CAMP ROBERTS — If Steven Spielberg got the script it would probably be titled something like "Searching for Sergeant Brewster."

Sgt. 1st Class Ricky Brewster is one of those slightly larger than life characters that inhabit the lore of the California National Guard.

Towering above 6 feet, athletic in frame and ease of movement, it's no surprise that he coaches, and plays a little football and some basketball too. Even at a spry and limber 47 years old. Nor is it a surprise that he began his military career 30 years ago in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Of the half-dozen platoon sergeants who lead the 50-soldier platoons of the 1498th Transportation Company — also known as "BAT-C" the "Big Awesome Truck Company," five of the six, like Brewster, are former Marines.

"They say there are no ex-Marines," company 1st Sgt. James Norris drawls in a twang that mixes equal portions of native Tennessee, Bakersfield and Oroville, where he resides when he is not en route to a war zone.

"There are no ex-Marines; there's just the National Guard," Top Norris observes, tongue planted firmly in cheek beneath an elegant silver guard's moustache. "I guess you could call us the Marine Corps retirement home."

So it was with Brewster. Six years in his "beloved Corps," then with a return to civilian life, an undisguised longing for yet another return to the world of soldiering. Add two dozen years of re-enlistments in the National Guard and you have a regulation 30-year man, just like the classic NCO non-commissioned officers described in novels like author James Jones" "From Here to Eternity."

He spent a number of those years as infantry, then amid the dash and elan of the armored cavalry, with frequent trips to the high desert home of Middle East preparations, the National Training Center at Fort Irwin near Barstow.

"I helped open that base," Brewster recalled. "I loved being with "the Cav,''" he said. "When President Bush (senior) came to Los Angeles after the riots, it was the armored cav that provided security for him, and that was a career high moment."

Marine retirement home

One morning in training for Operation Iraqi Freedom, caught between the dew point and dawn's early light in the remote wooded area of Camp Roberts known as "Sherwood Forest," Sgt. Brewster had weathered a tough previous day and a tougher night. As usual for his custom, he had come through and planned to lead his troops into a newer, better day.

During the previous day, Brewster's truck convoy got lost a couple of times, and a company commander began a series of encounters with higher command that ultimately would cause him to leave the 1498th for another assignment.

The training, never easy, was getting harder, and the training NCOs who were putting Brewster and the 1498th through their paces, nearly always relentless, were even more so. Everybody had gotten a chewing out, from nearly everybody who could give a chewing. That was a lot of chewing.

Asked how it was going for him, Brewster smiled with a serenity surprising for the crunch time he was coping with. Troops ran about in the gray morning. Engines fired up. Orders were shouted, and breakfasts were chewed with urgency, washed down with cold coffee and canteen back wash.

"I will be able to do this," he said, describing his platoon's mission for the coming day. "I will be able to do this because I have been doing this leading troops thing so long that there is no way that I cannot do it."

It was not cockiness. Not mere confidence. Brewster embodied a quality of near certainty that whatever would be required of Brewster, and his platoon, that with teamwork and leadership, ultimately, they would all come through. All the troops in Brewster's platoon ultimately did come through.

So much so, that they just got better as the training got harder.

The mission of the 1498th "Big Awesome Truck Company" is to go to Iraq. As the war waged by the troops of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" raged through late March and early April, the National Guard troops trained out in the lush green woods for whatever hazard would lay ahead of them in the wind-blown sand of the Iraqi Desert.

As the Marines and 3rd Infantry and 101st Airborne, riding a wave of fire and steel, took possession of places with names like Karbala and Kirkuk and Najaf and Bagdhad, the second-wave troops of the National Guard trained on their trucks in California.

Some of the troops "wanted to get some," meaning they wanted the experience of blooding in combat. Others wished they could just put the trip aside, wishing, wistfully, to return to the civilian world of mortgages, bill paying and a little TV after work.

Almost all troops of the 1498th volunteered to go to Iraq. Sooner or later, they would go.

So, Saturday, a dozen days into April, and days past the fall of Bagdhad, the troopers of "BAT-C" were still training, and recently declared by their taskmasters at higher headquarters to be "good to go."

On a Saturday when a world watched war live on CNN and other cable outlets, and when the Marines and 3rd Infantry were mopping up "pockets of resistance," the troops of 1498th were out in the hills refreshing their infantry squad tactics and skills. Yet again.

The time for 1498th was coming. Not before the fall of Basra, Karbala and Bagdhad. Not even before the fall of Tikrit, the last-ditch holdout home town of Mr. Moustache himself, the now mysteriously vanished Iraqi dictator, Saddam of the Tikriti clan.

Danger ahead

"These poor sons of guns are going to have the crappiest time there is in a war," said Lt. Col. Richard B. Phillips, overseer of much of the Guard troops" training. "They're gonna have to go in as troops entering an occupation, even if that's not what we're calling it.

"The worst time at the end of World War II was when there were Nazi troops up in the hills who hadn't packed it in because they hadn't gotten the word, or because they just didn't want to give up yet."

Like so many check point bombers, Fedayeen Saddam, or scattered snipers.

So the 1498th was scheduled to keep training, keep practicing, keep drilling until they got their "tail number," the flight number for the "Big Iron Bird" that would carry them over to "The Big Sand Box" to hook up with the 300,000 or so close friends who just won a war and need big trucks to secure the victory and own the main supply routes.

The training only lets up a bit on Sunday for religious services. On Saturday, it was a full day of practicing with the radios, disarming mock "EPWs" (enemy prisoners at war), and never failing to work out in the chemical warfare clothing. Finally, it was time to march home from the hills, the green rolling, deceptively pastoral hills of the 40,000-acre training complex at Camp Roberts.

There was Sgt. Brewster, marching in with the troops decked out in his several dozen pounds worth of flak jacket and "battle rattle," the rattling gear carried by grunts.

The platoons of 50 or so soldiers each gathered for the evening formation. The evening formation belongs to "Top," the unit's first sergeant, in this case, 1st Sgt. Norris.

Evening formation is where the news of the day that concerns the company is delivered by "Top," where questions are taken, and where plans for the next day's events are announced.

Once in a while, real news happens. News like, hey, maybe the war is over.

Or even something a little more odd and strange.

"I have an announcement," Top Norris said. "Sgt. Brewster, post!"

Brewster half-trotted, half-loped to the front-and-center position.

"There's been a mistake," Top Norris said. He chewed a bit at the edges of his moustache. "Really, it's kind of embarrassing." You know, in great Tennessee-Bakersfield-Oroville, twang, the word, "kind," takes on an old English-style elegance. "Kand of embarrassing."

Top Norris, tall or taller than Brewster, two tall men standing, each swaying on their boots just a bit in the cool of the evening.

Top Norris told the troops that Department of the Army had contacted command of 1498th Transportation Company. The truth is, the Department of the Army is far away, up in the clouds and behind the stone precipices of the ringed hallways of the Pentagon. Nobody from Department of the Army cares too much about 1498th Transport, unless, unless there's been "some kind of mistake."

As it happened, Department of the Army "wanted to know what we were doing deploying a retired sergeant first class," Norris said, a bit sheepish about the whole thing.

Top Norris recalled how Sgt. 1st Class Brewster had pondered retirement back in December. Brewster mulled retirement before President George W. Bush sent even more troops to Kuwait near the Iraqi border than he had already sent.

"At the time," Top Norris recalled, "I said, "Heck, Sgt. Brewster, 30 years is a mighty long stretch. If you want to retire, I'll be here to shake your hand, and say "Thank you," and buy you a beer.''"

No beer

Sgt. 1st Class Brewster, of Ridgecrest, would have smiled at that. He is an assistant minister in the Union Baptist Church congregation of the Rev. Douglas Hearns — brother to Bishop Henry Hearns, Vice Mayor of Lancaster, and pastor of the First Missionary Baptist Church of Littlerock.

"Then," Top Norris said, "I remembered y'all don't drink beer. So, heck, I'd buy you a Pepsi."

Norris explained it all to the mildly bemused troops. Brewster put in for his retirement in January, but the unit got activated for federal duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom as of Feb. 11.

The Antelope Valley troops got sent to Camp Roberts on Valentine's Day.

Brewster left his wife, Brenda, like so many other troops left their wives and husbands and families.

"Officially, Sgt. Brewster has been retired since March 16," Top Norris said. "Y'all remember where we were on March 16, don't ya?"

"In the field, "Top!''" the troops chorused back.

"That is right. In the field. So, Sgt. Brewster has accumulated five days leave since March 16, when he was officially retired."

Norris grinned. "Kind of a good thing we didn't go to Iraq last week, ain't it? It would've been something like that Spielberg movie, "Saving Private Ryan.''"

Just so. Something like "Searching for Sergeant Brewster."

"Sgt. Brewster is one of the soldiers who's been with the Guard a long time," Norris said, and there was pride in his tone. "He started as a Marine, and he's been with us through the good, the bad and the ugly. You got anything you want to say to the troops, Sgt. Brewster?"

Brewster did an about-face movement. He thought over his words for a moment.

"There is part of me that wants to stay, and part of me that wants to go. But I guess I have to believe that God has a plan for me."

The sun was setting. The Department of the Army had found Sgt. 1st Class Ricky Brewster, and the Department of the Army had not found Brewster wanting after 30 years honorable service. The Department of the Army sent Sgt. 1st Class Brewster home on the eve of the 1498th deployment to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"Take care of your battle buddy," he told all the soldiers gathered in the gathering dusk.

"And I'll see all of you when you get back."

© 2010 Antelope Valley Press, Palmdale, California (661) 273-2700