Saturday, September 6th, 2008

Students to soldiers

Facing possible deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan after graduation, 81 University students prepare for life as Army officers.

By Erin Sommer

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

Virgil Barnard is hunched over a small notepad near fallen branches in a wooded area when he hears the first shot. His mind is racing. He has minutes to communicate orders to his 10-man squad. Barnard and half of his men will leave their cover in the woods and run across an open area to gather intelligence for the commander back at base. But now the gunfire. He has to change his plans.

“Bound back 300 meters!” Barnard yells to squad members. They hit the ground and crawl away from the blasts. After he establishes that the group is safe, he tells the squad to reorganize and continue its mission.

Half the squad ­— the bravo team — defends its position and the other half — the alpha team — follows Barnard across the open area. One cadet screams that he’s been hit.

Barnard calls for help, but medics reply that Barnard must secure the area before help can come.

The scene is an Army ROTC training exercise, where the guns are filled with blanks and the injuries are pretend. But the future for these University students is real. They’ve made commitments to the Army, and after they graduate and are commissioned as officers, they will likely head to Iraq or Afghanistan.

That reality is especially daunting given the location of their training — Fort Riley. The same week in April of these simulated combat maneuvers, the Army reported that a soldier from the base was killed in Iraq, bringing the total number of fatalities from Fort Riley to 148.

Despite the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and the likelihood of serving there or in Afghanistan, the KU Army ROTC is growing — many recruits are enrolling to take advantage of increased funding for scholarships, serve their country and follow family traditions. The future officers, who are taught by faculty members who have all served in Iraq, accept service in hostile zones as a part of their choice to enroll and say their ROTC training should help them survive.

‘THE BIG ELEPHANT IN THE CLOSET’

Despite the probability of real combat, Army ROTC enrollment has actually gone up, according to Major Ted Culbertson, recruiting operations officer for the program. He said that during the past two years, the number of cadets in the program has increased by almost 20. Currently, 81 cadets participate at the University, including 19 who come from other area schools that don’t have Army ROTC programs, such as Washburn University in Topeka and Mid-America Nazarene University in Olathe.

Colonel John Basso, battalion commander for KU Army ROTC, said he expected enrollment to be about 100 in the fall.

Culbertson and Basso said a recent increase in scholarship money, driven by a current need for Army officers, had spurred recruiting.

“The Army is forecasting out and putting more scholarships out there,” Culbertson said. “With that means, we can recruit a lot more.”

Basso said the need for more Army officers and the increase in money for scholarships has everything to do with the war in Iraq.

“If we weren’t in a war in Iraq, we’d all be saying that our Army is plenty large,” Basso said.

Basso said the Army was recently told that it needed to increase to 547,000 soldiers, up from 482,000 soldiers a few years ago. He said that, to date, about half of that increase had already happened.

“It’s sort of a double whammy of being in the middle of an unpopular war and having to bring more people in,” he said.

Of the 81 cadets enrolled in the program, 33 receive federal scholarships, which includes full tuition, $1,200 toward books, and a stipend of $300 to $500 per month, depending on the cadet’s rank. An additional four cadets receive Kansas Board of Regents Scholarships, which pay up to 70 percent of tuition. To receive these scholarships, cadets must have a 2.5 cumulative GPA, have passing scores on physical fitness exams and be medically qualified. After they graduate and the Army commissions them as officers, the scholarships require an eight-year commitment — eight years of active duty or four years in active duty and four years in the National Guard or Army Reserve. Culbertson said several cadets also received scholarship money from involvement in the Army Reserve and National Guard. Basso said every cadet had the opportunity to receive a scholarship.

Paying for college was one of the reasons John Meier, a Leavenworth senior who will be commissioned this July, chose ROTC.

Meier, who said he turned down an opportunity to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to come to the University for a regular college experience, has a father who is retired from the Army. Meier said he knew from his childhood that the military always takes care of its own.

“I knew in high school that I really wanted to be in the Army,” Meier said. “A huge part of it was paying for college.”

Even with monetary benefits, Culbertson said recruiting during wartime has challenges, especially when talking with the worried parents of potential cadets.

“That’s the big elephant in the closet,” Culbertson said. “I tell them I don’t know what we’re going to be doing in four years.”

‘THE ONLY LIFE I KNOW’

Tyler Abel didn’t have to persuade a worried father to allow him to join Army ROTC. Service in the Army and involvement in the KU Army ROTC is a family tradition.

Tyler was born two weeks after his father, Wade Abel, was commissioned as an Army officer. As an Army brat, Tyler struggles to name a hometown, but identifies Billings, Mont., as home because it’s where his grandparents live.

Tyler also lived in Georgia, Germany, Alaska, Louisiana, New York and Oklahoma, before the Abel family moved to Kansas in 2004.

Tyler will graduate in December from Washburn University, but he participates in the KU Army ROTC program, where his father is an instructor and the battalion executive officer.

His decision to follow in his father’s bootsteps wasn’t immediate. He spent a semester on the Washburn campus, unsure of what he wanted to do, before a routine trip to Fort Leavenworth with his mother to renew his Army ID card made him feel like the Army culture was right for him.

“I realized this is where I needed to be,” Tyler said. “Army life is the only life I know. It just feels right to me to do it.”

Wade Abel said the transition from having a father-son relationship to having an officer-subordinate relationship wasn’t difficult.

“He just did it,” Wade Abel said. “When he’s here, it’s ‘sir’ or ‘Major Abel.’”

Not Dad.

Tyler, who lives with his parents in Lawrence, said that when he and his father were at home, they sometimes discussed ROTC, but they usually didn’t talk about his ROTC classes.

Wade Abel said he wanted to be sure not to interfere with other faculty members who taught his son.

Basso, who teaches the senior-level military science course that Tyler is in, said it was common for cadets to come from military families, and the father-son relationship between the Abels wasn’t an issue at school.

“It’s actually a lot of fun,” Basso said. “My hunch is that Major Abel is tougher on Tyler.”

Wade Abel said that having his son in the military during wartime would be a different experience from being in the military himself.

“As a parent, you’re always going to be worried,” he said. “You always know in the back of your head that when you sign up, odds are you’re going.”

‘everyone thinks they’re superman’

Some cadets have already gone. One-third of the current Army ROTC cadets already serve in the National Guard or Reserves, Basso said. As part of a Guard or Reserve unit, these cadets could be asked to deploy at any time, but as full-time students and officers-in-training, they can choose to defer deployment to continue school.

When Specialist Virgil Barnard learned his National Guard unit would deploy to Iraq, he knew he wanted to go even though he could get out of it.

Barnard, Topeka senior, is in an infantry unit of the National Guard — based in Lawrence — and will be commissioned as an officer in July.

He served overseas for 18 months, 13 of which were spent in Iraq, but one day in particular stands out for him — May 20, 2006.

Barnard and 18 other U.S. soldiers exchanged heavy gunfire with insurgents for 33 minutes.

Barnard said it was the largest firefight he participated in. He and his fellow soldiers shot off 1,800 rounds, and Barnard, team leader and sawgunner that day, personally fired 200. Barnard said that nobody in his platoon was hurt, but that afterwards, they had to walk through fields looking for opposition forces who died in the firefight.

He said that, on this day, they didn’t find any.

Barnard said family history in the military was one reason he enlisted, but he ended one family tradition when he came back alive from Iraq.

“I was the first person from my family ever to come back from war,” he said.

His paternal grandmother’s brother and his maternal grandfather’s brother were members of the 101st Airborne Division and died on D-Day in France during World War II.

Barnard said he didn’t give much thought to the possibility of dying when he was in Iraq.

“I was in an infantry unit, and we all joke around about it, but everyone thinks they’re Superman,” Barnard said.

Barnard said being shot at in Iraq made him realize the value of the training he did in the Army. He said that leading his squad in the ROTC training at Fort Riley provided good practice giving orders and making life-saving decisions.

“When you get to the real situation, you start to realize that there was a reason for everything you were doing and it wasn’t as stupid as it seemed at the time,” Barnard said. “ROTC doesn’t train people to be in the Army. They’re not going to teach you to clear a room in a building or anything like that. What ROTC does is it makes you make decisions, stand by your decisions and train to be a leader.”

Barnard, 25, will graduate from Washburn in May with a 4.0 GPA and is one of four candidates for the Sibberson award, a large monetary gift given to the top student in Washburn’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

It’s a feat for anyone, but Barnard in particular has reason to be proud. He graduated from high school with a cumulative GPA of 2.25.

“I was an idiot in high school,” Barnard said.

Barnard said that the structure and discipline he had received from his involvement in the military made him grow up and set him up for success in college. He said he knew he would spend his whole career in the military and hoped to earn a graduate degree along the way.

He also knows his future will involve another deployment to Iraq.

‘UNIMAGINABLE UNTIL YOU SEE IT UP CLOSE’

Once cadets graduate, they can no longer defer deployment.

Nicholas Potter, who graduated from the KU ROTC program in May 2006 and was commissioned the day after graduation, just returned from serving six months in Iraq.

He enrolled as a freshman in 2002, before the United States entered Iraq, but Potter, now a First Lieutenant in the Armor Branch, said he knew going to war was a possibility the whole way through his ROTC experience.

That possibility came to fruition in September 2007 when he was sent to Iraq. Because he served on a base, Potter said he experienced little violence, but the experience impacted him.

“Going out and seeing the absolute poverty that the people live with every day made one of the biggest impressions on me while I was there,” Potter said. “They live such an impoverished existence that is unimaginable until you see it up close.”

He said his day-to-day routine was the same each day in Iraq and he missed the variety of life experiences in the United States.

“There was a feeling of being detached from the things happening back home, by missing birthdays, holidays, New Year’s and other events,” Potter said.

Potter said the ROTC program was the foundation for all his Army training, and being in Iraq allowed him to grow.

“Professionally it was a way to put all my training into practice, and I continued to learn from the others over there who’d been in the country longer than me,” he said.

He said he valued the unique experiences he had in college because of his involvement in the ROTC.

“How many students can say that over the weekend they went to Fort Leavenworth and qualified with an M-16 and caught a ride back to Lawrence on a Blackhawk helicopter?” Potter said. “My Freshman ROTC class started with 20 to 30 cadets and by senior year, there were only six of us who stuck it out all four years.”

‘I NEVER GO INTO DETAILS’

Cadets getting ready to be commissioned said they valued learning from those who had been in a war zone.

Virgil Barnard, who returned to KU Army ROTC after a deployment to Iraq, said his military science professor, Colonel Basso, called on him in class to share his Iraq experiences, and he said cadets sometimes approached him with questions.

“I just tell them what my basic job was,” Barnard said. “I never go into details. I guess you just don’t want to think about it.”

The cadets can also ask questions of the instructors, all of whom have been to Iraq and some of them, such as Basso, more than once.

Basso said he recounted his personal Iraq experiences in class when it could help illustrate a point, and parts of the curriculum included discussion of the Army’s current situation. He said the cultures of countries where soldiers may serve was especially emphasized.

Basso also said classes were meant to prepare cadets for leadership in all potential situations.

“What we’re trying to avoid is that we become so focused on Iraq and Afghanistan that we lose other cultures,” Basso said.

Basso, who acknowledged the general unpopularity of the Iraq war in the United States, said he and the cadets hadn’t heard negative comments on campus from being associated with the Army.

“What we’re fighting for, I’ve never seen anyone be disrespectful against,” Basso said. “It’s more interesting to be in a place with diverse opinions.”

Basso said ROTC teaching jobs were coveted in the military because officers enjoyed interacting with future soldiers, and because working on campus provides a break from the rigor of the typical military lifestyle.

‘EVERYONE IS A LITTLE BIT SCARED’

The cadets’ feelings about deploying to a war zone are mixed — some express excitement, some nervousness, and some a combination of emotions. They all say that it will be a learning experience and they accept it as a result of their roles as soldiers.

“A deployment is in everyone’s future,” said Jessica Adkison, a St. Louis senior who will be commissioned May 19. “It’s certainly something you think about.”

Dan Flynn, a St. Louis senior who will be commissioned with Adkison, said, “If it’s not Iraq, it’s Afghanistan. I don’t worry about what I can’t control. I’ll go over there and do my very best and let what’s going to happen, happen.”

John Adam Keuhn, Leavenworth senior, said that the opportunity to serve in Iraq was one of the main reasons he joined the Army ROTC.

“I really want to get deployed,” Keuhn said.

John Meier, who will be commissioned in July, said that going to Iraq would be an opportunity to learn in a hands-on environment.

“Everyone is a little bit scared to be in a combat situation,” Meier said. “The thing that makes me the most nervous is being in a situation where my decisions affect peoples’ lives.”

Basso, who said 49 soldiers in his brigade were killed during his second tour in Iraq, said part of the leadership training of ROTC involved learning how to handle death when serving.

“You really have to think hard about what you do to keep your platoon going,” Basso said.

Basso said that KU Army ROTC tracked its graduates carefully, and he said knew of no ROTC graduates who had died in either of the current conflicts.

The cadets have more training in front of them. After graduation and being commissioned, they go to Basic Officer Leader Courses, including tactical training and training specific to the branch where they will be assigned.

After that, the future for these 81 cadets, and the Army, is uncertain. As presidents and policies in Iraq and Afghanistan change and are debated, the lives of these soon-to-be soldiers will change, too.

The cadets said their ROTC leadership experience would be invaluable wherever their military careers take them.

“It’s gotten me as far as it can get me — to go to the first unit,” Kuehn said.

— Edited by Tara Smith and Jyl Unruh

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