Two Ohio Air National Guardsmen from Southwestern Ohio — one a 50-year-old veteran and the other a 19-year-old college student — were as shocked and angered by the terrorist attack of Sept. 11 as any other American.

        The difference, though, is they are in a position to do something about it.

        Bob, a first sergeant, and Crystal, a Miami University student who joined the Ohio Air National guard a year ago, are members of the 121st Air Refueling Wing at Rickenbacker Airport near Columbus. It is the first Ohio National Guard unit to be mobilized in Operation Infinite Justice, the U.S. military response to the terrorism that struck New York and Washington.

        A decision was made Sunday by the 121st to allow some members of the unit to talk to the media, but not to give their last names, said Capt. Denise Varner, public affairs officer.

        “There are security concerns about family and other considerations,” Capt. Varner said.

        Sunday, while the 424 of the 1,400-member refueling wing prepared for orders to deploy, the two Southwestern Ohio guardsmen of different generations spoke in the same language of the mission ahead of them.

        “I felt the same as most Americans when I saw what happened in New York and Washington,” said Crystal, who just began her sophomore year at Miami.

        “I was sad, and angry, and afraid. But you realize very quickly that when you wear this uniform, you have a responsibility and I am ready to do it, whatever it is.”

        Bob, first sergeant of a crew that helps maintain the 121st's KC-135 refueling aircraft, said the order from the Pentagon Saturday to mobilize the 121st “is what we are here for. It's what we train for. We're ready now.”

        The sergeant said many of the members of his crew are much younger than he, too young to have served in any of the unit's other deployments in the Persian Gulf or the Balkans.

        “I don't think many of them necessarily anticipated going to war when they signed up,” Bob said.

        With 24 years of Air National Guard service behind him and six more to go before retirement, the full-time guardsman said he thought his own military career would be “winding down.”

        “But when you are called to go, you go,” Bob said.

        The 121st, which refuels military fighters and bombers in mid-flight, has no specific orders yet on where they will be going or what they will do when they get there.

        Crystal, whose peacetime Guard job is working in the unit personnel office, does not know yet whether she will be going when those orders come.

        She said she joined the Guard a year ago for two reasons: the benefits package Guard members get and for a chance to serve her country.

        “Get 100 percent tuition paid for doing one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer is a pretty good deal,” Crystal said.

        It has been difficult to concentrate on studies, she said, since the attacks, the military alert that followed and, finally, the mobilization of her unit.

        “But now, I just have to concentrate on the job at hand,” she said.

        “You don't do this believing you can never be called to active duty,” she said. “You do this because you are a patriot and because you love your country. I know I do.”

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