El Toro Marines Call Reservists for Copter Duty

From nervous newcomers to unabashedly gung-ho veterans, about a hundred Marine reservists reported to the air base here Tuesday for probable action in the Middle East in what officials described as the single biggest mobilization of Orange County reservists since the Persian Gulf crisis began nearly four months ago.

From El Toro, Medium Helicopter Squadron 764 will head to Cherry Point, N.C. But “the smart money” says they will then set sail for Saudi Arabia as part of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force for possible combat duty on the front lines, acknowledged Marine Col. Dave Seder, who oversees the squadron.

That grim reality was not lost on any of the squadron reservists--lawyers, businessmen, postal workers and short-order cooks among them--as they mulled over their military files Tuesday morning in an empty hangar, verified wills and prepared for a week of intensive training at the El Toro base. The squadron is to report to North Carolina by Dec. 5.

“Personally,” Sgt. Eric Sprague, 22, of Huntington Beach said as he prepared to verify his next of kin in military records, “if they came up to me and gave me a choice, I wouldn’t want to do it.

“I really don’t want to go, but there’s nothing we can do now,” added Sprague, a bachelor who will leave behind a job as a hydraulics technician with McDonnell Douglas.

Until now, Sprague, in his role as a Marine reserve, had worked weekends once a month on the CH-46 helicopter, a twin-engine tandem rotor aircraft known as the “Sea Knight.”

But as of last week, he and about 200 other men in the 764th squadron--which is split roughly in half between active military personnel and reservists--had a new assignment from the Pentagon: Operation Desert Shield.

Col. Seder calls the squadron “the pointy edge of the aviation spear.” Should the nation go to war, it would act as assault support, shuttling troops to and from the front lines and acting in rescue, supply and medical missions, said Reserve Col. Kevin B. Kuklock, a Fullerton businessman and father of two who is the squadron’s commander.

The squadron is part of the biggest mobilization of U.S. reserve troops since the Korean War, amounting to at least 80,000 reservists among a total of nearly half a million U.S. soldiers in the Middle East.

Earlier this month, about 44 Orange County Marine reservists in an air-traffic-controller company out of El Toro were activated. A small Santa Ana-based naval reserve unit, made up of medical personnel, was activated two weeks ago. And elsewhere in the county, individual National Guard personnel and Army and Navy reservists--totaling several dozen--have also been called into duty during the ongoing crisis, military officials said.

Many reservists among the 764th helicopter squadron said they thought that their time would come too.

“It was almost a relief to finally get the call,” one sergeant said.

Some, like Sgt. Sprague, made their apprehensions clear in talking with reporters allowed onto the base for Tuesday’s processing.

Still, Col. Kuklock said he has received no applications for hardship status among the squadron’s approximately 200 men. (Under Marine policy, the two women on active military duty in the squadron will not make the trip because they are not allowed into combat situations.) Some among the activated group seemed genuinely excited about the prospect.

Cpl. Michael Stykes, 24, a New Orleans native who served four years of active Marine duty before joining the reserves, remembers getting the call last week from a squadron member, informing him of the deployment. It was what he had been expecting--with some mixed emotions--off and on for the last several months.

“ ‘Stykes, your country’s calling,’ ” he remembers the squadron official saying. “I just said--’Let’s do it!’ ”

There’s not much anyone can do to prepare for that call, said Staff Sgt. Jose Garcia, a 30-year-old insurance fraud investigator who lives in Orange and had also served in active duty--for 6 1/2 years--before joining the reserves.

There’s even less to do to prepare children. Garcia has three of them, with the oldest one 8 years old.

“There were a lot of tears,” Garcia said. “I just said, ‘Daddy won’t be around for Christmas--or New Year’s. . . .’ There’s an initial shock for the whole family, trying to comprehend what this is going to mean. It’s not just a weekend trip anymore, but when you sign up for the reserves, you make a commitment.”

As a specialist in “NBC training”--military lexicon for nuclear, biological and chemical warfare--Garcia also knows that his expertise may prove of “paramount” importance if the United States and Iraq go to war, he said.

And how does he prepare now for the prospect of having to confront chemical weapons in the Middle East?

“This is something that I chose to do--I have no qualms,” he said. “It’s scary for everyone. And all you can do is pray that it never reaches that point.”