Marines Face Demotion to Private Sector : Military: El Toro, Tustin troops facing discharge due to cuts face a tough job market, readjustments.

Staff Sgt. Calvin Manning Jr. planned a career in the Marine Corps, but now that has all changed.

With 13 years on active duty and seven years left until retirement, Manning, 32, is about to be cut loose from the Marines, another victim of Pentagon reductions, which will pare the Marine Corps to 159,000 in 1997--cutting 6,000 men and women a year for the next five years.

Although there are no numbers available on how many active duty Marines at the El Toro and Tustin air stations will be affected by the cuts, one F/A-18 fighter squadron with 12 planes and 160 men has already been shut down. The air station at Tustin is scheduled to be closed by 1997, but its 3,500 Marines and the 125 helicopters they work on will settle at Marine bases at Twentynine Palms and Camp Pendleton.

There are also plans to slash thousands of positions from the Orange County-based 63rd Army Reserve and the 40th Infantry Division of the National Guard at Los Alamitos. At nearby Long Beach Naval Station, thousands gathered late last month to see the battleship Missouri one more time before its retirement. The naval station is slated for closure in 1996.

In an interview, Manning, confused by the sudden turn of events prompted by the cutbacks, said he plans to return to his hometown of Baltimore with his wife and daughter to look for a job. He said he couldn’t afford to stay in California.

“I just never thought it would be this way,” Manning said. “This was my career, I never thought I would be asked to leave.”

Manning was one of the 130 enlisted Marines, most of them in camouflage fatigues, who attended a recent seminar at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station on what to expect when they move from the military fraternity to the civilian community. The session is one of many being held at Marine Corps bases throughout the country, which are mandatory for personnel who are leaving the military within 180 days.

The employment picture painted for the El Toro Marines was not encouraging.

Neil Reich of the state Employment Development Department told them how the recession has left 9.2 million Americans unemployed, 1.3 million of them in California. Marines will be among the flood of men and women leaving the military early to seek employment in the private sector, he said.

Reich said that re-enlistment standards are being raised because of the cutbacks. In the past, Marines with minor problems were allowed to sign up for another tour of duty. “No more,” Reich said, who was a career Marine himself. “Now you have to be squeaky clean. If you have a weight problem or other problems, you’re history.”

The Marine Corps plans to make its manpower reductions through attrition, including weeding out non-commissioned and commissioned personnel when their re-enlistments come due.

“In a way I feel betrayed and in a way I don’t,” said Lance Cpl. Mark Apodaca, 22, of Port Washington, Ohio. “I relied on the Marine Corps for a job and I was always told that I had job security. That wasn’t the case.”

His re-enlistment rejected, Apodaca said he is looking to settle in an area that has a reasonable cost of living and job opportunities, maybe somewhere in North Carolina.

“It is frightening,” he said. “When I was in Okinawa and I had a year to re-enlist I thought I had plenty of time. One minute everything looked good and then I was in shock. It is a rude awakening.”

Earlier this year, over the objections of the Marine’s top brass, U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney recently directed the Marines to slim down from almost 200,000 personnel in the mid-1980s to 159,000 by 1997. The reduction is far less severe than the 30% manpower cut the Air Force and the Army are facing. Top Marine generals hope that Congress overrules Cheney and places a floor on Marine personnel at 176,000. But that is not likely.

With some bases being pared down and others set for closure, enlisted men and women in the field are feeling the squeeze.

“You might have thought you had a career here, but instead the Marine Corps said goodby,” Reich told the Marines attending the “transition” seminar.

In his role as the veterans’ employment representative for the state Employment Development Department, he explained that by the time the government gets finished carving away 500,000 military positions, there will be a lot more people out there “pounding the pavement for jobs.”

Not all those leaving the Marine Corps are being forced out. Some are just leaving. But attendance at the monthly seminars for those leaving the Marines is expected to increase as more and more re-enlistments are turned down because of the shrinking force, military officials said.

The classes are designed to give the departing Marines information about education and vocational rehabilitation programs to which they are entitled, plus provide job placement in the government and private sector, as well as job placement counseling for spouses, who like Sgt. Manning’s wife will leave her civilian job when they move to the East Coast.

The seminars also outline programs for relocation assistance and medical and dental coverage available after separation from the Marines. There is also counseling on the effects the career change will have on them and their families.

Counselor Ruth DeKeyser of the Family Service Center at the El Toro air station said those in the middle of the enlisted ranks are the hardest hit by the cutbacks. Most of them, she said, have put in 10 or more years and many are more than halfway to retirement when they are told that they can not re-enlist.

“They are upset and understandably so,” she said.

Former Marine Staff Sgt. John Sikora of Laguna Beach said he left the corps last November after 13 1/2 years when it “became very apparent” that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for him to get 20 years in the new, smaller Marine Corps. He had two re-enlistments left before retirement.

“I am still young enough to get out and start another career,” said Sikora, a Persian Gulf War veteran. “If I had re-enlisted for another four years and then they let me go, I would have been 35. There is a lot of difference between 31 and 35.”

Sikora, who served at El Toro and at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma and now is a carpenter’s apprentice in Orange County, said the change from the military to civilian life was a shock.

“You have to understand that I joined the Marine Corps when I was 17,” he said. “It was all I knew. It was my home. The military was good for me, and the discipline was good for me.”

But had he known what the future held, he said, he would have spent four years in the Marines and got out.

Col. Joe Robben, chief of staff for El Toro and other West Coast Marine air stations, told the group they should draw on what the Marines have taught them as they face loss of careers and a strange, new environment.

Every Marine learns discipline, whether they served for three years or 23 years, he said, and employers will consider that discipline when evaluating a person for a job. The employer, Robben said, will know that “you have played by the rules.”

The qualms the 130 enlisted men and women felt about the impending dislocation were evident. Several of those facing the move said it is a bit frightening to know that they will not have three hot meals a day available and a place to sleep.

“If you come out with an attitude that the world owes you a living, you are going to be among the 9.2 million unemployed,” said Reich of the state Employment Development Department.

He gave the Marines tips on how to dress when job hunting and how to fill out employment applications. He cautioned against the warriors describing themselves as “professional killers” when listing their previous employment. He said the days when “Uncle Sam takes care of you” are quickly coming to an end.

But Manning, who worked in the financial arm of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at El Toro and will leave the Marines shortly, said that seeing his career vanish has jolted him.

“I wonder what type of job I can get out there,” he said, adding that the country is in the midst of a recession. “I find it all kind of frightening.”