the ‘Governor’s Challenge’ to eliminate veteran deaths by suicide.”
According to records by the National Guard, the 1st Battalion of the 125th Field Artillery received an
alert order on July 14, 2005, – two months after Walz retired. The mobilization order came in August and the unit mobilized in October.
Joseph Eustice, another retired command sergeant major who served with Walz, tells ABC News that while there was speculation of a deployment around that time there was no firm indication that Walz’s unit would be sent to Iraq until that July alert order.
Eustice says he remembers Walz struggling with the timing of wanting to serve as a lawmaker but also avoiding asking for a deferment so he could do so.
"He had a window of time. He had to decide. And in his deciding, we were not on notice to be deployed. There were rumors. There were lots of rumors, and we didn't know where we were going until it was later that, early summer, I believe,” Eustice told ABC News.
Walz has said he has “an honorable record” — and other service members who led the same battalion have defended him.
“He was a great soldier,” Joseph Eustice, who served 32 years in the National Guard,
told the Star Tribune in 2022.
“When he chose to leave, he had every right to leave,” added Eustice, who indicated that other attacks on Walz’s record may have been made by disgruntled soldiers who were passed up for promotions.
Another National Guard member who served under Walz said that the future US lawmaker was eyeing a run for Congress earlier than 2005.
“Would the soldier look down on him because he didn’t go with us? Would the common soldier say, ‘Hey, he didn’t go with us, he’s trying to skip out on a deployment?’ And he wasn’t,” Al Bonnifield recalled to Minnesota Public Radio of Walz’s concerns about dipping out before the deployment to Iraq.
“He talked with us for quite a while on that subject. He weighed that decision to run for Congress very heavy [sic],” Bonnifeld added. “He loved the military, he loved the guard, he loved the soldiers he worked with.”
“We all do what we can. I’m proud I did 24 years,” Walz has said about his service.
Walz joined the National Guard after high school and had served in the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery before his retirement, where he obtained the rank of command sergeant major.
During his subsequent tenure in Congress,
Walz came out in opposition against then-President George W. Bush’s plans to increase troop levels in Iraq.
Where did Walz serve, and what did he do in the National Guard?
During his service, Walz responded to natural disasters, including floods and tornadoes in Minnesota and Nebraska, and was deployed overseas for months at a time, according to MPR.
In 2003, he was sent to Italy, where he served with the European Security Force to support the war in Afghanistan. He was also stationed in Norway for joint training with other NATO militaries.
Walz told MPR that he reenlisted in the National Guard after the September 11 attacks but never saw active combat in his years in the military.
Stars and Stripes reported in 2020 that Walz credited his Army experience with helping him steer Minnesota through the COVID-19 pandemic as governor.
As governor of Minnesota, Walz is commander in chief of the 13,000-soldier Minnesota National Guard. “I’m certainly proud of my military service, but it’s one piece of me,” he told Minnesota Public Radio in 2018. “It doesn’t define me.”
