breakout
Military-minded teens shun war questions
Before a blackboard decorated with yard-high money signs, recruiter Marcel Chasse made his pitch: Join us and make money.
That’s what high-schoolers care about, he learned, rather than whether they would be sent to war.
It’s an argument the sergeant first class has refined during years as a recruiter for the Maine Army National Guard. And as Maine guardsmen and women continue to serve in Iraq, the money remains his selling point.
“For benefits, nobody comes close to us in all the branches,” Chasse recently told a group of local high school sophomores, gathered for a career day event at Central Maine Community College.
For 30 minutes, he spoke about the Guard – outlining how students could join in their junior year as long as they’re 17 and both parents agree. And he answered questions, from how heavy is too heavy to pass the physical to whether the military would pay for eye surgery.
“Ask anything you want,” he told the kids, ages 14 and 15, who wanted to learn more about the military.
Among the dozen or so questions, there were none about the war
“They’re so young, they don’t ask,” said Chasse, a 57-year-old veteran of Vietnam.
It’s an issue that scares Lee Price, a guidance counselor at Lisbon High School. And it’s not just the younger teens.
For 17 years, she has helped students find their way to the right school or into the right branch of the military. Since U.S. soldiers began fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, she has seen few changes. Most years, about a half dozen students seriously consider the military.
“I’m not sure they have any concept of what it means to be in a war,” Price said.
Yet, some of her former students have learned.
Last year, 2002 Lisbon graduate Beau Beaulieu was killed in Iraq. There have been other losses, too. The road that leads past the school is named after Tom Field, a Lisbon graduate who was killed in Somalia in 1993.
“For adults, there’s a huge difference between peacetime and war,” Price said. “It’s not true for teenagers.”
Money and training are the driving forces, she said.
For the serious ones, the topic of Iraq comes up eventually.
Chasse wants to meet with all their parents. And each couple wants to know about the war.
“The parents come right out and ask,” Chasse said. “They’re not shy.”
Neither is Chasse. He has attended the funerals of Maine soldiers killed in Iraq. And he has friends there now.
If the war continues for three or four more years, he knows some of these high schoolers could be in Iraq.
At 17, they can join and even go to boot camp prior to their senior year.
They can’t go to war until they’ve finished school, though.
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