Reserve, Guard Units Hit Hard

By Rone Tempest

Sept. 2, 2003 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

SACRAMENTO —

You might think Raymond Anthony had already done enough for his country. During four tours in Vietnam with the Marine Corps, Anthony was wounded six times.

He bears a long bayonet scar on his face. He was shot in the chest with an enemy AK-47, strafed by jets and blown out of a landing craft by North Vietnamese artillery.

But the 57-year-old state office worker, who joined a California National Guard unit here eight years ago so he could qualify for military retirement pay, was severely wounded again in July when a rocket-propelled grenade hit his Humvee during a night patrol outside Baghdad.

News reports last week noted that the number of U.S. casualties during the occupation of Iraq has surpassed those suffered during the initial 6-week invasion. Increasingly, those in harm’s way are not from elite regular Army and Marine fighting units. Rather, like Anthony, some casualties come from mobilized National Guard and reserve forces sent to provide security.

On Aug. 10, Staff Sgt. David Perry, a Wasco State Prison guard from Bakersfield, became the first member of the California National Guard to die in Iraq. Perry, 36, was killed during a bomb attack in Baqubah, where he was working as a military policeman.

According to Maj. Gen. Paul D. Monroe Jr., more than a dozen Californians in the National Guard have been wounded since their presence began building in Iraq this summer.

Other than statistics produced by states, there are no overall numbers on reservists and guardsmen injured or killed, reflecting the military’s position that the nation fields one unified fighting force.

So far, most members of the California National Guard have been from military police and transportation units. But in an interview this week, Monroe said he expects combat units to be deployed in coming months.

“We are getting these indications that, as active duty combat forces are being rotated out, our combat forces will be replacing them,” Monroe said.

Unlike the regular military troops who preceded them, most of these reservists and members of the National Guard generally have civilian careers. For example, Anthony’s commander in the Sacramento-based 270th Military Police Company is an elementary school vice principal. Others in his unit are police officers, firefighters, nurses and utility repair workers.

In addition to the constant danger posed by an often hostile Iraqi population, the overseas duty has inflicted hardships on many California families.

“This has totally ruined my husband’s civilian career and disrupted our lives,” said Kathy Martin, the wife of Army National Guard Sgt. Joseph Martin, who is serving in Iraq with a California-based military police company. “Since this has started, he has been passed over twice for promotion. We are mortgaged up to the hilt.”

In civilian life, Joseph Martin, 44, is a 23-year veteran of the Hayward Police Department, where he is a patrol sergeant with a master’s degree in criminology from the University of San Francisco. Kathy Martin, 32, is a mortgage banker.

The couple, recently wed, has a blended family of five children -- ages 6 to 15 -- still living at home. All five attend Catholic schools.

According to National Guard spokesman Dan Donohue, there are about 30,500 guardsmen and women serving in Iraq and Kuwait -- about 18% of the total 166,000 U.S. forces.

Records show this to be the largest National Guard battlefield presence since the Korean War. During the entire Vietnam conflict, for example, only 7,040 National Guard soldiers and fliers went to war.

With more than 1,500 men and women stationed in Iraq, the California National Guard is one of the largest state contingents of these “citizen soldiers” stationed in the Iraq-Kuwait theater. (Florida, with more than 2,000 soldiers and airmen posted there, is the largest.)

The significant presence in Iraq represents a fundamental change in the role of National Guard. In the past, typical assignments included fighting wildfires, providing flood relief, policing civil disturbances and supplementing security at Super Bowls and World Series games. In 1992, 11,398 members of the California National Guard were mobilized for the Los Angeles riots.

In the years preceding the campaign against terrorism, National Guard soldiers seldom faced more than the minimum 15 duty days and 48 drill days required by law.

“Before Sept. 11,” Monroe said, “about 90% of our mobilizations were in support of the state of California and only about 10% were in support of national mobilizations. Since 9/11, that has just turned around completely. We used to be able to tell our recruits 15 days and 48 drills. Right now, I cannot even tell our soldiers how long they will be mobilized.”

Some units, such as the 870th Military Police Company out of working-class Pittsburg, east of San Francisco, have already been called up twice.

“They used to tell us that National Guard duty was one weekend a month and 15 days a year,” Kathy Martin said. “The joke now is that’s how much time you spend at home.”

The Martins married in March, only 13 days before he was called up for duty in Iraq after he had already served an 11-month tour as a military policeman assigned to Ft. Lewis, Wash. In Iraq, where he has been stationed since May, Joseph Martin instructs Iraqi police recruits and jail guards and participates in security patrols and roadblocks. His unit has already come under sniper and grenade attack several times.

Kathy Martin, who coordinates a support group for the spouses of overseas members of the National Guard, showed a reporter $2,661.05 in receipts for personal items she and another support group coordinator had sent to Iraq for the 138 men and seven women serving there. In addition to toiletries and other necessities, the list included several dozen chocolate rabbits for an Easter package. All of the supplies were paid for by members of the group. The military did not even provide postage.

Martin, whose first husband was an Army non-commissioned officer, said she was more prepared than most for the hardships caused by having a husband away at war.

“We have wives in our group who have never paid the bills,” she said. “They don’t know where their bank is. They don’t know how to mow the lawn.”

Many members of the National Guard, Martin said, were as surprised as their mates.

“These were just regular old good old boys, one weekend a month, two weeks out of a year. They weren’t prepared to be deployed, although they do an outstanding job.”

Unlike many of his colleagues in the National Guard, Raymond Anthony is well-versed in combat. He faced countless battles in his four Vietnam tours. Drawing on his deep Christian faith, he was almost never afraid, he said, except during one amphibious assault south of the demilitarized zone in which he was wounded and bleeding in shark-infested waters.

“I couldn’t get out of that water fast enough,” Anthony recalled.

But when Anthony joined the National Guard to qualify for retirement pay after 20 years of service, he never expected, he said, to be under fire again, especially at such an advanced age.

Anthony, a square-jawed, former Marine drill inspector, was wounded on July 5 near the Baghdad airport. His son, Gary, 28, a Verizon Cellular employee, was serving in the same 270th Military Police Company and provided cover for his wounded father as he lay beside an Iraqi road.

When his team came under attack, Anthony said, he had little time to react after the rocket-propelled grenade hit about a yard in front of the vehicle’s bulletproof windshield. More than 100 shrapnel fragments riddled his body, puncturing him from his neck to his feet. Anthony’s Humvee was in flames, its tires burned off the wheels.

“I was astonished I was still alive. I thought, ‘Thank you, Lord’ and then, ‘Dammit, not again,’ ” Anthony said. “My son called the medic.”

Sometime soon, Anthony, who is back in California recovering from his wounds, will receive his seventh Purple Heart.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

California Guards

More than 1,500 men and women from the California National Guard are stationed in the Iraq-Kuwait theater. Some of the larger units serving include:

270th Military Police Company, Sacramento

* 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion, Ft. Funston

* 40th Military Police Company, Los Alamitos

* 640th Military Intelligence Battalion, Los Alamitos

* 870th Military Police Company, Pittsburg

* 1498th Transportation Company, Riverside

* 2632nd Transportation Company, San Bruno