1,000 IRR members picked to deploy to Iraq

[Vulture6]

1,000 IRR members picked to deploy to Iraq

By Kimberly Johnson - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday May 16, 2007 12:17:33 EDT

About 1,000 Individual Ready Reservists will soon be issued orders to deploy to Iraq following a recent screening in Kansas City, Mo., according to a top Reserve official.

The new combat roster is about half of the 1,800 IRR members involuntarily activated in March. Those called up were sent letters from Marine Corps Mobilization Command instructing them to report to one of 10 two-day screening sessions held at their Missouri headquarters in April.

“The majority of nondeployable decisions were for medical reasons, most of an orthopedic nature,” said Brig. Gen. Darrell Moore, head of MobCom.

There were other reasons. Some of those called up were in seminary, and some had joined the Selected Marine Corps Reserve, Moore said. “There were 22 Marines who were pregnant.”

But about 100 Marines didn’t respond to the call-up, he added.

“I’m actually pretty pleased with that number,” Moore said. “A 5 percent noncommunication is pretty good. That’s not to say we’re not continuing to work that 5 percent. Obviously, I would have liked for it to have been zero. Given how mobile society is today, that’s better than I had anticipated.”

Moore said he was impressed with the lengths some Marines went to in order to make it to the screening sessions, some of which coincided with bad weather on the East Coast.

“We had one youngster, when his flight was canceled, he got on a Greyhound bus in New York City and rode to Kansas City,” Moore said.

Those selected for deployment were mostly corporals and sergeants who had already served four years on active duty and had been in the IRR for at least a year. Moore estimated that about half of them had already deployed to Iraq.

They are scheduled to report to Camp Pendleton, Calif., for duty in October and will likely deploy to Iraq at the beginning of next year, he said.

[Panzerman]

Wonder what kind of MOS's they're pulling.

[Vulture6]

This was the target back in March when they started screening. I'm sure that the numbers have changed some, but they ought to be pretty close:

361 aviation mechanics, 225 for logistics support, 223 for combat arms, 178 for motor transport, 97 for communication, 95 for intelligence and 21 for military police