Hundreds of Southland Reservists Heading for Ft. Ord, Active Duty

More than 200 newly activated Army reservists will board military trucks here this morning for a predawn convoy to Northern California--and then points unknown--to complete one of the biggest single mobilizations of Southland reserve troops under Operation Desert Shield.

Nearly 900 people from Santa Ana, San Bernardino, San Diego and other parts of Southern California and the West are expected to report Sunday and today to Ft. Ord in Monterey County for active duty of six months, or possibly more.

Among their ranks are doctors, nurses, truck drivers, cooks, maintenance personnel, law-enforcement officers and other specialists, all broken away from home and family at the holiday season by the prolonged tensions in the Middle East.

The slew of weekend mobilizations is by far the biggest to hit the Los Alamitos Command since the start of the Persian Gulf crisis and among the biggest single sweeps in Southern California. It brings to more than 1,000 the number of reservists activated from the Los Alamitos regional headquarters.

The troops activated this weekend do not yet know their final destinations as new active members of the Army.

“They’ll go where there’s a need for them--that’s all we know,” said Lt. Col. Stan Kensic, a spokesman for the 63rd Army Reserve Command, which is headquartered at Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center and includes parts of California, Nevada and Arizona. “We don’t yet know where they’ll wind up.”

In the past, reserve units--particularly medical units such as several that were deployed this weekend--have been used to fill in at military hospitals for units sent to Saudi Arabia under Operation Desert Shield. But Kensic said there is no way of predicting the role of this latest batch of call-ups.

“It’s probable that some of these units could replace (active military) units stateside,” Kensic said. “It’s possible some of them could replace units in Europe. It’s possible some of them could go overseas . . . to Saudi Arabia.”

Heading out Sunday for Ft. Ord were about 295 medical personnel from Santa Ana, San Bernardino and Las Vegas currently assigned to the Santa Ana-based 6252nd Army Reserve Hospital; about 175 reserve soldiers from the 250th Army Reserve company out of El Monte, used to haul cargo, and a seven-person reserve team out of Phoenix, used to repair field artillery.

Today, about 215 people from the 164th Army Reserve maintenance company, along with a smaller unit attached to it, are to report to Los Alamitos beginning at 4 a.m. for a military convoy to Ft. Ord. For the last week, the reserves have been verifying next of kin, checking wills and going through other military paperwork aimed at preparing for the move.

“We don’t know why the 63rd got hit right now,” Kensic said. “But we have very few people who have inhibitions about going. I was speaking with a number of the troops, and while they don’t exactly want to go because of family obligations, they know it’s their job.”