Frontline Duty Gives Pause to Potential Guardsmen (Hard sell)

[kskiska]

Recruiters Find Slots A Hard Sell in Wartime

Sgt. James O'Ferrell was on a roll, detailing the benefits and opportunities that the military bestows upon its civilian soldiers.

Seven young women and one young man, all about to receive their General Educational Development diplomas, had assembled in a room at the Adult Education Center in Alexandria to hear the pitch from the former Army Ranger and car salesman-turned-recruiter for the Virginia National Guard:

For training one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer, the part-time job comes with a salary, a signing bonus and tuition payments. Enlistees learn to do such neat things as rappelling out of helicopters and rescuing people from floods. And the physical regimen leaves them "buffed."

From a table in the back, Thomasina Ford, 24, raised her hand.

"You don't have to convince me," said the single mother and daughter of a Vietnam veteran. "This is what I want to do. But do we have to go to war? I don't want to go somewhere and fight for stuff I don't know what I'm fighting for. Everything else sounds good."

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8440-2003Aug31.html

[Systematic Chaos]

1. They're getting their GED's?

Then that means (theoretically, at least) that they can read a newspaper. Someone show these poor pigeons the stories about National Guardsmen being kept in Iraq until the 39th of Never.

Benefits, my fat white ass.