Call-Up and Non-Deployment of Southern Guard Units Spark Furor : Troops: Their readiness was questioned. Georgia’s 48th Brigade trained in the California desert at Ft. Irwin--and then trained some more. Political issues are raised.

More than 220,000 armed forces reserves and National Guard personnel were called up in the Persian Gulf crisis, and by most accounts, the many specialized logistic and other support units involved performed well.

But an angry dispute has arisen over the call-up, subsequent training and lack of Gulf deployment of about 14,000 National Guardsmen in three combat brigades from Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana.

A brigadier general who had commanded Georgia’s 48th Infantry Brigade when it was ordered to active duty charged this week that the call-up was prompted by political considerations. He also contended that regular Army officers improperly sought to insert themselves into his command staff once his unit began training.

The general, William A. Holland, said he was ousted from command of the 48th Brigade while it was on an unusual, extended 55-day desert training cycle at the Army’s National Training Center at Ft. Irwin in the California desert.

But Maj. John Wagstaffe, a spokesman for Ft. Irwin commander Brig. Gen. Wesley Clark, said: “To my knowledge, he wasn’t relieved. The Georgia governor and adjutant general said they desperately needed him in Georgia to command another unit.”

Wagstaffe said that in only one instance was a regular Army officer inserted into the brigade staff and that was to replace Holland’s deputy commander when he was elevated to unit commander in place of Holland.

The exchanges reflect possible tensions in the relationship between some regular Army and National Guard combat units. The brigades from the Deep South were the only full National Guard combat units of size called up under the military’s “round-out” reserve concept, under which Guard units would fill out regular divisions in times of need.

Now, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Army spokesmen have raised questions about whether the units were in condition to be trained fast enough to perform their round-out role.

Other questions have arisen about whether it was pressure from Congress, rather than the desires of the Defense Department, that led to the call-up of the combat brigades.

Rep. G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery (D-Miss.), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, told The Times on Thursday that he had urged the Defense Department to call up National Guard or Army reserve units, though not specifically ones from his state, because he viewed the crisis as a “real opportunity to test” whether the military’s Total Force policy of relying on the reserves in a crisis would actually work.

Montgomery was quoted Feb. 10 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as putting it even stronger. “We had to force the Army even to call them up,” he said then.

Ft. Irwin spokesman Wagstaffe said earlier this week that he had been told that Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had also approached Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and urged the call-up.

But on Thursday, following a call from Nunn’s staff, Wagstaffe changed his statement to say merely that Congress in general had urged a call-up of the combat units.

Arnold Punaro, an aide to Nunn, said Thursday that Nunn had not asked that any units be called up. Nunn’s press secretary, Scott Williams, said Nunn is “a supporter of the Total Force concept. . . . I don’t think he asked for the call-up of any specific units.”

A hearing on issues raised by the call-up and subsequent training of the three brigades is scheduled today in Washington by the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.). Gen. Edwin H. Burba Jr., who has command over all reserve forces in the United States, and the three brigade commanders have been invited to be present. Holland was not invited.

Lynn Reddy, a staff member of Aspin’s committee, said that the hearing will look into whether the units called were ready for service and, once they were called, the adequacy of their training.

The 48th Brigade has now returned to Ft. Stewart, Ga., and the 155th Armored Brigade from Mississippi is due to begin training at Ft. Irwin today. A spokesman for Gen. Burba said it is not known when the units will be released from active duty, now that the Gulf War is over.

The other brigade subject to the call-up, the 256th Infantry from Louisiana, was recently involved in controversy when 40 of its men went briefly absent without leave, many protesting that the training was too stringent.

Some men of the 48th Brigade have told Georgia journalists that morale in the unit sank during the unit’s 55 days at Ft. Irwin, a period three times longer than the usual 20-day training cycle at the base.

The officers and men lived in the desert, like regular units in Saudi Arabia, except for two days allowed for showering and rest at headquarters.

Originally, they had been scheduled to spend 41 days in the desert warfare exercises. But this was later extended by two more weeks about the same time that Gen. Holland was transferred away from the unit.

Holland told the Associated Press this week, “Precisely why we were extended, I can’t answer; I didn’t have any input in it.” He said it was his assessment that the unit was ready for combat after the 41 days, although he indicated physical conditioning may have been a problem. He noted that his senior noncommissioned officers were eight or 10 years older than their peers in regular Army units.

“We wanted to feel like we would be welcome and needed,” Holland said. “We certainly didn’t want to feel like political pressure forced us to be deployed.”

Contacted in Dalton, Ga., where he manages a carpet mill, Holland confirmed the accuracy of the Associated Press quotes but added that he felt he had said enough publicly.

Wagstaffe said that every senior officer who had considered the matter from the 2nd Army commander on down felt that the brigade needed more training than 41 days. He cited its maintenance of equipment and large unit coordination as weaknesses.

Nunn visited the unit at Ft. Irwin while it was there and told the Journal-Constitution later that he felt that for both regular and reserve units, “we’ve had great inflation in claims to readiness.” He said he felt the Guard brigades should have been called up even earlier than last November, so that they could have been made ready to go to the Gulf in time.