CALLING IN THE RESERVES

	May 4, 1999
	Correspondent Jeffrey Kaye reports on those reservists who were called to active duty.

JIM LEHRER: Next, the Kosovo war comes home to some Americans. Jeffrey Kaye of KCET, Los Angeles, reports. JEFFREY KAYE: Yesterday, one UPS driver showed up at work in uniform, but not in the usual dark brown clothes he wears to deliver packages. Larry is an Air Force reservist from Sacramento, California. We were asked not to use last names of reservists for security reasons. He came to a collect his last paycheck before shipping out to help fight the war in Yugoslavia. SPOKESMAN: I've got a couple of checks for you. LARRY: Also, can I turn in - I've got one week's vacation left on the books. I want to turn that in so I can get that paycheck before I take off. SPOKESMAN: Okay. I'll turn that in. That'll be here - LARRY: Will it make it in this week? SPOKESMAN: Yes. We can make it this week. LARRY: Okay. Okay. JEFFREY KAYE: Under federal law, Larry will have a job at UPS to come back to when he returns, possibly in as long as nine months. Larry says his employer has been supportive of his imminent deployment. LARRY: He even said, "if your wife needs anything, you know, feel free to have her call us; if anything goes wrong with the house, you know, we can get someone over there." So, they've been absolutely fantastic. JEFFREY KAYE: Larry is one of 33,000 members of the National Guard and reserves who can be called to active duty under a presidential order signed last week. He is one of about 2,100 specialists in eight air refueling units around the country who are moving out this week in support of NATO bombing raids over Yugoslavia. Since the weekend, Larry's unit has been preparing for deployment. He is a member of the 940th Air Refueling Wing at Beale Air Force Base in Northern California. It is deploying 250 personnel and up to eight air tankers to Europe. Adding more midair refueling tankers to the region will allow NATO planes to stay in the air longer and to carry out more bombing raids. Colonel Vik Malling is the unit's wing commander. VIK MALLING: The supreme allied commander, General Clark, has requested more fighter bomber support, and to go along with that, of course, is tankers. Operationally, with the fighters and the bombers, they can reach their targets -- they usually would come up and get a little bit of fuel probably before they would go their target, come off the target, and get what we call a post strike refueling. And that allows them to fly from a main operating base and return without having to stop for fuel someplace. Saves a lot of time. You can get a higher sortie flow rate -- more bombs on target. JEFFREY KAYE: The planes operated by the 940th, KC-135E's, are gas stations in the air. Each tanker carries up to 185,000 pounds of fuel and a crew of four. Besides two pilots and a navigator, there is the boom operator, who funnels gas into the planes that need it. That's Larry's job. And where do you sit? LARRY: We actually lay on our stomachs in the back of the aircraft. JEFFREY KAYE: Looking out? LARRY: Looking out. Well, this whole window will be raised. So this whole thing is on hydraulics, which gives you the - JEFFREY KAYE: Looking out the window, Larry inserts the nozzle, the boom, into the gas tank of the receiving plane. This file footage provided by the Pentagon shows how midair fueling is accomplished. Here, an F-16A pulls alongside a tanker as the boom operator inserts the nozzle. JEFFREY KAYE: How long does it take? LARRY: To do a refueling? JEFFREY KAYE: Yes. LARRY: Not very long. We have a transfer rate of about 6,000 pounds per minute, roughly around a thousand gallon max. It takes a few minutes. JEFFREY KAYE: A few minutes? LARRY: A few minutes probably - JEFFREY KAYE: And then they're off and running. LARRY: And then they're off and doing their thing. JEFFREY KAYE: While the actual refueling takes minutes, the KC-135 can circle around for hours waiting for planes in need of fuel. How long are you in this position? LARRY: We're in this position over there probably I'm guessing around three hours, three to four hours. JEFFREY KAYE: Flying like this for three hours? LARRY: Correct. Waiting for the people to come up. Waiting for the receivers to come up. JEFFREY KAYE: The planes themselves, military versions of Boeing 707's, are kept in a state of readiness. Technicians have been performing maintenance and last-minute repairs. They've also tested communications systems which keep them in touch with each other and their base. SPOKESMAN: Test one, test one. SPOKESPERSON: Sounds good. SPOKESMAN: I got you loud and clear also. JEFFREY KAYE: Reservists make up one half of US military forces. Most of the Air Force's air fueling capability is staffed by Air National Guard and Reserves. SPOKESMAN: A lot of the missions have shifted over to the reserve forces. We can do it cheaper. And, in fact, for the KC-135's, the tankers that we're flying, we're the majority stockholders. We have over 55 percent of the tankers that are in the Air Force and so the Guard and Reserve are flying those. JEFFREY KAYE: Reservists we interviewed said they were proud to participate in the NATO mission. RESERVIST: We're where we should be, looking back on the Hitler -- and I'm sure this has been referred to several times, that whole genocide ethnic cleansing thing, you know. We look back and say why didn't we step in sooner? You know, that's something that we don't want to do in this day and age. We shouldn't be able to say we should have done this. We should go and do it and then deal with the nay sayers and everything else after the fact so - JEFFREY KAYE: Ronald is a navigator and a former active duty Air Force officer. RONALD: I was telling some friends last night at church that, you know, how would you like it if someone were to come in our community, you know, commit atrocities against you, wouldn't you want somebody to come protect you from another nation if that came down to it? So I think that we definitely should be over there. SPOKESPERSON: Good morning. JEFFREY KAYE: The increased prominence of reserves means the US military must be more sensitive to the needs of their families. SPOKESMAN: A lesson learned in Desert Storm is for family readiness, we weren't really prepared very well to take care of the families who were left behind. There's a lot of stress involved in that. This time around we've actually added many positions in the unit. We have a family readiness section, as well as the active duty here at Beale; they'll be providing a lot of support for the folks left behind, which is really, really important. JEFFREY KAYE: At the Beale Air Force Base's Family Readiness Office, a logistics plans officer, Barbara, got some last-minute advice. SPOKESPERSON: This is a quick reference guide for your family to know where everything is so that they don't have to rummage through the house to try to find it in the time of need. JEFFREY KAYE: As she made preparations on base, at home she's been preparing her family, her 12-year-old son, and her 6-year-old daughter for her deployment. BARBARA: I think my son, he's older, he's aware that, you know, that things happen. I don't know if at six you're really, you know, thinking, although she did ask me the other night if I was going to die, and my answer was, "Not if I can help it." But you can't say, no, that's not going to happen, because it - you know - very well may happen, and then you've just - your last act has been to lie to your child and say you're not going to die and then something happens, so you want to kind of prepare them for the worst without needlessly scaring them. JEFFREY KAYE: As for Larry's family, this weekend they had friends over for a going away party. Larry has been deployed in the past in Europe, in the Persian Gulf, and in the states on stints lasting no longer than a month. When his wife, Christina, found out last week that this time Larry could be gone for up to nine months, she said the news was hard to take. CHRISTINA: For probably a day and a half I couldn't - I can't even explain - I couldn't, you know, talk without crying. My work dealt with me that day. And when - it would probably take about a day and a half to be over the initial shock and it still hurts, and I'm not looking forward to it; the longest I've been away from him. LARRY: My biggest worry, I think, when I'm gone is seeing things get done around the house, not so much if something goes wrong on an emergency basis. But fortunately we've got a lot of good friends that are in the house tonight that, you know, they'll definitely volunteer to take care of her and if something goes wrong or the toilet breaks or something like that, you know, I know that she's in good hands here. CHRISTINA: I'm extremely worried about him just for the fact it's dangerous and everything, and I know - I know what's going on. You know, I'm not - I watch the news. I know everything that's going on. Every time he gets in the plane that's dangerous, you know, just going up, whether they're in conflict or not, and making it ten times worse now what they're going into, a hundred times worse, I should say. JEFFREY KAYE: Next Monday is Christina and Larry's third wedding anniversary. Larry's unit is expected to leave sometime this week.