Another log from the South. This one was reported in the
Chattanooga Times Free Press today,
The graying of U.S. troops (you'll have to register to see the story). Edward Lee Pitts reports that the 278th Regimental Combat Team has 373 soldiers who are age 50 years or older. Not surprisingly, 63% of the 278th are age 30 years or older. Pitts reports that the average age of the current U.S. National Guard is 32 years old.
Pitts tells the story of a 57 year old divorced man named (ironically?) Sgt. Young at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. But Young is from Alcoa, Tennessee. Soon he will be a frontline scout in Iraq, risking all for his country. "It is going to be nasty. It is going to be dirty. It is going to be ugly. Mistakes will be made," admits Young in the article. And there are other 50-year-old and older guys joining him, some of them veterans of Vietnam.
Why this kind of heroism when we've just seen more than 50 American soldiers die during Fallujah?
Pitts quotes Dr. David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland: "If you look at the casualty lists, the older guys getting killed are National Guard, not active Army. The Army doesn't like to say they are relying on older people. But they are . . . and they haven't figured out a way to make the National Guard younger."
Another aging soldier, 46-year-old Major Rhonda Keisman, says that the older troops are an "asset and not a liability." Sgt. Major James Pippin, who is 60, claims he can "outrun any 19-year-old, do more push-ups than any 22-year-old and bench press 325 pounds." Sgt. Albert Howard, 58, had to push hard to get to go to Iraq. Howard is a medic.
Sgt. Young says he is "starting to feel . . . concern for these young guys who don't know what they are getting themselves into." The young troops tease older troops, however, especially Sgt. Young by calling him as old as Moses. Young responds with his own wit: "You've seen that picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware? I was behind him holding him up."
This kind of banter and repartee only disguises what must be a frightening prospect. And as we draw closer to a possible draft, how far will Bush go to rely on graying soldiers?