2 Colorful Characters Offered Fresh Slant on Same Old Story

When I first saw John Seitz, the grayed and stocky electronics teacher was struggling to reach double digits in a sit-ups drill at a Fort Ord training field as fellow Army reservists half his age cheered him on.

The drill over, his brown military T-shirt soaked, he hopped up from the ground and lined up for the next exercise, yelling: “Over 50 years, over here!” There were no takers.

Forget that interview I’d been trying to get with the stern company commander, I thought; this guy is the story.

The newspaper business is about finding different ways to tell the same old stories. That’s why, after writing for months about the anxious wives and gung-ho grunts who helped define the Gulf War in Orange County, I was so glad to meet John Seitz and Jim Smith.

Colorful, quotable, accessible, the two activated Army reservists had me running for my note pad during a prewar visit to Fort Ord, just hoping I wouldn’t run out of paper before they finished talking.

Seitz was the man they called “Santa”--a fatherly, happy-go-lucky reservist from Buena Park who sweated and hopped and cheered his way into shape to try to get over to the Gulf last January to help fix radios, air conditioners and whatever else broke down.

Smith was the classic grizzled veteran--a veteran of Korea, Vietnam and Lebanon, a chief warrant officer who had picked up a few tricks during his 35 years in military service and didn’t mind telling these go-by-the-book, know-it-all young officers how to fight a war.

I was at the training center at Fort Ord for a few days last December doing a story on their reserve unit, the 164th Heavy Maintenance Company out of Los Alamitos, which was called to active duty as part of Operation Desert Shield.

None of the 170 men and women of the company knew it for sure then, but within a few days they would be giving up the warm barracks, hot meals and seaside views of Northern California for the unpredictability of Saudi Arabia as participants in the soon-to-start Gulf War.

They saw three Scud attacks almost before they were off the bus in Saudi Arabia, Smith recounted. But more than six months later, the company made it back to a hero’s welcome in Los Alamitos a few weeks ago, and I got a chance to talk to Seitz and Smith again.

Most satisfying about that homecoming, in light of his Vietnam experience, Smith remarked, “was the knowledge that we don’t have to slink home, hide our clothes and let our hair grow long so we can go out again in society. . . . It’s really nice to come home to know people love you.”

Seitz brought back an Army commendation for his work in helping get air conditioners and other equipment--some of it damaged in Scud attacks--up and running again under tight deadlines.

Smith was one of 17 reservists to bring home a Bronze Star, out of about 2,700 deployed from the West Coast Army Reserve region, known as the 63rd Army Command Center, out of Los Alamitos. He got it for helping find emergency housing for the survivors of the devastating Feb. 25 Iraqi Scud hit on a U.S. barracks--a tragedy that killed 28 and that Smith witnessed--and also for a classified and unspecified mission “behind enemy lines,” the medal citation says.

But back at Fort Ord, back in December and January, medals were only pipe dreams, and Smith and Seitz were just two of hundreds waiting to find out their assignments.

I didn’t so much meet Smith as see him in action.

During my visit, I was leaving the barracks restroom (with a military escort, of course; they accompany the press everywhere on base, even to the john) when I happened upon a military debate in progress.

With a class on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons protection about to start for the reservists, Smith and the instructor were jawing it out over methodology. The instructor had a bevy of modern detection equipment and techniques to pitch, but Smith wasn’t buying it.

From his days in Vietnam, Smith said, the only way to detect certain gases in a war setting was a simple pocket lighter (he always carried two). If the flame went out, Smith said, get the hell out. It was a primitive method, but he trusted his life to it.

Neither man was moved by the other’s arguments, and the debate ended as a standoff, with Smith firing this closing salvo: “You sound like 85 lieutenants in Vietnam I knew who got sent home in body bags.”

Smith’s honesty, as unorthodox as it sometimes seems, made him an appealing story subject for me back at Fort Ord. His near-disdain for some youthful officers earned him an honorary spot in the “bad-attitude club” formed by a military police unit in Saudi Arabia and eventually prompted him to leave the 164th for an assignment elsewhere in Dhahran.

He ended up doing personnel duties for a combat support unit. “My experience there was much better utilized,” he said simply.

Having witnessed Smith’s pocket-lighter pitch at Fort Ord, I wasn’t surprised to hear that he had problems in the Gulf with most of the lieutenants leading his company. What did catch me off guard, however, was learning that the affable Seitz, who seemed to get along with just about everybody, had similar experiences.

“I had a great deal of problems with the officers,” he said. “I think they’re inexperienced, and they lack military bearing.”

Much of the time, he said, they seemed to want little more than to exert authority.

There was the time, for instance, that a commander had his soldiers dig trenches around their tents in 160-degree heat, even though Seitz noted that there didn’t appear to be much chance of rain. The attitude, according to Seitz, seemed to be “because I’m an officer, this is the way I want it done.”

But there were highlights in the trip.

Between Fort Ord and Saudi Arabia, Seitz said, he lost 35 pounds. “It got real hot, so it was easy to lose weight. And the food wasn’t that good--those MREs (meals ready to eat). I think Kibbles ‘n’ Bits would be a better name.”

Now, back in Buena Park with the summer off from his job as an electronics teacher at a Los Angeles trade school, Seitz said he’s been eating well.

“I’m on my way back up (in weight.) Anything and everything that doesn’t move has to be in danger,” he said. That is, until it comes time for his next possible deployment with the reserves, when “Santa” has to face the sit-ups and the calisthenics all over again.