Recall! Return of the IRR

By Doug DePew

There hadn't been a full-scale recall of the Individual Ready Reserves since the Korean War. In January of 1991, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, many people believed it would take World War III to trigger a recall of the IRR. Many people were wrong.

 

They came from cities and farms and towns in every corner of the country. With only a few days' notice, they quit their jobs, dropped out of college, kissed their girlfriends or wives, and got on planes to Atlanta, Georgia with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They had long hair, beards, and bad attitudes. They descended by the thousands on Fort Benning, Georgia, and they were not happy about it at all.

 

In this entertaining, true story, the author relates his own experiences as one of twenty-thousand IRR recalls who were ordered back to active duty in support of Operation Desert Storm. In a story reminiscent of "The Dirty Dozen" times ten thousand, the author takes you through the entire experience from beginning to end. He carries you along for the ride and explains exactly what it was like to be a recall. With the many IRR recalls over the last ten years of warfare, this first hand account could shed some light on how the current era of recalls began. (29,000 words +/-)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doug DePew
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215462485

Doug DePew

The author spent just over four years on active duty in the US Army Infantry. Today, he is a retired teacher from the Bureau of Prisons with over twenty years of total federal service and lives in the country in southwest Missouri with his wonderful wife and orange cats.

Book preview

Prologue

Iserved four years on active duty in the US Army as an 11B light weapons infantryman also known as a grunt. My first two years were spent in Heilbronn, Federal Republic of Germany with C Company, 2 nd Battalion, 4 th Infantry Regiment (Pershing) as security for Pershing II nuclear missiles. That tour is documented in my previous release: SAT & BAF! Memories of a Tower Rat . The balance of my enlistment was spent with B Company, 1 st Battalion, 8 th Infantry Regiment (Mechanized) at Fort Carson, Colorado as a mechanized infantryman.

I was honorably discharged from active duty as an E-4 specialist in July of 1990 at my end of term in service or ETS. All military contracts since the early 1980s have been for eight years rather than the six years it was prior to that. Part of it is obligated active duty or active reserve time. If a military member chooses not to re-enlist, they are automatically transferred to the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) to serve the balance of their contract. Members of the IRR do not have to drill and basically live as civilians. They are not paid. They are, however, on a list that is subject to recall on the order of the president. That hadn’t been done on a large scale since the Korean War, so it seemed highly unlikely to many veterans in the early 1990s. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet Union, it seemed nearly impossible. A lot of people said it would take World War III for the IRR to be called up again. A lot of people were wrong.

Many options were open to me after the Army. A big game outfitter in Montana offered me a job as a hunting guide. Application packets to the University of Tennessee, Auburn University, and University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) were stacked in the drawer next to my bed along with an application for the Central Intelligence Agency. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had a recruiting poster next to the pay phone on my floor of the barracks with a number I considered calling. Instead, I answered a full-page advertisement in the back of Rolling Stone magazine.

A school named Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts in Winter Park, Florida was looking for people who had a passion for music. I contacted them to learn more about the program. It was a grueling program that squeezed a full two academic years into nine months due to the long hours. In exchange, they taught about all facets of the music industry and gave hands-on experience with state of the art equipment. Admission required a high school diploma, a passion for music, and above average hearing. I submitted the hearing test from my ETS physical and started classes in July of 1990.

Iraq invaded the small country of Kuwait on August 2, 1990 prompting a huge, international outcry. The United Nations voted to bring economic sanctions against Iraq unless Saddam Hussein withdrew his troops immediately. Operation Desert Shield officially began on August 7, 1990 as the US began assembling forces in Saudi Arabia to repel a possible invasion by Iraq. The American troops were joined by military forces from a number of coalition nations. The US Army instituted a stop loss in August of 1990 halting all further releases from active duty until further notice. The United Nations Security Council voted on November 29, 1990 to give Iraq until January 15, 1991 to withdraw completely from Kuwait or face a military response. A huge force of more than half a million, including air, naval, and ground assets of more than thirty-four countries, was assembled to face the Iraqi army which was alleged to be the third or fourth largest in the world at that time. In addition, Germany and Japan added large financial contributions. President Bush drew a line in the sand. Saddam Hussein promised the world the Mother of All Battles on CNN.

The aerial campaign began on January 17, 1991 on live television. For the first time in history, people were able to watch a war in progress. Images of the massive amounts of anti-aircraft flack flying through the skies of Baghdad were broadcast live on CNN every night. The world was entering uncharted waters by holding a war that could be viewed live, twenty-four hours a day, on television.

Meanwhile, I was enjoying my time at Full Sail.

Chapter 1

W hat are we supposed to do? Rob asked our instructor Charlie.

Do whatever you want, he told us as he took a drag off his freshly rolled joint.

Whatever we want? I asked.

Yeah, it's your lab. We're just supposed to lay down some tape so you can run through the entire process, he said.

So we’re supposed to make a commercial about anything? This could be fun, Eric grinned.

This was a three a.m. lab at Full Sail Center for the Recording Arts in Winter Park, Florida. We were about to complete one of the last exercises to finish advanced recording. I started school there in July of 1990 just after I left the Army. It was an intensive, nine-month program to become a recording engineer, but it also covered a lot of other aspects of the music industry. Each class was roughly a month long and was packed with information. Classes were eight to ten hours a day with labs most nights. We were spending at least twelve hours a day in the program and sometimes more. Full Sail had seven studios packed with the most advanced recording gear in the world.

Our instructors were music professionals with years of experience in their areas of expertise. Our live sound expert had just received a brand new Corvette as a bonus for his work on the Tiffany Mall Tour. He also toured with Van Halen as a guitar tech, with Hank Williams, Jr. working the monitor board, and with others doing various live work. We liked teasing him about going straight from Van Halen to Tiffany, but music people work where there’s work. It earned him a Corvette! All of them had experience like that.

Charlie had worked a lot recording commercials and promo spots. He’d also done some studio work with various singing acts. He was a funny, little, stoner guy in his late-twenties with long hair. At the moment, he was waiting to see what we could create at three in the morning.

Let’s do one of those 1-900 commercials...you know like that one with the chick with the accent, Rob suggested.

I don’t want to get too raunchy, Eric said. He was a fun guy but not quite as crazy as the rest of us.

No, it’ll be something that could go on TV, Rob pressured.

You mean that woman who says, 'Cawl me. I want you to cawl me. You know you want to. It’s one noyn hundred...noyn noyn oh...noyn oh...noyn oh,’ in that Jersey accent? I asked. That woman’s horrible. I wouldn’t pay to hear that voice. It’s terrible!

It was a commercial that played on local TV in the middle of the night. We’d all seen it after our late-night labs, and it was horrible.

It doesn’t have to sound just like her. Just improvise, Rob said.

Let’s give it a shot, Charlie said as he fired up the NEVE.

A NEVE recording console cost more than $100,000 at that time. All told, we were probably playing with a quarter of a million dollars of equipment including microphones that cost five hundred to a thousand dollars, racks of effects equipment, the tape machines, and all of the other gear. We were about to record a 1-900 commercial on it, too! We set everything up in the studio then picked parts.

I want to be the pervert making the call, I volunteered.

I’ll be the woman, Rob yelled.

Ok, I can be the announcer, Jeff said.

Looks like you’re on the console, Eric. Lawrence, you're the assistant engineer, Charlie assigned.

Good. I don’t want my voice on this thing, Eric laughed as he set up the faders. We did our sound checks then let the tape roll. It was all improvised. After the beers we shared before the lab and the other chemical enhancements, this would be quite a session.

The team of Eric, Lawrence, Rob, Jeff, and me had been together since class started in July. We were assigned a lab team at the beginning of class. We’d survived Music Business, Basic Recording Engineering, Music History, Studio Maintenance, Live Music and Lighting, and now we were finally in Advanced Recording Engineering class.

We did a full session from recording to mastering with a band from South Carolina that played a song called LESA 5. That was a blast. I mastered it and used every effect we had. The lead singer told me, Make it go crazy at the end. He had long, platinum-blonde hair and was a riot. I was hitting buttons on every beat through the last chorus while he jumped around banging his head. I had so many reverbs, echoes, and filters on it that it was hard to tell which tracks were the originals. It definitely went crazy. He liked it so much