President Bush has authorized the Marine Corps to call up Marines from the service's Individual Ready Reserve, which may mean a return to duty for some recently discharged veterans.
President Bush authorized the Marine Corps to recall Marines from the IRR on July 26. At present, only the Army has been involuntarily activating IRR members. The Army began involuntarily recalling selected IRR members to active duty in 2004 (see related article).
Marine officials couldn't say how many Marines from the IRR could be activated, or when that might happen. The authorization allows up to 2,500 Marines to be on involuntary active duty at any time. But the actual number will depend on how many Marines volunteer for deployments within the global war on terrorism.
The service has set up a Web site, https://mcmps.manpower.usmc.mil/MCMPS/GIDA/, to allow IRR Marines and recent retirees to volunteer for war on terror assignments.
When a person joins the United States Military, they incur a total eight-year service commitment. Whatever portion is not served on active duty, or the active Guard or Reserves, is served in the IRR. In the IRR one does not perform weekend drill (such as the active Guard or Reserves), and one does not receive pay, but one may be recalled to active duty, at any time. (For more information see Part 4 of What the Recruiter Never Told You).
The Individual Ready Reserve includes 59,000 Marines who have completed their initial enlistment, but are still within their mandatory eight-year military service obligation.
"We are telling the American people that there is a chance that ... those individual ready reservists will be recalled," Marine Maj. Steven O'Connor, reserve liaison officer with Marine Corps Public Affairs, said.
Officials envision a much smaller number of involuntary activations than the maximum authorization. "There is that chance (of calling up the maximum authorized), even though it seems rather slight," O'Connor said.
Involuntarily activated Marines will receive at least five months notice before they have to report for an average of 12 to 18 months of additional active duty, officials said. The service is specifically targeting Marines in the combat arms, communications, intelligence, engineer and military police career fields.
In addition, the service is excluding Marines who are in their first year of IRR service. Officials are deliberately avoiding activating Marines who have recently been in a combat zone. Only Marines in their second or third year of IRR service are being involuntarily recalled, O'Connor said.
Marines in the IRR are a proven asset as the military works to manage its resources during heightened demands posed by the war on terror, O'Connor said. "These are Marines that have already been trained," he said.
Service officials said the authority does not signal a problem with recruiting. "It's just a matter of the Marine Corps accessing its total force," O'Connor said.
He noted that about 2,600 Marine reservists are serving within U.S. Central Command's area of responsibility. "They're part of our total force," he added. "They're a resource we should be able to tap into in times of war and contingency."
The Marine Corps drew on its Individual Ready Reserve in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, involuntarily calling up roughly 2,000 Marines, and in the 1991 Gulf War, when about 8,300 IRR members were involuntarily activated, O'Connor said.
Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton in California expressed little surprise over plans to recall members of the Marine Corps' Individual Ready Reserve to active duty, acknowledging that regardless of whether people think it's fair, it's part of the commitment those reservists signed on for.
"If I was in their shoes, I probably wouldn't like it," acknowledged Staff Sgt. Dwayne Benjamin, a purchasing chief for the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Pendleton.
Although the move probably won't be popular among affected Marines, Benjamin said it shouldn't be completely unexpected. "When you did your first time around (on active duty), you know it was a possibility," he said. "And knowing that it was a possibility, it's something that they should have always kept in mind."
Cpl. Juan Juarez, an active-duty administrative clerk who plans to join the Marine Corps Reserve after his upcoming deployment, shrugged when asked about the possibility of involuntary recall. "When you join the Marine Corps, you were joining a way of life," he said. "You knew when you signed up for eight years that it was a possibility, so why not expect it to be eight years?"
