Reservists and Regulars: Distrust, Friction in the Gulf : Military: The professionals tend to disparage ‘weekend warriors’ as the ‘total force’ concept is tested.

Sgt. William Farrell was driving through a rainstorm when the stinging comment was tossed in his direction.

He was near the northeastern Saudi Arabian city of Dhahran when he made a passing comment to a woman guard about how she must be soaked from the drenching rain.

“I’m not a reservist,” she fired back, as if to say that was the only brand of soldier who wouldn’t have the good sense to stay dry.

Farrell was stunned at her disparaging tone. He had slogged his way through the Vietnam War. He had been awarded the Bronze Star for valor. He had worn a soldier’s uniform before many in today’s Army were even born. But he is also a reservist, which can immediately connote second-class citizenship to regulars in the U.S. military.

The same kind of story came from a military policeman in a National Guard unit from Sacramento who wanted desperately to go to the front, preferably to guard prisoners of war. Instead, he stands guard at the Dhahran International Hotel, headquarters for the international press. The soldier, who asked not to be identified, said he could think of only one reason for the rear-line duty: “It’s because we’re reservists.”

Thus goes the war of the regulars versus the reservists, the military professionals versus the “weekend warriors.” As the United States prepares to enter its first large-scale ground war since Vietnam, the top brass from all of the services are watching carefully to see how these two kinds of soldiers meld together into a fighting machine.

The stakes are high for the military because the war with Iraq, along with being a campaign to liberate Kuwait, is also a laboratory test of the Pentagon’s “total force” concept. Under that plan, reserve forces are integrated into the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines as a means of stretching the Defense Department budget by keeping fewer soldiers on active duty during peacetime.

The rub, of course, comes in what is widely regarded as an inherent distrust of the reservist, in which full-time soldiers question whether part-time personnel can be counted on in times of real trouble.

The distrust is so palpable that an ad is now airing on Armed Forces Radio designed to counter it. The narrator makes the case that many reservists were once regulars and therefore shouldn’t be looked down upon.

“I don’t think it invalid for a guy on active duty to question whether a reservist can do the job,” said Maj. Gen. Terrence Mulcahy, the highest-ranking reservist in the theater of operations. “The direct answer is yes, there is a certain amount of skepticism until the reservist demonstrates he knows what he’s doing.”

The total force plan arrived with the all-volunteer military in 1973, its primary purpose to save money. The National Guard, with its 450,000 troops, can be supported by an annual budget of about $6 billion, while the cost for the same number of active duty soldiers is roughly seven times that amount.

Under the plan, selected divisions were reduced from three brigades to two. A National Guard brigade was then assigned to round out the regular troops in the event of combat. In theory, the active and National Guard brigades would deploy together. The reality has been somewhat different.

While some National Guard units are in Saudi Arabia on active duty, others are still in training, with no announced deployment schedule. In one well-publicized case, a group of Louisiana National Guardsmen went AWOL to call attention to their plight, complaining of low morale, bad food, inadequate training and stressful conditions. All the troops later returned to duty--after making the point that all was not well within the ranks of the National Guard.

Lawrence J. Korb, who was the Pentagon’s chief manpower and reserve affairs official during the Reagan Administration, contended that the “round-out brigades” have been a failure. But he added: “It’s not their fault. It was expecting too much to get them ready” for immediate deployment.

A spokesman for the National Guard advises patience.

“This is the first time this has ever been exercised,” said Victor Dubina, a spokesman for the National Guard Assn. in Washington. “It is still too early to know for sure.”

Piers M. Wood, a staffer at the Center for Defense Information--a Washington think tank often critical of the Pentagon--also said that a wait-and-see attitude should be adopted about the interweaving of military regulars and reservists.

“I believe that the total Army concept is a good concept,” he said. “It has not yet been tested in battle, so the early reports of its demise may well be exaggerated. I am no more skeptical about total Army than I am about volunteer Army. Let’s wait. . . .”

However, Wood did concede that active-duty soldiers are usually dubious of fighting alongside reservists. Lowered expectations, he said, sometimes become self-fulfilling prophesies.

“There is a bias in the active-duty Army against reserves,” said Wood, a reservist who was once on active duty. “But in every case where the reserves performed effectively, the bias was broken down.”

The reservists have their own complaints. Chief among them is that they were first called upon to serve for six months, then saw that extended to a year, while Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has said that there is no planned rotation of reservists. In addition, with the extended stay, financial woes continue to mount at home for many.

For example, the city of San Diego voted Monday to give employees called to active military duty a full month’s pay and five months of supplemental pay--the difference between their military pay and city salaries. But such magnanimous gestures may end if the war drags on.

“I’ll tell you, the biggest thing is the cut in pay,” said Tom Frankfurt, a lawyer in the reserves. “You can hang on for a little while. You can deplete your savings and take all your vacation and hope to get this (war) resolved as soon as possible.”

In numerous interviews with reservists, that same theme was voiced repeatedly. A sergeant who works for a telephone company has had his reserve salary supplemented for the last six months, but that is about to end. Employers who have kept jobs open are being forced to fill them. Reservists are in danger of losing their homes, even with the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act, which mandates that mortgage interest cannot exceed 6% while troops are in a war zone.

Despite those problems, one ranking military official said recently that he does not believe there are morale problems within the National Guard and reserve units stationed in Saudi Arabia. Soldiers, however, said they think the reserve units might be difficult to fill in the future simply because of the hardships that have surfaced in the Gulf War.

Though most were not willing to be identified, they spoke of feeling angry that regular armed forces units are still stateside while they have been sent to Saudi Arabia.

“All I want to do is go home,” said one young reservist. “I used to think that being in the National Guard would help you get a job, make the employer think you were the right kind of person. But now he might think he’s taking a risk hiring someone like me because I could be gone for so long. Now, I think being in the Guard is a liability.”

Gen. Mulcahy takes a longer-term view of the issue, saying lessons will be learned during this war that will be useful in smoothing out the fusion of reservists and regulars in the future.

“There is no question that, coming out of this conflict, our government is going to rethink the whole way we defend the country,” he said. “We have this example, and we need to use it to our advantage.”

He was also adamant in his belief that the system is working: “The total Army has worked, and we’re seeing it here.”

If there is any place where the total force concept has worked well so far, it has been in the Air Force. According to Pentagon sources, Air National Guard units from New York and South Carolina have performed superbly in combat missions over Kuwait and Iraq. But Korb, the former Pentagon reserve affairs official, says there is a simple reason for that.

“Air is easy,” he said. “Lots of these people fly airplanes for a living. Not very many people drive tanks for a living.”