Some Medical Reservists Given a Choice : Call-up: They can go on active duty for up to a year and remain in the country, and can also list three Army hospitals where they would like to serve.

Threatened with a shortage of medical personnel because of the Persian Gulf Crisis, the Army is asking more than 120 Southland doctors, nurses and other medical reservists--along with hundreds more nationwide--to serve from three months to a year of active duty at Army hospitals around the country, officials disclosed Friday.

Some reservists have already accepted the unprecedented offer over the last two days rather than risk the uncertainty of being mobilized by President Bush and sent to points unknown in the midst of Middle East tensions.

“The thought of winding up somewhere far away, far from my family, is a real fear, and I’m just not sure I’m willing to take that chance,” said one Orange County nurse who has been an Army reservist for 17 years and reports monthly to the Santa Ana medical station.

The current offer gives reservists the unusual chance to list three Army hospitals where they would prefer to be assigned. But even as President Bush moved Friday to mobilize perhaps several thousand reserve troops, some medical reservists said they are willing to take their chances.

“It’ll be rough if they call everyone in and I have to do (duty),” said Los Alamitos urologist Michael Norris, a reserve colonel since 1983 who lives in Palos Verdes, “but I just can’t afford now to volunteer that much time and devastate my practice.” An aide to the Army surgeon general in Washington said that his office started the recruitment operation, which he described as unprecedented in its scope and speed, on Wednesday.

“Critical shortages do exist at numerous military health-care facilities around the U.S. because of the mobilization,” said the source, who demanded anonymity. He described the shortages as “severe” in some of the Army’s 30 hospitals and seven medical centers nationwide but declined to elaborate.

Asked about the plan, Sgt. Richard Birmele, a spokesman for the 63rd Army Reserve Command, which includes Southern California, Nevada and Arizona, said: “If that’s happening, I would be amazed. It’s totally fantastic. That’s not the way the reserve army works.”

But officials in Washington, as well as local Army Reserve administrators in Ventura who serve under the 63rd Command, confirmed details of the recruiting project. Told of that, Birmele said later: “They totally went around us, and it’s a violation of all Army procedure. My general’s going to be (angry) when he hears this, and somebody’s going to get yelled at. This is just incredible.”

Army Reserve administrators in Santa Ana, San Bernardino and Riverside on Thursday began individually calling about 120 medically trained reservists around Southern California, asking them to decide within 24 hours if they would be willing to do duty at a U.S.-based hospital.

“What we’re doing is developing a contingency plan in the event that the Army medical staff is used up and moved out to the Middle East,” said Walter Shelton, staff administrator at the 6252nd Army Hospital in Ventura, which oversees all local medical reserve units.

Shelton said the response has been “positive” so far, but he declined to provide figures on how many have accepted.

Those reservists contacted are being offered their chance to pick three preferences for hospitals where they would want to work for at least three months, or perhaps as long as nine months or a year. (Reservists usually serve only two weeks a year on active duty.)

Those interested in the offer have no guarantees of their assignment, Army officials asserted. But the Washington source said: “We will do our part to try to match them with one of their choices.”

The aide said that the Army is not trying to pressure medical reserves by threatening to call them up for more uncertain duty later on. “This is not a high-pressure offer, and that (motive) is not driving our train,” he said.

Nonetheless, by volunteering now, reservists will have “a better chance of controlling where they end up,” the aide added.

Medical reserve personnel generally are assigned a stateside base to which they would report for active duty; for most Southern Californians, it is Ft. Ord. But Maj. Bill Maddox, a spokesman for the Army Reserve in Washington, cautioned that in a situation as volatile as the Persian Gulf Crisis, sending reserve doctors, nurses and other medical support troops overseas “is a very real possibility.”

Indeed, while President Bush had made no formal decisions Friday on the use of reserve troops, the Pentagon put the Civil Reserve Air Fleet on first-stage alert for possible military airlift duty.

The prospect of active duty has left some reservists in an awkward spot.

Robin Umberg of Garden Grove, a 17-year reservist nurse who met her husband, state Assembly candidate Tom Umberg, while serving in Korea, said she is still weighing the possibility of doing the requested monthslong stint at a U.S. hospital--or even volunteering for duty in the Middle East.

On the one hand, Umberg said, she is reluctant to leave her children and her husband, just as he enters the stretch in the state Assembly race. But on the other hand, the reservist colonel said, “I would love to go to active duty. . . . I’m pulled in so many directions, as a wife, as a mom, and it would be a burden, but that’s the type of growth experience that you can’t replace. It might only come around once.”