MASTER SGT. W. C. POPE Master sergeant Tracie Alfano-Aube

Ever since the morning of September 11, when David Perrault arrives for work at the Department of Facilities Management, he has been greeted with the same question: When are you going?

"I don't have any answers for them," Perrault, a painter and twenty-nine-year employee of the College, says. Like four of his coworkers at Mount Holyoke, Perrault is an Air Force reservist, waiting for the telephone call that will tell him to report for duty in the nation's declared war on terrorism.

Since the horror of that Tuesday morning unfolded, Perrault, Tracie Alfano-Aube, Mike Hurley, Bob Bray, and Jeffrey Wojcik have had their bags packed, waiting only for the word to go. All will be leaving loved ones behind. None yet knows just what the destination will be, or how long their service will be needed. Still, several said, there is comfort in the prospect of being able to put their training to use in a time of need.

"I think we all feel the same," said Alfano-Aube, a senior administrative assistant in Asian studies and Russian and Eurasian studies. "We all want to be there and do our part. I think we're all hoping [to be called], because we want to do something." On September 14, President Bush authorized the Pentagon to call up to 50,000 National Guard members and reservists for up to two years of active duty. So far, about 14,000 have been called.

In uniform, Alfano-Aube is a master sergeant in the 439th Operations Support Squadron at Westover Air Reserve Base, responsible for providing intelligence to air crews. "It's a busy office," she says. "When you see planes flying, that means we've briefed them on whatever mission they're on."
Alfano-Aube had enlisted in the military in 1979, but was out of the service during the war in the Gulf. "I hated not being part of it. I missed it very much and wanted to get back in," she says. And so, she joined the Air Reserve.

How does she feel about the prospect of taking part in a military attack? "I'm not prowar," she explains, "but I don't think these individuals should be able to get away with what happened. No, we don't want to see more lives lost, but we can't let these people come into our country and terrorize us
like this."

Hurley, a painter with facilities management, is a technical sergeant with the 42nd Aerial Port Squadron, taking care of payroll, next-of-kin information, and other paperwork. If and when he is activated, he could find himself at Westover, or in the field, "some place like Turkey, or Saudi Arabia. It's hard to say." He's well aware that his work can be done either in the Westover office he knows so well, or on a laptop computer anywhere in the world.

A thirty-one-year employee of the College, Hurley joined the Air Reserve nearly twenty years ago. He served with the Army in Vietnam, but sees no parallel between that war and the one that looms ahead. The comparison that does come to mind, he says, is "Pearl Harbor, except that this is five times worse." Hurley doesn't see a precedent for the kind of war on terrorism that the United States is entering. "In Desert Storm, we knew why we were there and we knew the task at hand," he says. "This is a totally different kind of warfare."

Wojcik, a public safety officer who also serves as a mechanic and driver with the 104th Tactical Fighter Group at Barnes Air National Guard Base in Westfield, was on duty on campus on September 11 when he got the news on his radio. "I thought it was terrorists from the first," Wojcik says. For Wojcik, who joined the Air Guard after graduating from high school, this would be the first call to active duty.

"This is a whole new ball game—our country has been attacked," says Perrault, a medical technician with the 439th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron.

Perrault, who joined the Air Reserve twenty-two years ago, believes he may have gotten a glimpse of what the new combat will be like from his five months of active duty service in Desert Storm. "Luckily, it was boring," he says. "We didn't have the kind of casualties that were being talked about."

Still, Perrault is aware that the United States may be taking on a foe that will use any weapon at its disposal, including chemical and biological weapons. "Westover has done an excellent job preparing us. Most of us would be confident enough in our equipment and our training to survive in that environment," he says.

"I'm ready to do what I was trained to do," Perrault says. "When the president said to get ready, I knew it was time to make sure all my personal affairs were in order."

Having their bags packed and their affairs in order is about all these reservists can do for now. As Alfano-Aube says, "They have my phone number. So I just wait."