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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Enlist or else |
Current rating: 0 |
by Jeffrey J. Mitchell
(No verified email address) |
10 Jul 2002
Modified: 11 Jul 2002 |
Local teens are left with a bitter taste by the military's approach to recruiting
Uncle Sam seems to have sunk to a new depth lately in an effort to recruit young soldiers. This has angered Portland teen-age boys and has made them even more disillusioned about the country's armed forces. |
 Local teens are left with a bitter taste by the military's approach to recruiting
Uncle Sam seems to have sunk to a new depth lately in an effort to recruit young soldiers. This has angered Portland teen-age boys and has made them even more disillusioned about the country's armed forces. |
Lee Woods (left) and Chris Milligan said no to the Army. Photo / Jeffrey J. Mitchell
Some kids say they were verbally abused by recruiters, who called them "fucking bums" and "worthless kids" when they refused to join up. They say recruiters offered them rides from school, work or home to discuss their future plans at recruiting offices
While it's typical for kids nearing high school graduation to get phone calls from the military promising money, great benefits and travel, not every Portland teen is impressed.
Lee Woods, 19, is all too familiar with these shenanigans. After enlisting in the Army and then changing his mind, Woods said he was subjected to intense verbal abuse.
"They told me I would be a fucking bum if I didn't join the Army," the Portland teen said. "After I took their verbal abuse, they sent me out in the January cold with no ride home." Woods said he tried to get out of enlisting over the phone, but was told he'd have to come down to the recruitment office to do so, face to face. A recruiter picked him up at his house, drove him to the South Portland office and demanded a reason for changing his mind.
"They just wouldn't give up. I gave them a reason for not enlisting and explained why I didn't want to be a part of the Army, but that wasn't good enough for them. They wanted to humiliate me," said Woods. This is when he said recruiters told him he was a worthless individual and had no future without the Army.
Other teens have similar stories. Like Mike O'Connor. The 20-year-old Portlander said recruiters called his house relentlessly, even after he had notified them several times that he was not interested in the armed forces. "They were calling three to five times a week," said O'Connor. "I actually had to go down to the office and tell them that I didn't want to enlist, but I think that made things worse." He said recruiters kept annoying him via telephone anyway.
"They're very forceful and insulting if you express no interest," said Chris Milligan, 18, of Portland. "You get to the point where you set up meetings with these people just to get them off the phone."
Brian Houdlette, a 20-year-old Portland resident, said he too received insulting phone calls from recruiters when he failed to show up for his meeting. "They believed I was making the wrong choices with my life," said Houdlette. "I think they were just pissed I didn't show up though."
Officers will often try to sell the military like a used car salesman peddles his iffy wares. "They seemed to talk about the money, jobs and benefits you could get from the Army," said Milligan. "But they never mention what it takes to get all those benefits. You're only getting half the story." The typical phone call involves recruiters listing off numerous student loans, ROTC and financial aid programs but rarely addresses the disadvantages of being in the military.
"I watched a [promotional] movie they sent me," said Milligan. "It had nothing to do with being in the military at all. It looked like it was all fun and games." What the movie failed to show were some of the by-products of war: bombs being dropped on kids, soldiers dying and a whole slew of homeless veterans who were once promised financial incentives.
Another Portland teen, who asked to be anonymous, recalled the same kind of propaganda. "They promised me $500 for eight hours of computer work," he said. "It seemed like something I really wanted to do, but I knew there was something he wasn't telling me, so I was hesitant." The minimum two-year commitment, intense basic training and an uncertain future were not mentioned.
With all the talk about financial incentives, you'd think the U.S. military is more a jobs program than our national defense. www.objector.org, a Web site dedicated to making youths aware of the questionable recruiting strategies used by the military, states that one-third of all homeless people in the United States are veterans. In addition, the site reports that two-thirds of all recruits never get any college funding from the military, while only 15 percent graduate with a four-year degree.
Messages left at local recruiting offices were not returned by CBW's deadline. But the facts kept coming in from the teens.
"I told them I was financially able to go to college and that I didn't need assistance from the military," said Houdlette. "He [the recruiter] persisted that I should join. It was kind of insulting that he didn't think I was capable of making my own decisions."
Houdlette felt like a price was being placed on his future. "They of-fered me up to $30,000 for enlisting," he said. "That's not the typical in-and-out incentive. $30,000 means you'll be there for a long time, so I just looked right through that statement."
"I understand we need an Army," said Woods. "But to humiliate me by calling me a fucking bum and then throwing me out with no ride home is kind of a ridiculous recruiting technique. Don't you think?"
Copyright 2002 Casco Bay Weekly
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a suggestion |
by kayoss
kayoss (nospam) rworld.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
11 Jul 2002
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When contacted by army recruiters back when i was 18, I said something to the recruiter along the lines of, "your ads say 'be all that you can be in the army,' and, well, if the army is all that you can be, then it's probably in the best intrest of humanity that you get blown up on foreign soil and thus have your genes weeded from the gene pool"
i didn't get any more calls from the army after that... |
