Teacher, Reservist Ready to Trade In His Boots for Books

Joe Berlin has an ambitious resolution for the New Year: Stay home and hang with the kids.

Not just his own, but the scores of students who have worried about their teacher over the last year, hoping he’d be able to keep his head low and make it back from the Iraq war in one piece.

The 54-year-old Ventura schoolteacher, a reservist with the California National Guard, was tapped for active duty in February and shipped four months later to the Middle East.

There he dodged mortar blasts and machine-gun fire, delivered tanks and other machinery to front-line troops in Iraq and defended himself against desert heat so intense that it would blister his skin.

But now it appears his tour of duty is over.

After five months in combat and a few months rehabilitating an injured knee, Berlin is set to be released from active duty in coming weeks, allowing him once and for all to trade a job ruled by rifles and flak jackets for one governed by grade books and lesson plans.

“I just want my life back,” said Berlin, who spent two weeks of holiday leave in Ventura from his latest Army posting in Washington, where the last of his paperwork is being processed.

“Basically, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m too old for all of this,” said the sixth-grade teacher, last assigned to De Anza Middle School on the city’s west end. “I was supposed to have my war a long time ago.”

With nearly a quarter of a century in the classroom, Berlin’s life has been disrupted before by service and duty.

He joined the Guard in 1975 shortly after completing two years of Army service. He was tapped for active duty in 1990 during the Persian Gulf War and again in 2001 after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A family illness prevented him from seeing action in the Persian Gulf, and his post-Sept. 11 service consisted of patrolling Santa Barbara Airport with an M-16 slung over one shoulder, keeping an eye out for unruly passengers and wayward luggage.

At that time, Berlin was believed to be the only Ventura County educator to have gone from schoolteacher to soldier, an assignment that took the burly guardsman out of the classroom for most of the 2001-02 school year.

He was reassigned to De Anza Middle School the next school year only to get called up again in February. By May, he was rumbling through the Iraqi desert as part of the Riverside-based 1498th Transportation Company, which ferries heavy equipment to the battlefield.

“I didn’t drive those trucks over there, I just kind of aimed them,” said Berlin, sitting in his Ventura home near the end of his two-week leave. He brought with him a map of Iraq highlighting the roads he had traveled, photos showing him on patrol in full battle gear and his sweaty helmet, adorned with Sylvester the Cat and Wonder Woman miniatures given to him by his two college-age daughters.

“I used to say my prayers and give these kisses every time before I went out, and I’d say, ‘OK, girls, wish me luck,’ ” Berlin said. “I never really dreamed I’d be in a combat zone. It’s boredom and tension and everything else, with every once in a while someone taking a shot at you.”

Berlin shared what he could with De Anza staff and students in letters, all of which were put on display in the school office. Some staff members wrote and sent gifts, including a box of chocolate snack cakes, which ended up being fused by the Iraqi heat into a giant brown blob.

“We just wanted him to know we were thinking about him,” said De Anza Principal Valerie Wyatt, who ran into Berlin during his two-week leave. “I just hope he doesn’t have to go back.”

Berlin has been told he’ll soon be home for good. And when he is back, Ventura school officials have promised he’ll have his teaching job back and that they will help ease his transition back to civilian life any way they can.

They also are planning to honor him for his war-time effort at a school board meeting upon his return.

“I just think his contribution is great, and we want to make sure he understands we all feel this way,” said school board member Debbie Golden, who had been in touch with Berlin via e-mail. “I don’t know what it must be like to do something like that. But we want to do whatever we can and make sure he has everything he needs to make the transition back.”

It could be difficult, Berlin knows. Even in his two weeks here, a burst of New Year’s Eve fireworks was enough to send him scurrying for cover, forgetting he wasn’t on the battlefield any longer.

But he’s eager to take up his old life, anxious to reconnect with daughters who have been forced to run a household by themselves. And he’s excited about standing in front of a classroom again, figuring he’s got a few more life lessons he can share.

“The classroom is where my heart is,” Berlin said. “It’s time that I get back there.”