TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091090/0910011.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.3 KB | 117 lines

                                                                                THE GULF, Page 32

Weekend to Full-Time Warriors


Call-ups cause some hardship, but the U.S. can no longer sustain
a big military buildup without using the reserves


    Christie Trexel, 26, who sells Cameo lingerie at home
parties, was at a weekend sales convention in Dallas when she
got word to hurry home to Cherokee, Iowa. Last Tuesday she and
her husband Donald, 39, called their five-year-old son Joe in
Omaha to tell him that he and his year-old brother Phillip
would have to prolong a visit with their grandmother. The next
day Christie and Donald flew to Wilmington, N.C., with an Army
reserve unit called to active port-security duty, leaving
family and friends to harvest the corn and soybeans from their
200-acre farm in October.

    It is unusual for husband and wife to be called to the
colors together. But otherwise, the Trexels' story is being
repeated almost every day around the country. During August,
8,870 reservists were summoned to active duty. Some 38,000 more
will be called up this month.

     That should be no surprise -- even though the call-ups are
the first in 20 years. It is virtually impossible today for the
U.S. to sustain a military undertaking the size of the buildup
in the Persian Gulf without mobilizing some of the million-odd
weekend warriors. Until 1976, no reserves could be activated
unless the President or Congress declared a national emergency.
But the law now permits the White House to call as many as
200,000 reservists for an initial term of 90 days (easily
stretchable to 180 days) without any proclamation.

    After the draft was abolished in 1973, the Pentagon adopted
the Total Force Policy, placing heavy reliance on the reserves.
National Guard units today supply 53% of the Army's potential
infantry and 47% of its armored fighting power. Reserves
account for nearly all the Army's water-desalting capability,
particularly important in arid Saudi Arabia, and 93% of the
Navy's cargo-handling capacity.

    The principal reason for this policy has been economy.
Today's reservists are a far cry from the fat, lazy weekend
warriors of legend. They pass the same physical tests as
regulars, get the same sort of training, and drill with the
same advanced equipment. Nonetheless, it costs only a third to
half as much to pay, train and equip a reservist as it does a
full-time soldier.

    A subsidiary motive has been to bring the human costs of any
major military venture home to communities around the country
quickly, by reserve call-ups that would swiftly test popular
backing. So far, only support personnel, not combat groups,
have been activated. Nonetheless, nine reservists have already
died. The Air Force cargo plane they were flying to Saudi
Arabia crashed last week in West Germany.

    Some reservists face financial hardship because their
military pay will come nowhere near matching their civilian
incomes. Though some employers are making up the difference,
many are not; their only legal obligation is to hold a
reservist's job open for his or her return. Reservists,
however, can have the interest rate on mortgage and other debts
reduced to 6% under the 50-year-old Soldiers' and Sailors'
Civil Relief Act.

    One who will receive this interest benefit is Dr. Michael
Millbern, 42, chief of anesthesiology at Scripps Memorial
Hospital in La Jolla, Calif. He reported last week to Balboa
Naval Hospital in San Diego for 90 days of duty, during which
he will see little of his wife Dotti, 41, a nonpracticing
registered nurse and member of the Naval Hospital Reserves,
unit 519. She has been summoned to duty at Oakland Naval
Hospital, 490 miles away. Dr. Millbern's mother is flying from
Florida to care for the Millberns' children, a daughter, 12,
and a son, 9. The Millberns' combined military pay will be
$9,600 a month,  less than half what Dr. Millbern had been
earning. That might not be sufficient to meet monthly mortgage
payments of nearly $6,000 on their newly remodeled home, plus
private-school tuition for the children and other expenses. But
the interest rate on their first mortgage has been reduced to
6%, while Union Bank, which holds a second mortgage, will allow
him to skip payments while he is on active duty.

    Despite the hardships, there seems to be little grumbling
of the sort that attended previous reserve call-ups. Like the
regular military, today's reserves are an all-volunteer force
whose members joined for various reasons: extra income, a
chance for free training in a specialty allied to their
civilian jobs, or travel (reserve units have trained with
regulars as far away as Egypt). Some may have joined thinking
they would never be called, but most have long accepted that
they might be. Now that it has happened, many view their service
as a necessary repayment for whatever benefits they have
derived from their reserve status; others seem moved by genuine
patriotic ardor. Says Army Major George D. Lanning, 41, who
last week left his job as superintendent of the Amity School
District in Amity, Ore., to assume command of the 35-member
206th Transportation Detachment in Fort Lewis, Wash.: "The
group is pumped."


By George J. Church. Reported by Barbara Dolan/Chicago and Bruce
van Voorst/Washington.