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WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2011 – Like so many Americans, Army Sgt.
Cheri Depenbrock watched the horror of 9/11 unfold from her office
television. What was different for the Army recruiter was how it
changed her job in the weeks after.
In seven years of helping ensure the Army met its recruiting
goals, Depenbrock was used to reaching out to young people, telling
them what the Army could do for them, and mostly answering their
questions about how they could get their college paid for by signing
up.
“It was almost always for college, for money, and for
having a full-time job,” she said, referring to the reasons people
enlisted.
Sept. 11, 2001, changed that. In the days, weeks
and months thereafter, Depenbrock, like military recruiters around
the nation, watched in amazement from her Cincinnati office as
people who never would have thought of joining -- or rejoining, as
many would have it -- approached recruiters with the sole purpose of
defending America.
“It was amazing the people walking into
that office, the ages,” she said. “We had so many prior-service
folks wanting to come back. I was amazed at how many older people
tried. I know some of them were in their fifties. And,
military-wise, we couldn't do anything for them.”
Some
younger people with prior service did rejoin, Depenbrock said, and
the first-time recruits were different. While patriotism has always
driven young people to service, it was almost always matched with a
desire for college money or new opportunities. Suddenly, they
weren't asking about money, she said.
“It was all about the patriotism,” Depenbrock said. “They didn't
care about anything else. Money had nothing do with it. I swear, I
think half those kids would have joined if we hadn't paid them.”
An annual Pentagon survey of young people's propensity to join
the military showed an 8-percent increase among young men likely to
enlist immediately after 9/11, and remained high until 2005, a
Defense Department official said.
One of those young men was
William Grigsby, now an Army staff sergeant who enlisted in early
2002. “The events of 9/11 had everything to do with my decision to
enlist,” he said.
Grigsby, an aircraft electrician on a
three-year detail as a recruiter in Houston, graduated high school
in June 2001 and was indecisive about his plans, first considering
the Army, then college, and then deciding against both.
Three
months later, “I was working a dead-end job at a grocery store,”
Grigsby recalled. He was driving home from the night shift on the
morning of 9/11 when he heard a news report about two hijacked
planes being flown into the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
Almost immediately after, Grigsby said, his mind went back to
joining the Army. As U.S. forces moved into Afghanistan to dismantle
al-Qaida and their Taliban backers, “I watched in awe as our
military forces took control of the country,” he said, adding that
he had no reservations at the prospects of deploying to war.
Recruiters from around the country remember post-9/11 as a time when
many potential recruits came to them.
Like other military recruiters, Army Master Sgt. Juan Dozier
witnessed a spike in patriotism following Sept. 11, 2001, that led
many Americans into recruiting stations. U.S. Army courtesy photo |
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Army Master Sgt. Juan Dozier calls himself “a recruiter of two
different generations.” There was the generation before 9/11 -- his
generation -- who enlisted for various benefits the military could
provide.
“There wasn't so much of a sense of purpose, of ‘What can I do
for my country?'” he said. “It was more, ‘I need the training or
education money.'”
Dozier didn't begrudge them -- he was one
of them. Raised in the tough Southside Chicago neighborhood of
Englewood, Dozier enlisted in the Army in 1989 as a way out.
“The
only thing I wanted to do was have different scenery,” he said.
“They took a chance on me being from Southside Chicago,” Dozier
said, adding that his recruiters asked him to take a bus to meet
them outside of his neighborhood because they were concerned about
violence there.
“The only time they came and got me was when it
was time for boot camp,” he said.
After serving as a motor
transportation operator in Germany, then California and Texas,
Dozier was working as a recruiter in Columbia, S.C., when 9/11
occurred. People began flowing into the recruiting station, and they
were prepared to fight, he said.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and his predecessor, Robert M.
Gates, have
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praised the more than 3 million young people who have joined the
military since 9/11, all knowing they likely would go to war. |
Dozier compared their mindset to that of peacetime recruits
caught off guard by military interventions such as the Persian Gulf
War that began in 1990.
“Back then kids were saying, ‘I didn't join for this, and a lot
of them were trying to get out,'” he said. “These kids now, they
know what they're signing up for. For most of them, they know war is
part of the job.”
Recruiters say they now hear a mixture of
reasons for enlisting, with many potential recruits still citing
patriotism, but a growing number also looking for benefits such as
health care.
“When they come in now, they're looking at
benefits,” Depenbrock said. “They're not talking about the GI Bill.
-- they're talking about a safety net.”
By Lisa Daniel
American Forces Press Service
Copyright 2011
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