The Gulf: Weekend To Full-Time Warriors

Christie Trexel, 26, who sells Cameo lingerie at home parties, was at a weekend sales convention in Dallas when she got word to hurry home to Cherokee, Iowa. Last Tuesday she and her husband Donald, 39, called their five-year-old son Joe in Omaha to tell him that he and his year-old brother Phillip would have to prolong a visit with their grandmother. The next day Christie and Donald flew to Wilmington, N.C., with an Army reserve unit called to active port-security duty, leaving family and friends to harvest the corn and soybeans from their 200-acre farm in October.

It is unusual for husband and wife to be called to the colors together. But otherwise, the Trexels' story is being repeated almost every day around the country. During August, 8,870 reservists were summoned to active duty. Some 38,000 more will be called up this month.

That should be no surprise -- even though the call-ups are the first in 20 years. It is virtually impossible today for the U.S. to sustain a military undertaking the size of the buildup in the Persian Gulf without mobilizing some of the million-odd weekend warriors. Until 1976, no reserves could be activated unless the President or Congress declared a national emergency. But the law now permits the White House to call as many as 200,000 reservists for an initial term of 90 days (easily stretchable to 180 days) without any proclamation.

After the draft was abolished in 1973, the Pentagon adopted the Total Force Policy, placing heavy reliance on the reserves. National Guard units today supply 53% of the Army's potential infantry and 47% of its armored fighting power. Reserves account for nearly all the Army's water-desalting capability, particularly important in arid Saudi Arabia, and 93% of the Navy's cargo- handling capacity.

The principal reason for this policy has been economy. Today's reservists are a far cry from the fat, lazy weekend warriors of legend. They pass the same physical tests as regulars, get the same sort of training, and drill with the same advanced equipment. Nonetheless, it costs only a third to half as much to pay, train and equip a reservist as it does a full-time soldier.

A subsidiary motive has been to bring the human costs of any major military venture home to communities around the country quickly, by reserve call-ups that would swiftly test popular backing. So far, only support personnel, not combat groups, have been activated. Nonetheless, nine reservists have already died. The Air Force cargo plane they were flying to Saudi Arabia crashed last week in West Germany.

Some reservists face financial hardship because their military pay will come nowhere near matching their civilian incomes. Though some employers are making up the difference, many are not; their only legal obligation is to hold a reservist's job open for his or her return. Reservists, however, can have the interest rate on mortgage and other debts reduced to 6% under the 50-year-old Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act.