CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — The last time the Marine Corps sent Ted Hogan into a war zone, Lyndon Johnson was president and there was no such thing as the Super Bowl.
Hogan was 18 and fresh out of high school in rural Iowa when he was shipped to Vietnam in 1966. He spent two years there and was awarded the Purple Heart after being wounded in a mortar attack.
Now, two weeks shy of his 56th birthday and recently retired from a three-decade career as a machinist in a tractor factory, Hogan is preparing to go to Iraq in the next few weeks as a master gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps reserves.
"I have mixed emotions about it," said Hogan during rifle training to brush up on the M-16 and the machine gun. "I’ve been there (in a war zone) before. I just hope I can help the junior Marines know what to expect and how to get through it."
Call it the graying of the fighting force.
As the U.S. military begins a massive rotation of troops in Iraq, the increasing reliance on reservists and National Guard troops means that units being sent as replacements will have a much higher percentage of personnel over the age of 40.
The face of America being shown to the Iraqis will have more lines in it that ever before. But officials believe it will also have greater maturity and patience, an advantage both in relating to the Iraqis and providing leadership to much younger U.S. troops.
Hogan and other reservists from Rock Island, Ill., are part of the 1st Force Service Support Group, which has the vital if unglamorous job of insuring that the vehicles, equipment, weaponry and other supplies needed by 20,000 troops of the 1st Marine Division going to Iraq are safely transported and adequately maintained.
With attacks on U.S. convoys an almost daily occurrence in Iraq, it is a job that is difficult and dangerous.
Once the upcoming rotation is complete — probably by late April — the proportion of reservists and Guard troops among the overall U.S. force in Iraq will have more than doubled, according to Pentagon figures.
Among active duty enlisted troops in the Army, 6 percent are 40 or older. But in the Army Reserve, the figure is 21 percent, and in the National Guard, it is 22 percent.
Among enlisted Marines, the percentage 40 or older is about 3 percent in the active duty and reserve force. Among officers, however, 17 percent of those on active duty are 40 and older, and among reserves, it is 44 percent.
The older reserves will have many younger Marines to mentor. More than 70 percent of the Marine reserve force is 25 or younger.
"We have a young force; it’s a definite asset to have someone who’s been through things before," said Capt. Jeff Pool, an official at Marine reserve headquarters in New Orleans.
The average reservist call-up is for a year, with the possibility of an additional year. The assignment in Iraq is set to last seven months.
While other reservists are having their college years disrupted, for Ted and Linda Hogan the call-up means delaying their retirement plans, which were to include fishing trips to Minnesota. Hogan was activated within days of his retirement from the Deere &Co. farm equipment plant in Dubuque, Iowa.
Hogan has stayed fit through a regimen of running and weights. He can do 18 "dead-hang" pull-ups without breaking a sweat.
Still, the uncertainty of the future has Linda Hogan and the couple’s three grown daughters apprehensive.
"It’s hard to go through this," she said. "This was supposed to be ‘our’ time together. But he’s a Marine, he’s always been a Marine, and I would never take that away from him."
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