IRAQ
SAUDI
ARABIA AdDamman®
Dhahran
0 Riyadh
John Bruce/Dally Nebraskan
Making that final phone call
home, Villwok joins other re
servists Sunday night at Fort
Riley.
Reserves
Continued trom Page 9
From the beginning, they sus
pected their eventual destination.
Their orders said they were getting
activated for Operation Desert
Shield.
A chalkboard at the Fremont
headquarters gave further hints:
"Oil is a commodity. Life is
not,” it read. Another message in
chalk said, What is our mission?
Win the war."
♦
At mail call, Villwok steps for
ward live times.
He collects letters from his
father, his aunt, his brother and his
brother’s girlfriend. But the first
letter Villwok reads comes to Fort
Riley with a U.S. Army postmark
from his friend in Saudi Arabia.
Villwok hasn’t been eager to
communicate with his family. In
fact, he says, he got in trouble for
making loo few phone calls. The
Army wants soldiers to keep in
touch with the folks back home.
That's been no problem for Ti
chota, who’s called home almost
every day. He left his girlriend in
Fremont. Now she writes him every
day.
"Gary gets more mail than
anyone in the company,’ says
Villwok, who’d rather not answer
the Idlers he gels.
“I’m having lun,” he says.
Writing makes him think aboul
school, aboul Fremont and his
parents.
Several weekends ago they
visited him at Fort Riley. Because
orders for deployment arc issued
days or hours in advance, the
soldiers and their families never
know which will be the last visit.
‘‘There’s a gtxxl and bad side to
this — you've got to say goodbye
all over again,” Villwok says.
His family probably understands.
Villwok s lather, brother and uncle
also were in the Army.
“I love it; just putting on the
green,” Villwok says. “Honestly, 1
enjoy it. This is the real stuff now.”
Villwok had no problem switch
ing roles from student to soldier. He
looks the part. A week alter getting
activated, he had his already
bu//.cd-olf hair trimmed further.
Now- there’s only a little bit left on
the lop. His “Marine Dog” cut, he
calls it.
Tichota looks more like a
criminal justice major. He admits
he joined the Reserves to pay his
way through college, not because he
expected to enjoy the Army.
“I don’t regret joining because
the money’s great and I need it to
go to school,” he says. “I just never,
never thought it would happen.”
Villwok has outlined reasons
why he wants to go to Saudi Arabia:
to see a new country, a new culture;
it’ll be a conversation piece. He
wants to have some stories to tell
his grandchildren.
He wants to tell them that he en
joyed the Army and its routine. He
doesn't mind sharing a room with
28 other men or the 5:30 a.m.
wakeup call for a march in 40
degree temperatures.
“I've been singing a lot of the
cadences when we go marching,"
he says.
He demonstrates;
“Iraqi soldiers
Beuer hit the hill
Army's coming
Shoot to kilt'’
But the company wasn’t acti
vated to do any shooting. It’s a rear
echelon, port-city outfit, one that
can keep more than 100,(XX) combat
troops stocked. It moves supplies
from ships into warehouses. Other
units transport the supplies to the
battle lines.
Still, Villwok wants to be pre
pared. Even at a comfortable
distance behind the front lines,
terrorism poses a threat, he says.
"There’s always the chance that
some kid will come up and throw a
bomb," he says, "or you go into
some place and it's going to blow
up.”
Getting activated has demon
strated to Tichola and Villwok how
other students lake things for
granted. The reservists will be
allowed only a few personal items
when they go abroad: a set of
civilian clothes, a Walkman and
tapes, a disc camera (other cameras
are ux> big), some “hygiene stuff,"
writing utensils and paper.
Other things that they as students
have come to expect, they won't
even be able to find Saudi
Arabia is an 830,000 square-mile
dry campus.
The Army also has placed re
strictions on religion. U.S. troops
are not allowed to enter mosques
out ol respect lor the Muslims. And
the Army has renamed its chaplains
keepers ol the peace, or some
thing," Villwok says, to avoid
religious friction.
“I’m Catholic; I still have to
pray. I just won’t tell anyone," he
says.
Tichota is less concerned about
the details. He just doesn't want to
go
“This is not helping you at all in
lile; what’s it going toward?” he
asks his friend.
“It’s the best thing that happened
all year," Villwok says. “I miss
school, but you can always get your
education. This dtKsn’i happen but
every 20 years.”
Never mind that they aren’t
doing anything very different from
college life. Take away the bar
racks, the camouflage jeeps and the
salutes, and Tichota and Villwok
could be on campus. They sleep in
bunk beds, eat dining hall food,
open their mail and study history.
Even today's combat training
wasn't much different from intra
mural football.
As they walk back to the
barracks alter the drill, Tichota and
Villwok still have some college
student in them. T here’s little
discipline in tiieir steps. Their rifles
arc casually at their sides. And
they’re talking about the weekend.
But the new setting has made
them realize they arc caught in a
series of events they can do nothing
about.
Because of decisions they made
more lhan two years ago. Villwok
and Tichota can only wait for the
next order to come, until the setting
changes again — from prairie to
desert.
*
On Veterans Day — late
Monday afternoon — Villwok and
I ichota file onto a jumbo jet at
Forbes Field in Topeka. Kan.
The transition from college stu
dent to soldier is nearly complete
now; the uncertainty is replaced
with a clear destination.
As the civilian 747 airliner takes
oil against a Kansas sunset,
members of the 1012th General
Supply C ompany know where they
are headed: a Saudi port city only a
couple hundred miles from Kuwait.