U.S. MILITARY Old soldiers never retire; they now serve in Iraq

In Vietnam, 35 was considered old; in Iraq, 50-somethings are doing their duty.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Dennis Sledd is one of the nation's finest -- he spent almost a year in Iraq helping provide troops with the proper supplies before returning stateside to serve as a full-time reservist in Tampa, Fla.
At 55, he is also a soldier with a generation's advantage over many of his peers.
The stereotype of the young Turk soldier -- 19, fresh out of high school, newly married if at all -- has proved false in the war in Iraq. Soldiers in their 50s have become more common as the military uses all available resources on the battlefield.
Many of the older soldiers are split between two categories: reservists and Guardsmen, who tend to skew older than active duty military, and members of the Individual Ready Reserve, a group of 5,000 military retirees who can be called back at a moment's notice to serve again.
Sledd insists he is no rarity. During Desert Storm, he said, he served with a handful of 50-something reservists who could have been called but weren't because the conflict lasted a comparatively short time.
Expert
Charles Moskos, a Northwestern University professor who studies military families, said the bulk of older soldiers in this war are reservists. More reservists are serving in this war than ever before, he said.
"Many are successful professionals who, in some sense, are more patriotic than some active duty soldiers, ironically enough," he said.
Moskos, 70, served in Vietnam, where he estimated less than 10 percent of the fighting force were reservists. "In that war, a person over 35 was considered an old-timer," he said.
David Segal, head of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, said that in Vietnam, the biggest group of 50- and 60-somethings were doctors called up under the so-called "doctors' draft." That group is being called up again primarily through the Individual Ready Reserve program.
"This is really the first long-term military engagement we've had since the end of the draft," he said. "So this is the first time we've had to deal with needing large numbers of doctors over a long period of time without being able to draft them."
Stop-loss policy
Besides turning more often to older reservists, the Army instituted a stop-loss policy last spring that won't let soldiers leave the service even when their enlistment time ends. At least eight soldiers have sued to block the policy.
"They're trying to keep the forces up and they're running out of bodies," said Mark Acker, a veterans services officer in Indiana.
Capt. Eugene Hunton, 39, is one of 1,000 Individual Ready Reserve members to volunteer for duty in support of missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hunton, who has yet to deploy to Iraq with the Knoxville, Tenn.-based 844th Engineer Battalion, said at least half his company is made up of Individual Ready Reserve members.
"I was concerned about the morale of soldiers," said Hunton, who will help oversee his battalion's construction projects. "I thought the guys are in IRR because they don't want to be in the Army. That's not necessarily true."
Charles Ham, a Columbia, S.C., psychiatrist, is not a member of the Individual Ready Reserve, but he still answered the call. He retired from the reserves seven years ago and his obligation to the military was considered complete. But when the military called him earlier this year and asked if he would be willing to come back, he agreed. He is 67.
"I really believe if we're going to send troops over there, they will need clothes and medical care," he said. "I will do everything I can to make them come back alive."
Ham will report to Fort Benning, Ga., in February. He doesn't know where he will be sent after that.
"Apparently they're trying to get all the people they can to help support this war," he said.
Another
Carl Shissler, 58, of Lancaster, Pa., retired in December from the U.S. Postal Service. But he wasn't there to celebrate his retirement -- just before his retirement he arrived at Fort Dix, N.J. His wife, Donna, expects that his transportation company will go to Iraq.
This will be Shissler's third war. He served in Vietnam and Desert Storm, according to Donna.
"My husband loves his country, and he loves the military -- and I do too," she said. "It's a sacrifice, but we're willing to make it."
In Florida, Sledd said he sees himself as having few differences from the younger soldiers he is serving with. He paces himself, he said, to make sure the physical differences are minimal. The biggest difference, he said, may be psychological.
"As a 55-year-old," he said, "I'm probably a little more cautious, not as cavalier as maybe a 20-year-old would be."