Word has been received that Gertrude M. Jones, 81, passed away on August 25, 2003, under the loving care of the nursing aides of Heritage Manor of Mandeville, Louisiana. She was a native of Lebanon, KY. She was a retired Vice President of Georgia International Life Insurance Company of Atlanta, GA. Her husband, Warren K. Jones predeceased her. Two daughters survive her: Dawn Hunt and her live-in boyfriend, Roland, of Mandeville, LA; and Melba Kovalak and her husband, Drew Kovalak, of Woodbury, MN. Three sisters, four grandchildren and three great grandchildren, also survive her. Funeral services were held in Louisville, KY. Memorial gifts may be made to any organization that seeks the removal of President George Bush from office.
"We fought for our country and now we're being treated like second-class citizens" was the refrain last week from reservists mobilized for war with Iraq, but now marooned at Fort Stewart.
Hundreds of Army reservists and National Guardsmen are being held over at Fort Stewart for a variety of reasons. These soldiers report substandard housing, long waits for medical appointments and an active- duty Army bureaucracy indifferent to their problems.
After trying to work through the system to resolve their situations, some of these reservists decided to leak their gripes to the press. In short order, the issue rocketed to the top of the Pentagon, which dispatched a high-level Army team to investigate. Commanders at Fort Stewart are working with this team to expedite the processing of the 740 reservists they have there -- including 633 on "medical hold."
Fort Stewart says it is trying hard to accommodate these reservists, but it simply lacks the supply to deal with their demand. The post's hospitals have been drained of key personnel to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan; so too have the personnel offices and support activities at Fort Stewart.
In many ways, these soldiers represent the best that America has to offer. They volunteered to join the reserves in a day when most Americans do not serve in uniform; they answered their nation's call to arms; many of them fought in Iraq. The mistreatment alleged by reports in this newspaper and others seems like a grave injustice, and it would be easy to characterize these reservists as brave men and women who now face a malicious Army bureaucracy intent on denying them the benefits they earned. Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
Beneath the surface of these complaints lies another story -- one of neglect. The real story is about how America came to rely so heavily on its reserves, and how these reserves have suffered from years of neglect and inadequate resources from the federal government despite that reliance.
The story starts with Vietnam. In that war, reservists largely stayed home, due in part to political calculations by the White House that it could not afford to mobilize thousands of reservists from every corner of America. After the Vietnam War ended, America's generals restructured the military in such a way that would require the president to mobilize the reserves for any major conflict.
Army Gen. Creighton W. Abrams played a key role in crafting this "total force" concept, wherein key support units were placed in the reserves that active-duty combat units would need for any major war. The idea was that no president could again wage an unpopular war, because a future war would require reserve mobilization, and that would require popular support.
The system worked fairly well during the Cold War, when everyone in the active and reserve force trained for the big war with the Soviet Union. After the Berlin Wall fell and the first Gulf War ended, things changed. America's military transitioned from a "forward-deployed" force focused on the Soviet Union to an expeditionary force that deployed to small trouble spots around the world.
The role of the reserves changed as well. Support units such as military police, civil affairs and logistics now mattered more for missions like Somalia and Haiti than the combat units in the active force. The operational tempo for reservists increased steadily during the 1990s.
Targeting terrorism
After the Sept. 11 attacks, America mobilized its reserves in a way that hadn't been seen since Korea. At home and abroad, reservists performed missions that active soldiers couldn't (such as guarding airports) and supported the active force in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Since Sept. 11, no fewer than 40,000 reservists have been on active duty at any given time, both for homeland security missions and combat operations overseas. Today, the Defense Department has 168,915 reservists on active duty in support of the war on terrorism. Senior officials have made it clear that the military could not function without the support of the reserves.
Yet, America's reserves have never achieved full equality with their active-duty counterparts. The reservists marooned at Fort Stewart -- as well as their reserve brethren around the world -- have long suffered from a lack of resources. America gives less to its reserve forces at every step -- recruiting, training, deployment, equipment, manning, medical care, even veterans' benefits. In the Army Reserve and National Guard, the nation gets a bargain -- trained soldiers with civilian experience who can be called at a moment's notice, but paid for only one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.
Even in Iraq, reservists had to make do with less than their active-duty counterparts. Reserve units typically stand last in line for new equipment, behind active-duty Army units and the Marines. National Guard and Army Reserve units deployed to Iraq with radios older than many of their soldiers -- radios that could not talk securely with the active-duty units they worked with.
Many reserve units drove into Iraq with cargo trucks that were more than 30 years old. Reservists were also last in line to receive the military's new "Interceptor" body armor, specially designed to stop bullets from an AK-47.
Some units, such as Florida's 53rd Infantry Brigade, were designated as enhanced readiness units and given better training, equipment and resources. But they were the exception.
Some benefits denied
The same story has been true on the home front for reservists. The most visible deployment of reservists since Sept. 11 was the placement of National Guard troops in airports. The decision was made to call up these reservists in a state status, not a federal status, so that they could assume a quasi-police role in the airports. That policy decision, however, meant they would be ineligible for certain veterans' benefits because of the different ways the Veterans Administration treats state and federal military service.
Similarly, reserve families have encountered difficulties joining the military TriCare medical insurance program. The Pentagon opposed legislation to extend health care benefits to reservists and their families, saying it was too costly, and ultimately the proposal died. Indeed, 213 of the reservists stuck at Fort Stewart were held over for pre-deployment medical problems that should have been identified before the soldiers were mobilized -- and might have been if they had had better access to military health care before they were called to active duty.
Winston Churchill once said that reservists were "twice the citizen" because of their dual commitments to civil society and the military. We ask them to lead their lives in the knowledge that they could be called away from home and family on short notice to serve in harm's way. America's military depends on these men and women, and its combat units could not function without them.
Yet, America continues to undercut its reserve units, sending them into combat with equipment intended for other soldiers in other wars. If we expect our reservists to serve as modern-day minutemen, then we must train and equip them as such. We cannot expect them to shoulder as much of the burden as they have if we continue to treat them as second-class soldiers.
