Charlie Miller, left, of the American Legion Tyner-Ford Post 213 watches as Douglas Watts Sr., center, and Sheriff Martin Pace, right, open the Blue Star Banner raised during a ceremony at the Warren County Sheriff’s Department Monday. The flag will be flown until all deputies on active military duty are back home, Pace said.(Melanie Duncan The Vicksburg Post)

[3/11/03]A flag honoring Warren County sheriff’s deputies on active military duty during the war on terrorism was raised Monday outside the Warren County Sheriff’s Department.

“This flag will be on this pole every day until, God willing, all five of them are home safe,” Sheriff Martin Pace said of the deputies already called to active military duty with war against Iraq looming.

Pace raised the flag at a noon ceremony attended by family members of Undersheriff Jeff Riggs and Deputies John Elfer, Shane Parker, Jerry Walker and Anthony Walker. All five reservists were called up in recent weeks and four are likely to serve overseas, Pace said.

“I’m so glad that they were honored, for serving not only Warren County but now our country,” said Elfer’s wife, Olie. “This brings out a great pride to me and I know to all the other families, too.”

The Vicksburg Fire Department has five employees out on active military duty, said Anne Doyle, administrative assistant to the fire chief.

Deputy Fire Chief Rose Shaifer said the department holds the positions for the firefighters, but they are not paid by the department during their leave.

She said their deployment has not caused the fire department to be understaffed.

At the Vicksburg Police Department, Chief Tommy Moffett said this morning that six officers are out on active military duty and a seventh has been notified that he will definitely be leaving. The seven officers would represent about nine percent of the department’s approximately 76 sworn officers. Moffett said shift commanders have been given the responsibility and authority to keep their shifts full.

“If they want to call in people on their days off, they don’t have to ask me or jump through any hoops,” Moffett said. He added that overtime wages have not become an issue since the salaries of officers who have left the department, including those on leave with the military, remain part of the department’s personnel budget.

Pace said shifts normally covered by the deployed deputies are being covered by the remaining 18 patrol officers.

The flag raised Monday was presented to Pace by American Legion Tyner-Ford Post 213 adjutant Charlie Scott and about nine other members of his post.

The banner, created for government and other organizations by the national American Legion after terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, is like those flown in the windows of homes of members of U.S. Armed Forces during World Wars I and II, only larger and with the words “We Honor Those Who Serve,” spokesman Joe Marsh said.

Pace said he got the idea to raise the Blue Star Banner while attending a program put on by Post 213 to host national American Legion national commander Ronald F. Conley on Feb. 19.

“We passed out small Blue Star Banners to the families” of service members, Scott said.

Pace asked Scott to check into the possibility of the sheriff’s department’s flying the banner. Scott helped procure the flag itself, and the Monday ceremony resulted.

“It’s a way for us to publicly show support for my deputies who are deployed,” Pace said, expressing his appreciation to Scott for his help in the process.

“Most of our 15,000 posts have been providing banners” to organizations, Marsh said. He added that interest in flying the flag is “literally taking off in leaps and bounds” nationwide.

A week ago, Pace said Elfer and Parker were already in Kuwait. Riggs and Walker were at a mobilization station at Fort Stewart, Ga., with their departure to the Middle East imminent.

Jerry Walker is a member of the 114th Military Police Company of the Mississippi Army National Guard. He recently returned from a yearlong deployment, mostly spent helping guard detainees, including suspected al-Qaida terrorists, at the U.S.’s Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. After returning to work for 60 days, he has been re-deployed, to Fort Hood, Texas, Pace said

“He’s the only one of the group who will probably stay stateside,” the sheriff added.

Blue Star Banners have been displayed in the windows of families of service members since 1917, when it was designed and patented by World War I Army Capt. Robert L. Queissner of the 5th Ohio Infantry who had two sons serving on the front lines, the American Legion’s national office reports. “It quickly became the unofficial symbol of a child in the service,” the organization adds.

“They’re as much family as blood relatives,” Pace said of the deputies deployed.

The Blue Star Banner is different from the 1926 War Mothers Flag, which is hoisted every Veterans Day at 11:11 a.m., the American Legion says. That flag commemorates the millions of Americans who died during World Wars I and II.