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| U.S. Military Largely
Comprised Of Rural Americans |
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| October 12 9:20:00
AM EST |
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| U.S. Military families
cheer as US President George W. Bush enters to
make a speech at the Pease Air National Guard
Base. (Agence France-Presse AFP International
Telephoto
Service) | COAHOMA,
Texas _ As a topic for his senior English paper
at Coahoma High School, Chad Metcalf chose the
military. Midway through his work _ between the
rigors of training and military pay_ he wrote a
sentence true beyond his imagination.
"The first step to enlisting," Metcalf
wrote, '`is making the decision that will change
your life forever.''
Chad Bales Metcalf made his decision and
took that step on March 18, 2002, the day he
entered boot camp. One year later, Marine Pfc.
Chad Metcalf crossed the Iraqi border and on
April 3 he died in an accident as his unit sped
across the desert.
Inside the front door of the Metcalf
house on the outskirts of tiny Coahoma, his mom,
Ginger, and his stepfather, John Wayne, have
constructed a memorial to their son. The walls
are layered with letters, maps and a case
containing Chad's medals, a tiny vial of Iraqi
sand and three rocks John Wayne said came from
the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar.
Outside is Howard County, Texas. The
fields are flat and planted in cotton. A few
well pumps go about their rhythmic work. The
buildings in Coahoma are empty mostly, if they
aren't burned hollow, except for the Dairy
Queen, the Town and Country quick stop and an
auto parts store.
Howard County is poorer than most. Its
young people are leaving, although Hispanic
immigrants are replacing them. It is small. Its
people have low incomes. It has relatively few
people with college degrees. It is economically
depressed.
Disproportionately, the young men dying
in Iraq come from places just like this.
Compared to the nation's population, those who
have died are disproportionately from smaller
counties. They are disproportionately from
counties with lower per capita income. They are
disproportionately from places with low levels
of college education.
A statistical analysis of the more than
300 U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq by Austin
American-Statesman consultant Robert Cushing
shows that this may be America's war, but it is
being fought by only a part of America.
The soldiers who died aren't numbers, but
numbers tell some of their story. Those who died
in Iraq were 39 percent more likely than the
nation as a whole to live in counties with fewer
than 100,000 people. They were 16 percent more
likely than the nation as a whole to live in a
county with lower than average levels of college
education and 16 percent more likely to live in
counties with below average incomes.
Those soldiers who came from the nation's
large cities were disproportionately black or
Hispanic. And a small proportion of those who
died come from the nation's technology hubs, the
score of urban areas that are creating the
world's newest inventions and companies _ cities
like San Jose, Seattle, Austin and Dallas. Those
who have died largely grew up in old economy
towns or rural regions, places with low levels
of technology and little innovation.
Was this same divide evident in the
Vietnam War? "I don't think so," said Steve
Maxner, associate director of the Vietnam Center
at Texas Tech University. "During the war in
Southeast Asia, you had the draft."
More than anything, however, those who
died in today's all-volunteer military came from
small-town America. Their names, lives and
hometowns roll through the news, and places long
forgotten are known again, if only for a day.
Army Spc. James M. Kiehl of Comfort,
Texas, population 1,593, left his wife a stuffed
bear for their unborn child. Kiehl was baptized
in Qatar before he moved into Iraq, where he was
killed in an ambush near Nasiriyah.
Army Sgt. Floyd G. Knighten, Jr., 55,
lived in Olla, La., population 1,417. He was
born in Trout, La., and joined the Navy after
graduating from Sicily Island High School in
1969. He died of heat-related illness. Knighten
served in the same company as his son, Floyd G.
Knighten III.
Sgt. Jacob Butler, 24, was reared in
Wellsville, Kan., population 1,600, and was
killed by a rocket-propelled grenade in
Assamawah. His father, Jim, said the Butler
family ``believed in things that were right.''
This is a conflict fought by kids like
Chad Metcalf, who grew up surrounded by flat
fields of cotton, who played football and showed
rabbits, pigs and steers, who found college too
expensive and running the roads of Howard County
with high school buddies too much of a dead end.
This is Coahoma's war.
More out of life
The senior class at Coahoma High School
averages only 60 members. But for the past two
years, 10 percent of the school's senior class
has enlisted in the military, according to
school guidance counselor Cheryl Green. Already
this year, five students from the Class of 2004
have said they are joining the Marines and two
are aimed toward the Navy.
Coahoma High School keeps a list of
former students who are on active duty with the
military. (See
www.coahoma.esc18.net/coahoma_military_list.htm.)
There are now 48 young men and women on that
list. The town has just over 900 residents.
In testimony before Congress in 2000,
Major General Evan Gaddis, commander of the
Army's recruiters, said he hoped to ``reconnect
with America by breaking up large
mega-recruiting stations in urban locations and
migrating them to suburban and rural America.''
But why? Why do the towns along I-20 west of
Fort Worth, in rural America, send so many of
their young men and women to the nation's
military? And what does it mean for a country
when one part of its society sends its children
to the military and another doesn't?
Karen Henry has two boys in Iraq. She
spreads photos on the Formica table of the
Coahoma Dairy Queen. Here is Russell, in
Afghanistan, yukking it up with comedian Robin
Williams. And here _ she flips the pages of a
small album _ here is Steven standing in front
of a mural of Saddam Hussein.
Karen graduated from Coahoma High school
nearly 30 years ago. She works at an oilfield
service company.
``There wasn't anything here.'' She was
explaining why two of her three boys enlisted.
(The third, Murphy, had asthma; otherwise he
might be in Iraq, too.) Her kids would hang out
in front of the Town and Country convenience
store until they ``got run off.'' They were
``bored and they knew there was no place to get
a job and that college was too expensive.''
And then, she says, ``90 percent of them
start drinking and partying.''
The local police came to a party Steven
was attending. He raced out a back door. ``He
was walking back to his cousin's house and he
stayed up all night,'' Karen Henry recalled.
``And that was it. He wanted more out of life.''
Steven went down I-20 to the recruiting
station in Midland and enlisted.
Donna Newton sat in the classroom where
she runs the detention hall. Her boy Bobby is in
Iraq, working as a senior mechanical engineer
out of Camp Anaconda. After high school, Bobby
``got into drinking and all that fun stuff,''
Newton said.
Bobby had ``gotten into trouble'' when
his family ``finally woke up and said it's
time,'' she recalled. Donna and her husband were
there. So was Bobby's grandmother. ``We didn't
encourage the military,'' she recalled, ``but
the next thing we know, he's in Midland at the
recruitment office. It was a very brave
decision.''
Bobby was a friend of Chad Metcalf. Donna
Newton and Ginger Metcalf are friends. Everyone
knows everyone else in Coahoma. ``Chad's
situation was like Bobby's,'' Donna said. ``In
these small communities, there's nothing, the
jobs are scarce. It's a do-or-die situation
here. We're going to have to figure something
out.''
Until the adults come up with a solution,
the kids are figuring it out on their own. They
leave.
People have been leaving this stretch of
West Texas for years. Ten miles to the west, the
county seat of Big Spring had over 35,000 people
once, enough to support the 15-story Settles
Hotel that looks like the Sears Tower standing
alone in the West Texas plains. Now the rain
pours through the abandoned hotel's roof, and
water pools in the first floor meeting room. Big
Spring has 25,000 people.
Coahoma's population has dropped by half
over the past 30 years, to 932. The elementary
school had 500 children not long ago, said high
school counselor Cheryl Green. Now there are
350. ``Our population is just shrinking,'' she
says.
Nearby Sweetwater had 2,700 students in
1998. The district now has 2,200, and the
Abilene newspaper blithely referred to
Sweetwater as having been ``named one of the
fastest-shrinking Texas cities.''
A noble calling
Military recruiters say they do best in
places where the local culture supports the
military. It helps if a potential recruit knows
someone in the military, that he or she comes
from a place where service is honored.
Carroll Kohl pastored the Lutheran church
in Big Spring for 28 years before he retired and
became chaplain at the large Big Spring Veterans
Administration Medical Center. ``In other
places, being in the military is kind of a
disgrace,'' he explained. ``Out here, you're a
first-class citizen. West Texas has the most
patriotism I've ever seen anywhere.''
Patriotism, service, the church, America
_ they are all wound up here. Big Spring was
once reputed to have the most Protestant
churches per person of any town in the United
States, according to the Handbook of Texas. The
Sweetwater Reporter in late September carried a
front-page item about ``Cowboys Ridin' for
Christ,'' a clinic promising to ``train an
unridden horse to ride based on scripture.''
Signs welcoming home soldiers who have
served in Iraq hang all over the towns along
I-20. On a map at the Vietnam War memorial on a
hill above Big Spring, vets pointing out where
they served have rubbed shiny spots in the
granite. When Karen Henry goes to Wal-Mart in
Big Spring, ``People see this (Army) pin on me
and I get these hugs.''
``West Texas is different,'' explained
the Rev. Kohl. Indeed, it is. And although it's
hard to tell whether America is moving away from
West Texas or West Texas is moving away from
America, it's easy to sense here that there's a
split in the country between those who serve and
those who don't.
That divide is real. For the first time
in the country's history in 1995, the percentage
of members of Congress who had served in the
military fell 15 percent below the comparable
cohort of Americans as a whole, according to the
University of North Carolina's Richard Kohn,
chair of the schools Curriculum in Peace, War,
and Defense. Before, veterans were always over
represented in Congress.
Those charged with declaring war are
growing apart from those who must wage it. And
those leading the military are growing apart
from the rest of the country.
There have been several studies showing
that elite military officers have strikingly
different social and political attitudes from
the general public. For example, Richard Kohn's
surveys found that elites in civilian life were
evenly divided between Republican and Democrat,
conservative and liberal. But only 10 percent of
the elite military officers counted themselves
as Democrats, Kohn said.
Loyola University scholar John Allen
Williams wrote in 1999 that ``many in the
military feel estranged from civilians, whom
they see as undisciplined, irresolute, and
morally adrift.''
Meanwhile, Williams continued,
``Americans may love their military, but it is
in the same way they might love their
Rottweiler: They are happy enough for the
protection but do not want to become one
themselves.'' Military life is ``as unfathomable
as life on another planet.''
Well, there are two planets. There's the
planet that sends its kids to Afghanistan and
Iraq, and there is the America whose only
connection with the military comes from watching
CNN.
Coahoma High School sends 10 percent of
its graduates to the military. Westlake High
School in Austin sent 97 percent of its 2002
class to college. Only four young people out of
575 Westlake seniors last year indicated they
might enlist.
The difference isn't lost on those in
Coahoma. ``I'm looking and seeing this change
building in the country,'' said Cheryl Green,
sitting at the coffee table in the teachers'
lounge. ``You see this huge division. It seems
like it's more pronounced now. I know the people
here say, `What are the people in Massachusetts
and California thinking?' ''
``There's a growing gap in which military
service is less understood by the more general
American population,'' Kohn said. ``It's treated
as a spectator experience rather than as a
participant experience.''
Ginger and John Wayne Metcalf didn't know
Chad would join the military until his senior
year at Coahoma High. They learned later that he
planned to join as early as his freshman year
and that he always intended to become a Marine.
``He wanted to be the best of the best,'' said
John Wayne.
Still, the lure of Howard County's
backroads almost took Chad first. Ginger Metcalf
knows the stories of Chad's friends, the Henry
and Newton boys, and their troubles with liquor
and the law. ``Chad was on that same road,'' she
said. ``There was nothing here for him. They
were all going down roads they didn't need to go
down.''
``I would a lot rather have it happen
over there than on the streets of Coahoma doing
something foolish,'' John Wayne said of Chad's
fatal crash in Iraq. ``It was not a wasted
death.''
Nor was it a death that had to be endured
alone, not in Howard County. Nearly 1,400 people
came to Chad's service at the large First
Baptist Church in Big Spring. John Wayne counted
186 plants delivered to the church and funeral
home. Visitation before the service was
scheduled for two hours. Ginger and John Wayne
left after five.
John Wayne still farms in Howard County.
He's been growing cotton since he was a
teenager. (``I bought a cotton stripper before I
graduated from high school,'' he said.) But
farming is too uncertain for a young person, he
said, and jobs in the oil fields are scarce. So
neither Ginger nor John Wayne regret that Chad
joined the Marines and traveled to Iraq.
``I thought Chad needed to go,'' Ginger
said.
In the hallway where the Metcalfs have
hung dozens of maps and letters and photos of
Chad's too brief military career, John Wayne
points to a photo. Students at the high school
in Forsan _ Coahoma's nearby arch-rival _ had
worked hours in their stadium so that their
prone bodies stretched across the football field
would spell out, perfectly neat (motto of the
U.S. Marine Corps: "Always faithful"):
SEMPER FI
A camera from a plane flying over the
cotton fields and pumping wells of West Texas
captured the scene and the sentiment. The Forsan
students gave the framed photo to John Wayne at
a meeting of the Coahoma school board. John
Wayne, who graduated from Coahoma High School
and is now a school board member, was as proud
of that photo, it seemed, as he was of the
letters from senators, governors and the
president.
``These small towns are really knit,''
Ginger said. ``People watch out for each other.
People from these small towns, they're fighting
for each other.''
They are fighting for everyone else, too,
of course, even if everyone doesn't know it
quite the way the people in Coahoma do.
John Wayne sat at the kitchen table and
explained: ``We have a country now that is run
on volunteer hearts.''
Bill Bishop writes for the Austin
American-Statesman. E-mail: bbisho@tatesman.com
Cox News Service
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