Reservists now play central, not backup, role

Employers are required by law to reinstate reservists to jobs with equal pay, benefits, and seniority. But employers are not bound to make up the pay differential for reservists. Some employers such as large Fortune 500 companies do reimburse the pay gap for periods of between several days and a year or more, according to a survey by the Reserve Officers Association here. However, reservists who work for smaller firms or are self employed, such as Hunter, must often accept a substantial pay loss.

Although Hunter plans to stay in the Guard both out of a sense of duty and for the eventual retirement benefits, he expects many others to leave. "Everybody's concerned about the numbers we may lose" because of heavier demands on the force, he says.

Career setbacks are also common. Lt. Col. Brian Perry, a New Orleans attorney and Army reserve officer, served only three days last fall in his appointment to a Louisiana judgeship before he had to report to work as a logistics officer at Central Command in Tampa, Fla. His military salary is only half what he earned as an attorney. Dispatched to Afghanistan for five months, Colonel Perry has also seen little of his wife and six children, who live in New Orleans. "I just got orders yesterday for another year," he says.

The stresses of the war on terrorism are accelerating a historic shift in the role of US reserve forces in recent decades. During the cold war in the 1950s and '60s, when the US drafted citizens into military service, the reserve's mission was to stand ready in case of a big war; it was rarely employed for short-term contingencies, says Renee Hylton, a National Guard historian.

Since the creation of the all-volunteer force in 1973, and especially with the roughly 40 percent drop in the active force size since the Gulf War, Guard and Reserve units have become far more integral to the full range of military operations. These units have also become more multifaceted, adding intelligence, special forces, air cargo, and refueling units to their traditional infantry and fighter teams.

"Whenever something happens that requires more than just the bare bones, we will have to have reservists mobilized," says Lt. Col. Vincent Savoia, a spokesman for the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve.

As a result, tensions are growing over how and how long reserve forces should be deployed in the future. Guard and Reserve officials, for example, favor shorter term rotations in the full spectrum of military activities including overseas missions. Active-duty military officials gravitate toward using reservists in longer assignments and as "backfill" in jobs such as base security at home, Ms. Hylton says.

"We should not be mobilized for backfill," says Col. Martin of the Air National Guard. "We should be factored in to the overseas rotation for the most part."

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