Guard Troops Drill for L.A. Riot Duty : Soldiers: Some troops at staging points in county say street duty worries them more than Gulf War.

Exhibiting emotions ranging from outright fear to calm determination, thousands of California National Guardsmen streamed onto closely guarded county military bases Thursday in preparation for a trip north to help quell rioting in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating verdict.

“To tell you the truth, I’m scared,” Darrel Morgan, 26, of Santa Ana said at the armory in Orange. “I’ve never done anything like this before--it’s all just been training.”

Another guardsman, wearing military fatigues and hanging out of an armored vehicle rumbling through the gates of the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center, expressed a more confident view. “We’re here to do a job!” he shouted above the din and under the watchful eyes of a handful of civilians gathered to cheer the troops on. “Hopefully, our presence will make people want to go home.”

Because they were under orders not to talk to reporters, many would speak only on condition of anonymity.

The men--and some women--were among the first 2,400 mobilized early Thursday for possible deployment in Los Angeles. Later in the day, Gov. Pete Wilson activated another 2,000 guardsmen.

During a press briefing at the front gate in Los Alamitos, where National Guard officials had set up command headquarters, Col. Roger Goodrich, a public affairs officer, was tight-lipped about when or where the Guard would be deployed. Saying only that the troops are being grouped at “more than 20 but fewer than 40” local staging sites, Goodrich described their mood as motivated and upbeat.

“I think that today’s guardsman understands that this is part of being in the National Guard as much as being in the desert,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find a bunch of down-and-out soldiers out there.”

Still, the contrast with the Gulf War was inescapable. “This is a lot different from attacking an Iraqi bunker,” Goodrich conceded. “There, we knew where they were. Here, there are many unknowns.

“This is not the kind of situation we trained for. This has a lot of baggage because it’s citizen soldier facing citizen.”

That reality was not lost on many of the soldiers.

“It’s different being in the States,” said Specialist Timothy Cassel, 23, who had been among the first troops to arrive in Kuwait during the Gulf War. “It’s a whole different thing because you might know someone in the crowd.”

In fact, said one corporal from North County, the idea of going to Los Angeles scares him more than the prospect of serving in the Gulf.

“If I would have gone to Saudi Arabia,” he said, “it would have been with millions of my brothers. Here it will just be 2,000 of us. I don’t want to die.”

To make that outcome less likely, the soldiers spent much of Thursday in last-minute training exercises and briefings on crowd control.

At the small armory near Brookhurst Road and Valencia Drive in Fullerton, about 100 camouflage-clad soldiers could be seen cleaning automatic rifles, sheathing bayonets, checking gas masks and preparing face shields and helmets.

In an asphalt-paved storage area behind the armory, meanwhile, Guard members practiced crowd-control techniques, using three-foot-long wooden clubs attached to leather straps. The soldiers would cluster in groups of six, shoulder to shoulder. Then, holding the clubs with both hands in front of their chests, they would make short slashing movements, grunting as they crow-hopped forward.

Outside the armory gates, meanwhile, loved ones gathered to say their farewells.

Pearl Silva, the wife of Spec. 4 Oscar Silva, brought their 14-month-old son, Nathan, to the armory parking lot from Baldwin Park to see him off. The father left the armory, held the boy for a minute in his arms, then turned and went back inside.

“He doesn’t have time to be worrying about me,” Pearl Silva said, “so I have to take care of myself. He has to be able to give 100% of himself to his job if he is to do it well.”

In Los Alamitos, dozens of spectators lined the curbs to get close-up views of the seemingly endless stream of military trucks and private cars delivering guardsmen to the base.

“I think it’s great,” said Deborah Morgan, 36, a student who lives across the street. “If this is what it takes to restore the peace, so be it.”

Deb Dentler, who lives on the base with her husband, a military recruiter, said the spectacle both scared and excited her. “The parking lot hasn’t been this full since they filmed ‘Iron Eagle III’ here,” she said. “It’s not a drill anymore--this is real.”

But for Lorena Crisostomo, the experience was disturbing.

A 16-year-old high school student, Crisostomo had been so upset by the rioting that she spent the morning penning a three-page letter expressing her feelings.

Although she had been deeply offended by the acquittal of the police officers in the Rodney King case, Crisostomo wrote: “What you (rioters) are doing is very wrong. . . . I think this is crazy because all you people didn’t want violence in the first place . . . but now you are the ones creating violence.”

She brought her letter to the front gate of the Los Alamitos base, hoping to find a TV reporter to read it on the air. Failing that, she settled for leaving it with a newspaper reporter.

“I just want it stopped,” she said of the rioting. “If people want justice, this shouldn’t be the way. They are confusing a lot of people, and I am one of them.”

Times staff writer Rose Kim and correspondents Terry Spencer and Bob Elston contributed to this story.