Though they may serve only two to four years on active duty, soldiers who enlist in the Army takes on an eight-year commitment. When they leave active duty, they can serve the remainder of their obligation in the National Guard or Army Reserve. The Individual Ready Reserve is one of several Army Reserve categories in which they can serve.

IRR members must meet minimal annual requirements — such as keeping personal contact information current, attending musters, updating readiness screening questionnaires and responding to official correspondence – and are subject to being mobilized, or called back to active duty.

Col. Wanda Good, commander of the St. Louis branch of the U.S. Army Human Resources Command, discussed the process for mobilizing soldiers under the IRR program during a teleconference with bloggers and online journalists yesterday.

“Their knowledge and skill make them an invaluable asset to our nation, and we’re tremendously proud of our IRR soldiers and their contribution to the total Army,” she said.

“IRR soldiers have been making a contribution for a long time,” the colonel said. “Beginning with the Berlin crisis in 1961, we had 38,827 IRR soldiers mobilized by the Army, and this was the largest mobilization of the IRR to date.”

Good added that in the late 1960s during the Vietnam era, 1,692 IRR soldiers were called up into 42 mobilized reserve units. During the Gulf War in the ealy 1990s, 20,277 IRR soldiers were mobilized, and 14,470 of them were deployed.

“This is not the first time we’ve tapped the expertise of the IRR soldiers,” Good noted.

Good said a common myth surrounding the IRR today is the impression that a massive mobilization is under way.

“There are 65,000 IRR soldiers. Since 9/11, seven years ago, we’ve published about 20,000 mobilization orders. That’s about 31 percent of the IRR. Slightly less than 5,000 are mobilized today, and that’s about 7 percent of the current IRR population,” she said.

Another myth, Good said, is the belief that vast numbers of IRR soldiers are failing to report to mobilization stations as ordered.

“We’ve had 779 cases of IRR soldiers failing to report as ordered to their mobilization stations,” she said. “We’ve discharged 354 of them for failure to report, and we have 425 cases still under investigation. So, if you calculate those numbers, that’s 779 out of 20,000, soldiers. That’s only 4 percent.”

Good said another myth centers around the belief that the Army doesn’t take care of IRR soldiers after they return from Iraq or Afghanistan.

“Actually, the Army and the [Veterans Affairs Department] have a wide variety of programs in place to support all soldiers,” she said. “That is another reason why we have musters on an annual basis. We want to call back our soldiers and make sure they are filling out their post-deployment health reassessments.”

The assessments are important, the colonel said. “Last year … we found three soldiers who were suicidal, one of whom got directly into the VA and [received] help immediately,” she noted. “We do try very hard to take care of our soldiers, and the musters [are] the best way so far that we can actually touch these soldiers and give them the medical assistance they need.”

Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, about 20,000 IRR soldiers have been mobilized for the global war on terror. Good noted that 2,218 Retired Reserve soldiers have volunteered to return to active duty; 384 of them have served in Iraq, and 122 of them have served in Afghanistan.

DoD
By Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg
Special to American Forces Press Service

Redemption, Courage, Sacrifice

Somewhere near here, Valhalla or Fiddler’s Green, a band of brothers is welcoming a new friend. Standing at attention are men like Alvin York, Audie Murphy and Douglas MacArthur. A new hero has come home.

It wasn’t a very long road for Ross McGinnis. He was just 19 when he became a legend. It had not been a long road but it had some twists and turns.

Ross McGinnis was not always hero material. He grew up in a small town in western Pennsylvania, the only boy in a family with two gifted girls. His father suggests Bart Simpson as a good image of this underachiever.

At fourteen he made several mistakes, bought some marijuana and talked about it at school. When school administrators looked further, they found a couple of knives in his locker.

Suspension and court followed.

Given time to think, Ross thought. At some point he talked with an Army recruiter. In his junior year he enlisted in the United States Army under the delayed enlistment program. Those who knew him saw the change. Despite academic struggles, he graduated from high school and joined the Army.

After basic and advanced infantry training, Ross came home on leave. He was a changed man. He was a soldier.

In Germany, training for deployment to Iraq, Ross made his mark with his fellow soldiers. He was the platoon funny man, able to make men laugh even after a long day. He was also recognized as a born leader, and excelled at the skills a combat soldier needs.

His unit was assigned to northeastern Baghdad, and violence was a daily happening. In late November his unit fought off a five hour attack in which dozens of the enemy were killed. McGinnis’s photo was on the cover of the Middle East edition of Stars & Stripes for November 30 as they covered that battle.

December 4, 2006 was like most days. The unit geared up for a patrol and the delivery of a generator. Six vehicles pulled out of Combat Outpost Apache. McGinnis was the .50 cal gunner on the rear vehicle, a position he was expert at.

The vehicles ahead heard an explosion and when they looked, found McGinnis’s vehicle severely damaged with all four of its doors blown off. Medics found four wounded soldiers and McGinnis. McGinnis was dead.

It all happened in a matter of seconds.

McGinnis saw an insurgent throw a grenade from a nearby rooftop. He tried to deflect it but it dropped through the hatch behind him. Training told him to holler “Grenade” and then jump clear. That is not what this hero did.

He saw the grenade lodged in some equipment below him. The doors were locked and the four soldiers in the truck had no chance to escape. McGinnis dropped down into the Humvee and pressed his back against the radio where the grenade had come to rest, covering the blast with his body.

Ross McGinnis, a little over six feet tall and a lanky 130 some pounds, took the force of the explosion. One of the other soldiers was seriously wounded, and the other three received less serious injuries. All of them lived because of Ross McGinnis.

On June 2, 2008 the President of the United States will present the Medal of Honor to the family of Ross McGinnis. He will speak about courage and sacrifice. His fellow heroes in Valhalla and Fiddler’s Green know all about that.

It may be the the President of the United States will also talk about redemption. Ross McGinnis was once a troubled youth on a clear path to nowhere. Then, he chose to become a soldier in the United States Army. He chose to become a warrior.

This young man, this ordinary young man, found a place that gave him a path, people who became comrades and friends, and he found a time that for all eternity became his time.

God bless you, Ross McGinnis.

Ross McGinnis MoH site
Army News story by Carrie McLeroy
Scripps Newspaper by Milan Simonich

Army Resources Command, Military Awards Branch