Daniel Travers considers himself lucky. Before he was called to active duty in Iraq, Travers, a colonel in the Marine Reserve, was able to train a "second in command" to take over his civilian job as a logistics manager at Siemens Westinghouse Power in Orlando, Florida.
But his co-workers are still coping with his absence. "People have come to depend on his strong personality and his leadership abilities," said his boss, Rick A. Merker. "His absence has left a vacuum."
As the armed forces rely heavily on reservists like Travers, 47, to fill important roles in the Middle East and at home, companies are quickly learning that dealing with the absence of important executives goes far beyond completing day-to-day tasks.
Much harder is filling in the gaps in creative, managerial and other skills that make many reservists so valuable in their civilian jobs.
At Ask Jeeves, an Internet search company in Emeryville, California, colleagues of Ronald W. Burkett, an account manager who is also a major in the Army Reserve, are keeping in touch with his main clients, including Hewlett-Packard and the Navy. Burkett, a former Apache helicopter pilot, is on active duty in Houston, training soldiers on computer programs that help them simulate air and ground missions.
But his colleagues at Ask Jeeves said they couldn't replace the skills that help Burkett, who is known as Win, bring in sales.
"Revenue is really important during these economic times," said A. George Battle, chief executive of Ask Jeeves. "Win is one of our best producers, and we're a small company. We have people who can fill in, but that's like saying the Chicago Bulls know everything that Michael Jordan can do."
Reservists are also vital to the military.
More than 218,000 reservists and members of the National Guard have been put on active duty because of the action in Iraq. That is the largest call-up since the Persian Gulf War, when about 265,000 reservists were called to active duty, according to the Defense Department.
Reservists and members of the National Guard -- all 1.22 million of them -- now make up 48 percent of all the armed forces, according Lieutentant Colonel Stephen G. Brozak, a Marine reservist who is the spokesman for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve. The support agency operates a Web site, www.esgr.org, that provides information about the Reserves and the National Guard and civilian employment requirements.
"Reservists have become indispensable to the military as it has downsized -- there's been a 40 percent reduction in military personnel in the past decade," Brozak said. "Some military positions now are filled solely by reservists."
Reservists are even filling senior-level military positions. Last August, for example, James M. Collins Jr., a major general in the Army Reserve, took a three-year leave from his job at Weyerhaeuser to become the deputy commanding general and chief of staff of 1st Corps, stationed at Fort Lewis in the state of Washington.
Collins says the Army has increasingly turned to the Reserve and National Guard to find people with specific skills. Sometimes, as in his case, skills are found in those who have worked both inside and outside the military.
Weyerhaeuser, he said, decided not to replace him as manager of information technology while he was on active duty, instead assigning his duties among other employees.
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