Paint a picture of frustration and it might well look like this: The nation at war, and a United States Marine still on the home front.

        Iwo Jima. Belleau Wood. Inchon. Khe Sanh. The Halls of Montezuma, the shores of Tripoli.

        For 226 years, when Americans have gone to war, the Marines are used to being first in line.

        Which is why on Friday night, in the Marine Reserve Center on Gilbert Avenue in Walnut Hills, an air of anxious energy — like an automobile motor racing with the gear shifted to park — hung over the center as more than 100 Marines in camouflage prepared to pull out for combat exercises.

        In Indiana, not Uzbekistan.

        “If I walked out in the room right now with orders for us to deploy, you would hear a cheer that would shake the building,” said Lt. Col. Eloy Campos, commander of the Communications Company, Headquarters Battalion, 4th Marine Division, the unit based at the Walnut Hills center.

Communications experts

        There are nearly 300 Marine reservists attached to the company, which has units here and in Indianapolis.

        They specialize in combat communications — setting up telephone, radio and data transmission services under combat conditions for the Fourth Division, so no unit on a battlefield is ever out of touch with its command center and other units.

        Friday, the Marines in the company left their civilian jobs early to report to the reserve center, where they packed their gear and headed in buses to Camp Atterbury in southern Indiana for a weekend of field exercises in the mud and brush.

        Traffic was backed up on Gilbert Avenue as the reservists pulled their cars up to the gate, where Marines with automatic rifles searched each car — trunk, glove compartment, floorboards.

        Maj. Markus Hartmann showed up in his civilian clothes, as did most of the reservists. After having his car searched, he pulled inside the compound and greeted a visitor to the post who had just gone through the same search.

        A Marine sergeant on guard duty in the parking lot didn't recognize the major at first and questioned him. When Major Hartmann identified himself, the sergeant snapped to attention, saluting with a crisp “Sir, Major, Sir!”

        “Things are a little tight around here,” Maj. Hartmann said, his camouflage uniform in a garment bag slung over his shoulder. The garment bag was camouflage, too.

        “They have to be.”

        Most of the men in the Communications Company have prior service as active-duty Marines, said Maj. Jerry Miller, a training officer.

        “They are ready when the call comes,” said Maj. Miller. “They want to be part of it.”

        So far, that call has not come. In fact, since President Bush declared a “war on terrorism,” the call has come only for a relative handful of Marines.

        Of the 27,752 National Guard and armed forces reservists called to active duty so far, only 333 have been Marines — individuals plucked from units around the country for their particular skills. Entire Marine Reserve units have yet to be called.

Troops ready to go

        Marines, Maj. Miller said, “are not used to sitting around.”

        “Our people went through the same range of emotions that every other American did when they saw what happened Sept. 11,” Maj. Miller said. “Everyone wants to do something. Marines especially.”

        He said that, after the terrorist attacks, his phone was “ringing off the hook” with calls from reservists asking if they would be called to active duty.

        “They were all charged up,” Maj. Miller said. “Everybody wanted to go. Now. Not later.”

        For Marines, a war against international terrorism has a special meaning because, in recent decades, so many of their fellow Marines have died at the hands of terrorists.

        They remember October 1983, when a Hezbollah terrorist drove a truck with explosives into the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Marines and sailors in the blast.

        They remember, too, Marine Col. William R. “Rich” Huggins, a Kentucky native and graduate of Miami University who was kidnapped and later slain by Hezbollah terrorists.

        “Marines have borne the brunt of terrorist attacks many times,” Col. Campos said.

        “I know for a fact that there are many of these kids in this company who are here for that very reason; they know the history. This is very personal for us.”

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