Why did I join the Army?

In answer to the usual question...

I was born on September 10^th, 1982, almost 5 weeks early. 21 inches long, extremely skinny, and afflicted with a bad case of jaundice, my unfortunate appearance was that of an underfed Purdue oven roaster. (This resemblance to a plucked chicken would continue until high school, when I discovered snickers bars.) I was my parents’ first child, which might explain my mother’s reaction to the initial symptom of impending motherhood. When she went to the doctor and he delicately suggested she might be in the family way, she answered, “Oh no doctor, you don’t understand. I’m dying.” My father was ecstatic and my mother less than enthused when it became apparent that rather than leukemia she had caught herself a parasite – the 18 year version. My grandmother took my parents out to lunch in DC when, three blood tests and a hissy fit later, my mother had finally accepted the news. My mother remember, "Your grandmother and father drank champagne and discussed name possibilities. I sulked and drank a Sam Adams." This must be why to this day I can't stand the taste of that particular brew. I must associate it with subconscious rejection in the womb.

My parents met at the University of South Carolina, where my father was studying pharmacy (having picked up the major in preparation to marry a girl who later dumped him – kudos to Dad for sticking with the hand he was dealt) and my mother majored in journalism. My father is 6’4”, large framed and dark, my mother is petite and pale. I take after him in build and my mother in coloring, with my Scottish granny's red hair and temper. Luckily, my ancestors are all attractive people and the combination of their features in me is not an unpleasant one. Ugly children tend to screw up your holiday pictures, so my parents really won the genetics lottery with all three of their offspring. I got my father’s height, which has always been an asset in sports. Growing up I was extremely active, which has served me well especially with the chocolate addiction I've been feeding since discovering cake at my first birthday. Unfortunately, I also inherited my father's lack of coordination, which has left me at a disadvantage for any activity involving a ball, field or referee. Any sport ending with "ball" was a disaster waiting to happen. I had the nickname "Bam-Bam" on my peewee soccer team, not for my lead foot, but for my unerring knack for kicking the ball into my teammates' unprotected genitals. When I was nine, we moved to a new neighborhood where the local pool had a thriving swim club, and I discovered my talent for sports ending with "Ing". It's very difficult to injure your teammates (accidentally) in sports ending with "Ing". I swam competitively for seven years, year-round, until I got to high school and discovered where my true talents lay: on the river. My boat won Nationals my Junior year. Not that I'm bragging, or anything, it just has bearing on later decisions.

I took it for granted that I would row in college, because after winning Nationals one begins to think one's shit does not stink. 18 year olds are brilliant at taking things for granted. So are 22 year olds, come to think of it. Anyway, there's something magical about visiting college campuses as a recruit. It's like being a celebrity, even when your sport is as relatively unknown as rowing. When I was offered a scholarship from Duke University’s crew team, it was like getting an offer from the pros. All of my friends were so jealous that if envy were acid all that'd be left of me is teeth. "Duke?" They would squeal. "Oh my god, you could date a basketball player!" Flattered, excited, and thoroughly convinced of my own awesomeness, I didn’t stop to think about what I was getting myself into. Rowing in college was a completely different animal than in high school. I'm a healthy 5 feet 8 inches tall, which in the world of high school rowing is enormous. When I got to college, for the first time in my life I was shorter than the majority of the people on the team. The coach focused on recruiting girls who stood at 5’10” or better, so it became very hard for me to remain competitive. I stuck it out for two seasons, even trying "lightweight" rowing when it became apparent that I couldn't hack it with the bigger girls. Lightweights in college must weigh less than 135 pounds during the fall season and 130 pounds during the spring season: on my frame, this made me look like an extremely muscular heroin addict.

After my sophomore year, with my health and my grades suffering, I realized that I had stopped enjoying the sport at all. At first, quitting the team was not an option because of my scholarship. I needed to find a way to finance my education without the NCAA money, or I would be forced to transfer to a Virginia school at which I could pay in-state tuition. I didn't want to transfer. I loved Duke. I was 19, I had a tight-knit group of friends affectionately known as the Dawg Corps (despite the name they were really quite attractive), and I was active in my sorority. I was dating a KA, for God's sake. I was happy where I was.

It was at this point that I received an email from the recruiter at the Duke Army ROTC department, offering full scholarship opportunities for female athletes. This seemed like the answer to my prayers. In hindsight, it was a little creepy that just as my problems were started to become complicated, this email appeared out of the blue. Had they been tapping my phones? Invasions of privacy aside, I met with the cadre to discuss my options. I didn't know anything about ROTC, other than that occasionally they had to wear uniforms to class. LTC Ernest Sherrill, the head professor of military science (PMS) of the program, and the man I would soon realize was the coolest NCO alive, SFC James Cook, explained it to me.

For those of you who don't know, the Army is broken up into three broad classes of soldiers: enlisted, non-commissioned officers, and commissioned officers. Enlisted soldiers are the rank of specialist or below and perform the majority of the technical jobs in the army. If you've ever seen a recruiting video, all the bad-ass scenes of the soldiers decked out in camouflage rising out of the water ready to engage and destroy the enemy…these are probably enlisted soldiers. Enlisted soldiers will, if they don't do something stupid enough to get themselves kicked out, eventually become non-commissioned officers. NCOs are the backbone of the Army, responsible for day-to-day running of a unit and individual training of soldiers. Officers are made one of three ways: either they graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, applied as an NCO or civilian to the Officer Candidate School, or they graduated from an ROTC program. There's a rivalry between all of these different officer groups. West Pointers are the golden children of the Army, get preferential treatment for duty assignments and school slots, and are often referred to as "ring knockers" for their tendency to favor other Pointers over non-Pointer peers. Pointers tend to be lifers, and are the most institutionalized members of the officer world. OCS graduates are the smallest pool of officers in the Army. They usually have the most interesting backgrounds, as they often came from either the enlisted side of the house or from civilian jobs. They also spent their entire tenure at OCS getting the shit kicked out of them, so they sneer at Pointers and ROTC graduates for getting an easy ride to a big paycheck. OCS graduates tend to be early retirees, as they often are halfway to the 20-year mark before they switch over to the officer side of the house. ROTC is the easiest route of the three, and graduates of ROTC programs are often looked down on because they so often turn out to be worthless. ROTC graduates tend to be the "four-and-out-the-door" crowd. We make up the largest group of officers in the Army. Draw whatever conclusion you wish from that. Most of the enlisted soldiers already have.

The ROTC program is relatively simple. It's an extra class you take in addition to your major requirements in college. It teaches its students about the Army through leadership classes, weekend overnights in the woods, and a three-day field exercise once a semester. The cadet rank structure mirrors the Army's; freshman year you're a private, so you can pretty much be a huge moron and you will be forgiven as long as you maintain a suitable grade point average and can pass the PT test; sophomore year you're a specialist, given slightly more responsibility; you're an NCO your junior year, the watershed year in the ROTC program, the year that you're ranked against all other cadets nationally so if you suck it's really going to screw with your career track; senior year you're an officer and thus do exactly what officers are supposed to do: you plan training and supervise. You also make coffee. This is good preparation for staff time. After graduation, you owe the Army four years of active duty plus four years in the individual ready reserve (IRR). IRR used to be a pretty sweet deal: you'd sit on your butt with chances being slim to none that the Army would call you back into service. Ever since the invasion of Iraq, though, IRR soldiers have been called up left and right to fill gaps in personnel strength. I'm sure a lot of newly minted ROTC cadets are wishing they'd read the fine print a little more closely right about now.

I liked what I heard about the ROTC program so I signed on the dotted line. My friends and family were a little baffled, and less than thrilled. Sarah, one of my best friends said, "Honey, you can't be a soldier. You wear Victoria's Secret underwear. There's got to be a regulation against that." My mom sobbed, in one of her best foot-in-mouth moments, "I raised you to be a scholar, not a soldier!" to which my Dad's best friend, a retired Army Ranger retorted, "I consider myself to be both." Pink underpants and scholarly ambitions aside, I saw no disconnect between my career path and my personality. Surely the two could mesh; there had to be a place for bikini waxes and sparkly toenail polish in between the battle dress uniforms and drab color schemes…didn't there?

Being in ROTC was an interesting experience at Duke, which is an extremely small, extremely liberal university. My sophomore year, just after the 9-11 attacks, some anonymous wit posted flyers all over campus with pictures of the burning Twin Towers and the caption: "join ROTC and you'll get firepower just like this!" The campus buses had "ROTC out of Duke!" graffiti. We had to wear our uniforms once a week, and professors could get a little hostile if they were ideologically opposed to the military with such an obvious statement of support paraded through their classrooms. You try wearing BDUs to a class entitled, "The Culture of Protest in the 1960s" or "Gender Identity and Alternative Lifestyles." I am not making this up; I took a class on religion in American life my junior year and had the professor ask me point-blank why the military hated gay people. For the most part, I never had much of a problem with wearing the uniform once a week, except that the boots are hell on a pedicure. My sorority sisters used to love to borrow my camouflage pants for Halloween costumes or Greek Week dance routines. My practice of loaning out bits of my uniforms to the girls for these occasions used to piss off some of the boys in the program who thought it was disrespectful to the military to see scantily dressed Chi Omegas in camouflage pants with "Major Hooch!" or "Private Parts!" nametags running around the local bar scene.

I always just thought it was funny. Made for some great pictures, anyway.