Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette Joe and Jocelyn Kramer moved up their wedding date after he got word of his latest call-up. Click photo for larger image.

Joe Kramer had just returned Nov. 28 from hunting in Clarion County, where he found no deer but where he had felt comfortable with a rifle briefly cradled in his arms once more.

The Iraq War veteran walked up the front steps of his Stanton Heights home, saw the FedEx package from the U.S. Army, and correctly surmised his rifle-toting was about to become far more frequent.

His civilian life of the past 465 days was a mere interlude, not the start to home and career he had envisioned.

The letter from the Army Human Resources Command instructed him to report for active duty. His mobilization at Fort Benning, Ga., the letter said, will be part of service "not to exceed 0545 days unless extended or terminated by proper authority."

Mr. Kramer, 31-year-old, suit-wearing legislative aide, is about to resume camouflage and battle gear as Sgt. Kramer. On Jan. 14, he will join thousands of Individual Ready Reserves soldiers recalled to active duty since the start of the Iraq-Afghanistan conflict.

Some ready reserve troops are regular Army reservists and National Guardsmen, with recurrent part-time training. Others like Mr. Kramer enlist for active duty, serve four years, receive a discharge, forget the military, but still face waiting out another four years in which they may be recalled at any time.

Most don't expect to be reactivated, Mr. Kramer included, and most aren't. But with the Army struggling to maintain its force of 110,000 soldiers in Iraq and another 30,000 in anti-terrorism campaigns overseas, the service has been tapping into this pool of battle-tested soldiers at a rate of more than 2,000 annually.

It's sometimes known as the "back-door draft" adopted but rarely used following the Vietnam War as a way to replenish the all-volunteer military during critical periods.

In the buildup overseas since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Army sought only voluntary call-ups among a pool of some 100,000 IRR soldiers in 2001 and 2002, said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army personnel spokesman. Involuntary activations of 2,300 troops took place in 2004, 2,500 in 2005, and a similar number this year, he said. The Marine Corps has also used ready reserve activations, but to lesser extent.

While the obligation of returning to war is part of the contract soldiers sign upon enlistment, it's jarring for those who figured they'd left behind drilling, rations, chain-of-command orders and life-threatening perils.

"It kind of knocks you off your heels a bit," Mr. Kramer said in his living room last week, with his wife Jocelyn leaning on his shoulder on their couch. "For me, I always felt after being in the military, it's not a way to raise a family."

A hurry-up wedding
And yet, the Army's formal order spurred the graduate of Shaler Area High School and the University of Pittsburgh to do something he'd delayed: get married. He and Jocelyn, a lawyer, had been high school sweethearts, dated off and on for years and jointly bought the house they have lived in since July 2005. They figured to be married sometime in 2007, maybe somewhere overseas, but with the prospect of Joe returning to a war zone they decided to wed in a hastily arranged ceremony at Heinz Chapel Dec. 14.

"She was like waiting for me to quit putting it off," Mr. Kramer said, and the Army gave him impetus to seal their bond before he starts doing what he did from February 2003 to February 2004, patrolling the streets of Iraqi cities on foot.

He presents an interesting mix of emotions, opinions and background related to this particular war, and it is no coincidence that he was eager to call attention to the U.S. military's need for people like him.

He enlisted out of college, the summer before the Sept. 11 attacks. Once in Iraq, he was proud of his 101st Airborne Division unit's ability to secure most of the cities it patrolled without gun battles.

He received a Bronze Star, however, for actions in a raid of a home in Mosul on Dec. 29, 2003, using a grenade to kill two enemy combatants who had wounded his squad leader. He feels a strong bond with other soldiers, and sympathy for those already required to make multiple tours of duty in Iraq.

But after leaving active duty in August 2005, he joined a group of veterans critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war. He served on the national board of VoteVets.org, a largely Democratic political organization that worked this year to unseat Republicans in Congress with close ties to President Bush. He took a job in September 2005 as an aide to state Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Highland Park, a longtime anti-war activist for whom he previously interned when the senator was a city councilman. (Mr. Kramer's job must be kept open for him by law until his return.)

"After six or seven months in Iraq, I came to feel things were badly mismanaged in the war, and had been poorly handled from the outset," Mr. Kramer said. "I don't buy into the notion that we're fighting over there so we don't have to fight here. ... I don't feel like I'm going there to fight Adolf Hitler. I feel like I'm fighting as part of a mismanaged effort that proliferated a civil war."

The Kramers have joked that Joe's call-up could be retaliation for such public criticism, including the VoteVets activities, but they say they're not such conspiracy theorists that they actually believe it. In fact, Mr. Kramer's willing to go back to Iraq -- not that he has a choice -- if it means another soldier who already had two or three rotations there could be relieved of one more by his reactivation. One of his conclusions from his first tour was the U.S. military had too few troops to sustain its mission properly, whether one agreed with the mission or not.

Army 'overstretched'
Christine Wormuth, a senior fellow for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said use of the individual ready reserve troops "is reflective of the Army's challenge in trying to put together the sheer numbers it needs for Iraq, and also filling the particular skills it needs. In general, the Army hasn't used the IRR in that it is politically pretty unpopular. ... It's just a symptom of the Army being overstretched."

Although there have been no announcements of any increase in individual ready reserve activations ahead, President Bush took note of troop shortages in proposing that more military personnel be added to the 1.4 million already in uniform. The Army may add at least 20,000 soldiers to its current force of 507,000, by whatever means, although the budget for such additions is not yet approved.

Col. Hilferty, the Army spokesman, said the IRR troops are typically used to plug holes in units that are missing a few men or women, and to fill specialties, such as truck driver or military policeman of a particular rank. Such activations also took place during the first war against Iraq, Operation Desert Storm, so it's not shocking that it's necessary now, he said.

"Honestly, I commiserate with this soldier, because we understand there's a hardship involved in this," Col. Hilferty said. "Personally, I wouldn't be excited to get that order if I had left the Army and were active in the civilian community, but clearly the potential for that exists."

If the individual ready reserve soldiers have special personal hardships, they can apply for delays or exemptions from reactivation. If not, they're assessed by the Army to make sure they are still mentally and physically fit months or years after leaving active duty. If they pass those tests, they enter training to revive their military skills, and are typically placed in a unit among comrades they've never met.

Mr. Kramer has some curiosity about how he's involved in all of this. Instead of being a specialist like many individual ready reserve call-ups, he's been a general foot soldier. His paperwork makes it appear he may be assigned to an armored division, although that would require retraining. And he's taking medical records along to be evaluated for a shoulder injury, as an MRI since leaving the service showed him with a partially compressed spine.

He says he'll do what the Army wants, "but I'll probably be a little bit more outspoken than in my first four years. I know how to be borderline insubordinate, about the best way to do things, without crossing a line with commanding officers."

But first comes a honeymoon trip next week to Grand Cayman in the Caribbean. It may be the last taste he has of civilian, and married, life for some time.