As Pentagon Maps Action, Reservists Anticipate Call

As Pentagon officials began mapping out which military reserve units to call up in the “war against terrorism,” California reservists Friday prepared themselves to put away their everyday lives and slip back into uniform.

According to the Pentagon, at least 35,500 reservists will be needed for assignments that are already known--and about 15,000 more also could be called.

Which units will be tapped, and whether the National Guard would be included, had not been decided.

Reservists could be summoned within days, and the largest share, 13,000, will come from the Air Force Reserve. About 10,000 more will be called from the Army, 3,000 from the Navy, 7,500 from the Marines and 2,000 from the Coast Guard.

Still unknown is how many California reservists might be involved. But the pool is deep, with about 15,000 reservists in Southern California alone.

Many reservists and members of the National Guard did not wait to be called. Steve Timbol, a Simi Valley police officer and National Guardsman, was one of them.

After watching Tuesday’s televised images of the attacks on the East Coast, Timbol called his commanding officer at Channel Islands Air National Guard Base outside Oxnard.

“What do you need me to do?” Timbol asked, setting in motion a chain of events all too familiar to his wife, Dorina, now left at home with two children while her husband serves as a military police officer on the base.

“Everything in my life is on hold,” said Dorina Timbol, who runs the Guard unit’s Family Readiness Program. “You are dealing with the fear that, if something happens, your kids will be without a father. To me, the most frightening part of it is not knowing what to expect.”

While some jumped the gun, others waited for the official call as they prepared, mentally and physically, to remove themselves from their daily lives.

Pat Flynn, a 30-year-old Persian Gulf War veteran, has already gotten his call to augment security at the Channel Islands base. Flynn, his wife, Jackie, and their 9-week-old son, William, live on isolated Anacapa Island. After Tuesday’s attacks, they climbed in a boat and headed for the mainland.

“It’s our paradise,” Jackie Flynn, 24, said of the island. “But everybody’s paradise has been put on hold.”

She worries that her husband might be shipped to a war zone.

“I am very scared. I don’t know what is going to happen.”

Scott McMillan also got his call early. McMillan, 34, a food service manager in San Jose, spent Friday with 31 other reservists at Travis Air Force Base preparing to ship out to the military mortuary in Dover, Del., which is to handle victims from the attack on the Pentagon.

Their assignment: to spend the next two weeks as orderlies to the dead, helping move bodies and perform related chores.

McMillan played a similar role when more than 200 people--including 12 Americans--were killed in the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, an experience that haunted him well after he took off his uniform.

“You never get over it, but the real sensitivity part took about a month from when I got home,” he said.

“You get images back. Smells will trigger things that will make you go back. . . . I’m not looking forward to it, but because I’ve done it already, I’m not as anxious as I was the first time.”

Bill Butler, 55, of San Diego, spent five years on active duty and has spent 30 years as a Navy reservist, reaching the rank of rear admiral.

After four tours in Vietnam and assorted call-ups since, he’s ready for another stint.

“All of us have volunteered; some of us more than once,” he said of his fellow reservists. “We know what is necessary, to go in harm’s way. We know our jobs. We know the risks.”

In West Los Angeles, Army reservists pondered the call-up order as they inspected cars pulling into their training center at Wilshire Boulevard and Federal Avenue.

Pfc. Nancy Villasenor, a 21-year-old food services specialist, said it didn’t dawn on her as she watched the attacks unfold on television that she could be drawn into the aftermath.

“But then they started using words like ‘war’ and ‘retaliation,’ ” she said. “Then I thought I might be involved.”

Jesse Cervantes, 20, a Corona police cadet, reacted as soon as he learned of the attacks. Like Timbol, he called his Armed Forces Reserve Center in Los Alamitos and volunteered for shifts, missing a class at Riverside Community College so he could help guard the gates.

“I wanted to help in any way I can,” Cervantes said.

Cervantes, whose cousin was a Marine during the Persian Gulf War, said his Mexican-born parents respect his allegiance to their new homeland.

“They see what I do and they back me 100%,” he said. “They know that if it weren’t for what I do and what others do, we wouldn’t be the country we are.”

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Times staff writers Scott Martelle, Tracy Wilson, Bob Pool and Jennifer Mena contributed to this report.