Gulf War Converts : Some Reservists Discover Unexpected Rewards and Seek to Stay on Active Duty

When Navy reservist Dr. Carmen James Corrall was called to serve in Operation Desert Storm last January, he didn’t want to go.

His assignment to San Diego’s Naval Hospital meant leaving his wife behind in Irvine. It also meant trading his $12,000-a-month job as director of a hospital emergency room for a $4,000-a-month position as a Navy pediatrician.

At first, he recalls, he was homesick. But now he’s fighting to stay.

To the surprise of Navy officials, his family and even himself, Corrall is one of scores of reservists vying for the chance to “go native.” Having been thrust into new, challenging environments, these men and women have adapted and thrived. Now they want to remain on active duty.

Of the 10,000 Navy reserve doctors and medical personnel pressed into service in the wake of Operation Desert Shield, 589 have asked to remain on active duty. Only 147 of those requests, however, have been approved since budgetary constraints are forcing the Navy to trim its ranks.

Other branches of the armed services are seeing similar changes among their reservists, officials said. To support the Persian Gulf conflict, the Army, for instance, called up 85,000 reservists. Now, 600 have applied to remain on active duty and the Army accepted 125--an offer open only to enlisted personnel.

Military officials, who expected reservists to tire of dormitories, “mess” food, and the financial strain often associated with deployment, did not anticipate this small group of enthusiasts. And even among those who have returned to civilian life, few have opted to leave the reserves--not yet anyway, said Cmdr. Steve Clawson, spokesman for the Chief of Naval Personnel in Washington.

“The reservists are not all bailing out,” said Lt. Col. Ronald Wolfe, an Army spokesman, a reservist himself who left his San Francisco home to serve in Washington. “If anything, (the Gulf War) will attract more. It can be a very, very positive thing. The trade off is that history was made and you were a part of it.”

Corrall, the Irvine doctor, and some 21,100 Navy reservists heeded the call to duty, bidding farewell to families, jobs, and the comforts of home during the course of the U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf.

About half of those summoned were, like Corrall, medical personnel. And 1,200 are still plying their trade on behalf of their country, Clawson said.

Little is known about the readjustments faced by reservists coming home. Active duty sailors, as well as soldiers, returning from the Persian Gulf have experienced a disproportionate increase in divorces, growing alcohol and chemical abuse, “relationship disorders” among family members, and anxiety levels, according to a recent report submitted to the Office of Veterans Affairs.

Some reservists say they, too, are enduring a disproportionate share of marital strife. Others say the deployment was an emotional and financial drain. Still others laud their stint as a time of self-discovery, adventures that led to improvements in their marriages and family relationships.

“In coming back, I was no longer willing to resume the same role,” said Army reserve Lt. Col. Susan Simpson, a San Diego registered nurse who was deployed to Dubai in December. “I told my husband ‘you know where the grocery store is now, you know how to use the washer and dryer.’ There was a real realignment of family roles.”

Simpson so enjoyed her deployment that she was hurt when Army officials said that they could not offer her active duty because they had no room for more officers.

“I was good enough to go to war but now they don’t want me,” said Simpson, who returned to her civilian nursing job in April.

But other reservists welcomed the release from duty. Air Force reserve Major Hector R. Fernandez, a San Diego anesthesiologist, figures that his three-month stint cost him about $50,000 in lost income. Initially dispatched to Nebraska, Fernandez was transferred to Travis Air Force Base in Sacramento.

Fernandez, who has spent seven years in the reserves, is now considering getting out.

“I don’t want to go through it again,” he said. “I still have a lot of bills to pay.”

But for others, including David Jackson, the military provided--rather than threatened--their livelihood. And Jackson, a 30-year-old Navy reservist hospital corpsman, has opted to remain on active duty.

Jackson was 22 days into his civilian nursing school semester in Arlington, Tex., when he was called up and assigned to San Diego’s Naval Hospital. He eagerly packed up his family’s few belongings and drove cross-country to report for duty Feb. 14.

“If you asked me if I wanted to go to school or fight in a conflict, I wanted to fight in a conflict,” said Jackson, who had joined the reserves a year-and-a-half-ago. In fact, Jackson was disappointed that he was thousands of miles from the front lines.

But as he heard from more and more civilian friends who were losing jobs as the economy flattened in Texas, Jackson began to realize that he had a good deal.

“With this job, I can say I will be here tomorrow,” Jackson said. “It’s tight in the civilian world. I’m not saying the Navy is easy--it’s not.”

Edward Calix, a 37-year-old psychologist called up in January, found himself thriving in his newly assigned job. As a civilian, Calix worked with San Diego County’s Mental Health Department and evaluated criminals to determine which should be released from hospitals or sent to jails. Often, he found himself face-to-face with killers and rapists.

But when he started working with military patients, Lt. Cmdr. Calix realized he was actually, once again, enjoying his profession. When his military supervisor asked him in March if he wanted to stay, Calix thought he was joking. But the idea took hold. And last week, Calix’ status was officially changed to active duty.

“It was the teamwork and the camaraderie. . . . It was a quality of life decision--it was a lifestyle I enjoyed, and I felt useful and needed,” he said. “I don’t know, I guess the Navy is kind of, like, in your blood.”

It was much the same for Corrall. First called up in August, he was told he would be assigned to a Navy base in Jacksonville, Fla. But because of a snafu in the paperwork, Corrall was never dispatched.

By January, Corrall figured he was not going to be tapped. Corrall had left his job as director of the pediatric emergency room at University of California at Irvine and had just accepted a new job as a director of the emergency room at Mercy Hospital in San Diego. But at 2 a.m. Jan. 19, Corrall got the call telling him to report to the San Diego Naval Hospital in three days.

“I was panic stricken,” said Corrall, the officer-in-charge of his reserve unit at UC Irvine’s pediatric emergency room.

Corrall knew the Naval Hospital since he had served three of his six years in the Navy there. For him, those were unpleasant years of feeling overwhelmed with the patient load and the poor working conditions of the old, dilapidated building, where the temperature hit 102 degrees in the pediatrics ward one summer.

So when the call came, it seemed like a slap. Though he felt lucky to stay in Southern California, he did not look forward to working again in the very hospital that he had been so desperate to leave five years earlier.

But it was different. The old hospital had been torn down, replaced with a new facility. He recognized many people when he returned and noticed a change too. The workload and attitudes were different, he said.

“The hospital changed and the Navy changed,” Corrall said. “Physicians were not treated as expendable items but as valuable resources.”

One month into his stint of duty, Corrall prepared and gave a lecture. Suddenly, he remembered the exhilaration of teaching.

“I thought ‘ this is what I need to be doing,’ ” said Corrall, who will earn about $110,000 annually as an active duty Navy doctor, a pay cut from his job as a civilian doctor. “It was an emotional decision. . . . It became obvious that this was where my love was.”