In Leaner Military, Reservists Play a Pivotal Role

UMM AL QASR, Iraq — Baghdad has fallen, the war appears to be in its final stages, but it could be seven months or longer before Petty Officer Irl Kellum gets back to his struggling computer business in Reno and, more important, the four children he is raising on his own.

“You can’t think about it too much,” he said at a military outpost in this southern Iraq port city. “You’d get ulcers.”

Kellum, 35, never figured to be in this predicament when he joined the Naval Reserve. He expected to serve one weekend a month, plus two weeks for training each summer.

But with the U.S. military increasingly reliant on citizen forces, about 200,000 reservists have been deployed in the war against Iraq. They include Marines in combat, supply- line truckers and specialists working in rear areas.

Like their counterparts on active duty, reservists speak of sacrificing for their country. Unlike regular troops, many have taken pay cuts from what they earned as civilians and thought they would play a limited role.

Kellum’s unit, the Naval Coastal Warfare Group, is 95% reservist. Riding small patrol boats armed with .50-caliber guns, its sailors protect military and humanitarian aid ships passing through the region, so they will remain until most active-duty troops have left.

In phone calls that siphon hundreds of dollars from his monthly paycheck, Kellum tries to explain it to his 8-year-old son.

“We talk a lot,” he said. “I think he understands.”

The military is calling upon men and women like Kellum with unprecedented frequency for tasks ranging from training exercises to homeland security. In Iraq, U.S. reservists comprise a third of the logistics force that carries supplies into the combat zone. Doctors and lawyers staff civil affairs units. As an officer from military headquarters in Kuwait City said, “We could not do our mission without them.”

Analysts suspect that economics make them even more attractive.

Under tight budgets, the armed forces have chosen not to keep specialists in areas ranging from communications to humanitarian aid, even pilots for aerial tankers. It is cheaper to pluck them from the reserves.

“In the old days, being a reserve meant being called up in times of national emergency,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. “Now it means you’re called up if it’s the third fiscal quarter.”

Kellum signed up in December for reasons that are common. A Navy submariner as a younger man, he missed the lifestyle and was halfway to the 20-year mark that brings a hefty pension. Another factor: Left to raise a family after his wife left -- his kids range from 2 to 8 -- he needed a break.

“A few weekends and those two weeks of training,” he said. “Something just for me.”

Not deaf to rumors of war, the computer specialist and technical writer figured that it would take months to get processed into the system. But he was activated before he received so much as a uniform. “I had one week to make all my arrangements,” he said.

Kellum soon found himself deployed, working as an electrician on surveillance equipment and diesel generators at ports in Iraq and Kuwait.

His parents were taking care of the children. Then his dad fell ill.

“They couldn’t handle the kids,” he said. “I started making phone calls.”

Such hardships have not gone unnoticed in the United States. Rep. John M. McHugh (R-N.Y.), chairman of the Total Force subcommittee, wants to lighten the load by adding 33,000 troops to active-duty forces.

Pending legislation would augment laws that already protect reservists’ jobs while they are activated. One bill would require the government to pay the difference between civilian income and military service.

Thompson believes legislators should act quickly.

“Peoples’ careers are being destroyed by the frequency with which they are being taken away from the private sector,” the analyst said. “When it comes time to sign up again, they won’t.”

The sailors and Coast Guardsmen who patrol Umm al Qasr harbor, though far from the front lines, might have reason to gripe. Their commodore jokes that by the time they go home, they will have qualified to become naturalized Iraqi citizens.

“Most of these guys left active duty because they wanted to be with their families,” said Capt. David Brown, a UPS employee from Oklahoma who serves as commanding officer for the post.

But no one on active duty trains specifically to protect harbors against terrorism, so Naval Coastal Warfare units have been activated repeatedly since the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen three years ago.

Back in Reno, Kellum’s computer networking business is all but dead -- his clients have gone elsewhere. Although his sister in Atlanta has taken the kids, he worries about being away.

Samantha, his 2-year-old daughter, recently suffered infections in both ears. Her older brothers miss their father and have struggled with shifting households.

“I didn’t plan on this,” he said. “We’re dealing with it a little at a time.”