Army weighs activation of Ready Reserves.

Byline: Tim Christie The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 5/19/04): The name of the local Oregon Army National Guard unit in Eugene is the 2nd Battalion, 162nd Infantry. A story Tuesday on Page C1 misidentified the unit.

The U.S. Army may begin calling up former soldiers who still have time left on their obligation to serve.

The soldiers are known as Individual Ready Reserves - a group of about 118,000 men and women who have served a stint in active or reserve duty and returned to civilian life.

Anyone who enlists in the Army has an eight-year obligation. After serving four years in an active or reserve unit, a soldier still has four years in the IRR, when they aren't paid or obligated to train, but can be called up.

The Army has begun screening IRR soldiers and may assign some to vacancies in Army Reserve units that are in Iraq or Afghanistan.

A handful of local IRR soldiers have enlisted in the Oregon National Guard to better control their own destiny.

Lt. Kevin Ressel of the National Guard said he swore three IRR soldiers into the Eugene-based 6th Battalion, 162nd Infantry unit, on Monday. The battalion has about 700 soldiers who were mobilized last fall and are deployed in Iraq, and an additional 300 here who are part of a rear detachment, he said.

The main advantage of enlisting in the National Guard is that soldiers have more warning before being called up, Ressel said. In contrast, the Army could take an IRR soldier who isn't attached to a Guard unit and deploy him or her within three weeks with an unfamiliar unit, he said.

But Ressel noted that the Army has become so "downsized" that any soldier, whether Army Reserve, National Guard or IRR, can expect to be deployed.

"Anymore it doesn't matter where you are," he said. "Everyone is getting deployed. There are too many soldiers needed in too many places to expect you won't get deployed."

Charles Corey, 21, of Eugene, was one of the IRR soldiers who just enlisted in the local Guard unit.

He recently completed three years in the Army, where he was stationed in Fairbanks.

He had been thinking about getting back into the service when a National Guard recruiter called him up last week to see if he wanted to enlist.

"If I do get called up, at least for the time being I'm here, and I can serve and get to know the people I'm going to be serving with," he said.

It's not clear how many IRR soldiers the Army intends to activate.

Ressel said he has heard 22,000 nationwide, but Army officials couldn't be reached to verify that number.

Most would be support personnel with specific skills in demand, such as Arab speakers, truck drivers or military police, Ressel said.

Any such call-up requires authorization from U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.