California National Guard

Firefighters on Tuesday continued to battle a fusillade of wildfires plaguing Northern California, including a destructive blaze that has charred homes and threatened tourist haunts along the Big Sur coast. With more than 425,000 acres burned, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the California National Guard to deploy ground forces for the first time in three decades to help weary firefighters battling blazes from Kern County to the Oregon border.

John Hanson, a city building inspector in Northern California, already served one tour in Iraq with his National Guard unit. If called, he said he is prepared to go back: "But I'm not going to lie and say I'm happy about it." Francis Shaw, a Long Beach medical technician, worries about the toll another deployment would take on his family, his civilian job and his 55-year-old body.

The Pentagon has ordered the mobilization of 800 California National Guard soldiers to support President Bush's surge of 20,000 additional troops in Iraq, California Guard officials said Thursday. The announcement came on the same day as a congressionally created panel issued a report concluding that repeated National Guard deployments to Iraq and domestic emergencies are wearing down units to such an extent that they may no longer be able to meet current demands.

In the 15 months since Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Derek West returned from a tour of Iraq, he has closely watched developments there, listening to the news and following Internet reports from fellow soldiers about conditions on the ground. On Sunday, as he prepared to return to the war-torn region with more than 600 members of the National Guard's 1st Battalion, 160th Infantry Regiment, West said he had little doubt that he faced a different, and worsening, situation.

Notice to Westsiders: Disregard the thwack-thwack-thwack of Black Hawk helicopter blades you might be hearing. The West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus is not, repeat not, under attack. The California National Guard is slated to launch a three-day training exercise today titled Operation Vector. Plans call for a Hollywood-style convergence of a simulated natural disaster and faux bio-terror attack designed to test how well Guard teams work with local emergency responders.

Lt. Col. Dirk Levy, commander of a California National Guard battalion that took heavy casualties in Iraq, said he can't get used to civilians slogging through training exercises alongside his uniformed troops. "I keep thinking, 'Who are these people?' " Levy said.

Off duty in Baghdad, Army Sgt. Ronn Cantu operates an antiwar website. When not repairing Black Hawk helicopters for the California National Guard, Jabbar Magruder conducts counterrecruiting sessions with would-be enlistees. Fresh from two tours each in Iraq, decorated former Marines Sean O'Neill and Mike Ergo give antiwar speeches at Northern California high schools.

Riding a surge of public support for the citizen soldiers fighting an unpopular war in Iraq, California lawmakers are scrambling to issue them special license plates, waive car registration fees, offer free parking at state parks, even cut the price of their fishing licenses.

Calling it "unconscionable" that California offers no college tuition help to its National Guard members, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will push to include funding in the next state budget. In the prepared text of a speech he is set to deliver today at the groundbreaking for a veterans home on the VA's West Los Angeles campus, the governor says California must be prepared to assist the 27,000 active-duty soldiers and National Guard members returning from overseas.

At Renaissance fairs, Eric Holke loved playing the part of a hard-bitten mercenary. He would dress up in a breastplate and chain mail and carry a two-handed sword. But with two overseas Army tours under his belt, Holke knew all too well the perils of real war, said his wife, Cassidhe. For him, military service was above all a good career -- one in which he hoped to one day make lieutenant, his wife said.