When Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz chose to leave the military on the eve of his deployment to Iraq, Thomas Behrends went in his place.

“I needed to hit the ground running and take care of the troops — and tell them we were going to war,” Behrends said of the 500 soldiers under his command. “For a guy in that position, to quit is cowardice.”

Behrends, a 63-year-old farmer in Brewster, Minn., called the Democratic vice presidential candidate “a traitor” for retiring from their Minnesota National Guard unit just before their deployment to Iraq in 2005.

“When your country calls, you are supposed to run into battle — not the other way,” the retired command sergeant major told The Post Tuesday. “He ran away. It’s sad.

“He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘Screw you’ to the United States. That’s not who I would pick to run for vice president.”

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Fellow National Guardsmen who went to Iraq in place of Gov. Tim Walz say Kamala Harris’ VP pick is a “traitor” for retiring before deployment.

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When Democratic vice presidential pick Tim Walz retired from the National Guard on the eve of his battalion’s deployment to Iraq in 2005, Tom Behrends (above) took his place as command sergeant major overseeing 500 troops.
courtesy of Thomas Behrends

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Behrends (above) called Walz a “coward” for retiring from the National Guard on the eve of his unit’s Iraq deployment in 2005.

Walz, 60, joined the National Guard after high school and served 24 years in the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, rising to the rank of command sergeant major. He retired in 2005 — months after a warning order that the battalion would be deployed to Iraq — to run for Congress. He was elected to office in 2006.

“On May 16th, 2005, [Walz] quit, betraying his country, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war,” Behrends and fellow retired Guardsman Paul Herr wrote in a letter posted to Facebook during Walz’s first gubernatorial run, in 2018.

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Tim Walz (right) at a training facility in Wyoming in 1992. Although he served in the National Guard for more than two decades, he has said he never saw combat.
Courtesy of Tim Walz
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Behrends and Herr wrote that Walz could have requested permission from the Pentagon to seek congressional office while on active duty.

When Walz left the unit, he offered to raise funds to cover his fellow soldiers’ bus trips home for Christmas — a gesture that was seen as a cynical ploy by some of them, according to Behrends.

“If it were me, I would feel guilty about leaving and do something to make up for it, but if you ask me, he was doing it to buy votes,” Behrends told The Post. “He will do anything for votes.”

The unit spent 17 months in Iraq and suffered three casualties, including Kyle Miller, a 19-year-old from Willmar, Minn.

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Tom Behrends posted a political message calling Tim Walz a “traitor” on his Minnesota grain silo in 2022, during Walz’s second gubernatorial run.
Thomas Behrends/Facebook
Like Walz, Miller signed up for the National Guard in high school, and hoped to work as an auto mechanic after his deployment, according to reports.

He died when the vehicle in which he was a passenger was hit by a roadside bomb on June 29, 2006.

“Unlike Walz, Kyle volunteered to go with his unit,” said Behrends, who worked with Miller’s mother, Cathy Miller, to create a bronze memorial of her son.