MN National Guard is seeking to fill boots

02/27/2005

Rene Sanchez, Star Tribune
February 27, 2005

Two hours into his pitch, Staff Sgt. Brad Bond scanned the classroom of sleepy-eyed seniors in sweatshirts and saw familiar signs of trouble.

Yawns. Shrugs. No sounds except clicking pens and popping gum.

“You guys are awfully quiet this morning,” Bond said. “You’re making me nervous.”

He had rushed down snowy roads to Rogers High School on a mission: He needed to get someone, in the slang of military recruiters, “in boots.”

If even one of the teenagers joined the Minnesota National Guard, at a time when that choice could land them in Iraq, the latest long day Bond had ahead would be a triumph.

He taught the class how to fold an American flag. He brought slides showing the World Trade Center cloaked in fire and smoke. He passed out fliers touting “25 Perks” of serving in the National Guard and spoke of honor and country.

A tougher sell.Joey McleisterStar Tribune"I don’t think anyone in here would do it,” a student whispered in the back of the room.

“So what’s my name?” Bond asked the class before he left.

A few mumbles: “Brad.”

“So if you see me around,” he said, “I won’t bite.”

No one laughed at the joke.

Bond’s job was tough even before three Minnesota National Guard members were killed in Iraq last week—the first deaths Guard units from the state have had in the war.

His hunt for recruits is relentless. He racks up 4,000 miles a month roaming the far northern suburbs of the Twin Cities. He leaves his calling card with gas pump clerks and fast-food cooks. He mingles at high school wrestling meets. He is away from home so often he calls his wife a single mom.

“Always prospecting,” Bond bellowed one recent morning as he drove near Elk River.

The nation’s growing need to send citizen-soldiers to Iraq, on dangerous tours of duty that often last over a year, is punching new holes into the ranks of its Guard and reserve forces.

About 180 National Guard members have died in Iraq—a tally greater than the losses the Guard sustained during the decade-long Vietnam War.

As the toll rises, recruiting suffers. Last year, the Guard fell 7,000 recruits short of its goal. In January, it reached only 56 percent of its recruiting quotas.

The Guard is scrambling to reverse the trend—because it expects units to keep getting sent to Iraq this year and next, at least. It is adding 1,400 recruiters. It is tripling the top bonuses that its members can get for re-enlisting from $5,000 to $15,000. And it is almost doubling signing bonuses for recruits to $10,000.

Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the Guard, said the new tactics are essential.

“Otherwise,” he told reporters earlier this year, “the Guard will be broken.”

Bond, one of 83 Guard recruiters in Minnesota, feels the pressure.

He is 27, all muscle and charm, with a Boy Scout face beneath his buzz cut and a knack for using patriotic pleas to put prospects at ease.

His partner much of the time is Sgt. First Class LeRoy McCoy, 34, a soft-spoken suburban dad carrying a few extra pounds who has an itch some days to be a teacher.

They work from a cramped office inside a community center in Monticello, next to a swimming pool that reeks of chlorine and under a gym whose treadmills thump their ceiling.

Their challenge this year is formidable: Minnesota’s Army National Guard, which has 10,388 members, has orders to add 300 troops. It also needs about 1,400 more recruits to replace members finishing standard six-year stints of service.

Bond used to tell prospects that no Guard member from Minnesota has been killed in Iraq. Now, suddenly, he has to adjust that approach.

He also will be making his case with a heavier heart. He once belonged to the Guard unit in Montevideo, Minn., that lost three young men in Iraq last week.

“I’m taking this real hard,” Bond said. “But I’m not going to hide from it. I’ll tell people the truth: Service to country is always going to bring sacrifice.”

By October, he and McCoy each need to enlist more than two dozen recruits. They are facing competition from other branches of the military also struggling to meet enlistment quotas. And they can no longer count on getting full-time soldiers who are leaving active duty, because many fear that signing up for the Guard could put them right back in Iraq.

So their prime targets these days are teenagers. A 17-year-old can join the Guard with parental consent. But few ever show up on their doorstep.

“It’s always a roller coaster for us now,” McCoy said.

Capt. Jason Burley, a former Marine who took part in Operation Desert Storm 14 years ago, keeps a close eye on their work. He also requires the recruiters he supervises to attend motivational seminars. The last one featured a speaker who told them Islamic extremists in the United States are winning more converts than they are.

That ticked off Bond so much that he scheduled an evening appointment with a prospect on Valentine’s Day.

“I’m in hot water at home right now,” Bond said a few days after the holiday.

He had another appointment that night.

A heroic glow

“Anyone heard of an IED?”

It’s mid-February. A week has passed since Bond and McCoy visited Rogers High School, where they met with about 75 students and talked about how important patriotism and military service have become since the Sept. 11 attacks.

About six students asked for information on the National Guard. None has joined.

Today, at Ivan Sand Community School in Elk River, which enrolls troubled teenagers, the recruiters are trying a different approach. Instead of wearing slacks and golf shirts with the Guard logo, they are dressed in fatigues and combat boots. And they have brought along Adam Timperley, 22, a Minnesota Guardsman who was wounded in Iraq last year by a roadside bomb—what the military calls an “improvised explosive device,” or IED.

McCoy and Bond have decided to show students slides and video from Iraq that mostly cast the work of the National Guard in a heroic glow—helping children and farmers, bringing cleaner water and better sanitation to villages.

An image of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces flickered in the dimly lit classroom.

“I don’t think there were even five shots fired when we took this castle,” McCoy said.

Another slide: smiling Iraqi kids. “They love to give soldiers a thumbs-up.”

Then McCoy played a video of Minnesota Guardsmen in a soccer match last spring with young men from a neighborhood near the Baghdad airport. It had a rousing a sound track that began with the words: “Let’s get ready to rummmmmmble!”

But the recruiters also did not sugar-coat the war.

One slide showed a picture of two Iraqi men in handcuffs.

“These two are prisoners,” McCoy said. “The terrorists look like anyone else. You don’t really know who your enemy is.”

Another video clip showed a Humvee filled with Minnesota Guard members speeding down an Iraqi road last year—then getting rocked by an exploding IED. No soldiers were seriously hurt.

“Any questions?” McCoy asked a few minutes later.

None.

Timperley stepped in front the class. “I think it’s an incredibly important thing I’ve done,” he said. “I could have been killed, but I wouldn’t trade a day for it.”

Bond broke the silence: “As for morale over there—would you say it’s high?”

“Oh yeah,” Timperley replied. “We have a blast.”

At last, a student blurted out a question: “Did you get to blow a lot of stuff up?”

The class soon ended. Jimmy Ronning, 17, looked persuaded.

“It’s not as bad as everyone thinks,” he said. “You’re not going to get blown up as soon as you step foot over there.”

But Bond and McCoy may have been too late. A Marine recruiter already had called him.

A sense of guilt

The former high school wrestler from a small town in Iowa had a construction job but not much direction in life. He saw the Guard as a chance to break out of his rut. But his parents wanted no part of the military. He joined anyway.

That was Bond seven years ago. Now, he is on the other side of kitchen tables, fielding questions from wary parents about the Guard’s role in Iraq.

“The first thing they all ask,” Bond said, “is, ‘What are the odds of being deployed?’

“And we’re straight up with them. You’ve got to put the issue on the table.”

“They’ll be worthless soldiers if they’re forced into this,” McCoy said.

At times, he and Bond get accused of being shifty salesmen who cash in when they snag a recruit. But they do not work on commission or get bonuses for beating their quotas.

“That perception drives me absolutely insane,” Bond said. “I’ve never lied to a kid.”

The conversations with parents last for hours. Some questions leave Bond feeling uneasy about his job—because he has never been to Iraq.

One reason he became a full-time recruiter four years ago is that he has a wife and two young children and preferred not to be sent overseas.

“There’s a sense of guilt being back here,” Bond said. “But I know my role is important.”

“Recruiters talk about that all the time,” said McCoy, who also has never been sent to Iraq.

Bond stays in touch with some of his recruits who are in Iraq. None has been killed.

“That’s my biggest fear,” he said. “I can’t imagine how hard it would be to lose a kid I put in. You take ownership of a recruit—that’s my soldier.”

On Saturday morning, Bond met two of his latest prospects at Fort Snelling for the final phase of the recruiting process. They are 17. He had been wooing them for weeks.

Before enlisting, each recruit had to take exams assessing his aptitude and health.

Bond waited hours to hear how they did. All the work he had put in to get them to join the Guard was at risk.

He beamed when word from a medical office reached him.

“Looks like both my boys made it,” he said.

Rapt attention

It was almost noon at Ivan Sand school in Elk River. McCoy had been talking to classes for three hours. He was about to end the Iraq slide show.

The last class of teenagers looked on with rapt attention. Many were old enough to join the Guard. “It’s totally different there than what I thought,” one student said as he watched.

McCoy showed a slide of an Iraqi smiling beside a soldier.

“Hey!” a student exclaimed. “He looks just like the guy before who was a prisoner!”

McCoy told the group that all the Guard members in the slides are Minnesotans. “They’re from your area,” he said. “Elk River. Princeton. Buffalo. Big Lake.”

A student raised his hand: “What kind of food do they have over there?”

“They make good pizza with lamb,” Timperley replied.

McCoy handed out a survey asking students what they thought about the session—and whether they wanted to learn more about the Guard.

A teenager in baggy jeans ambled over to his teacher, Rich Egeberg, who was leaning against a sign warning students to turn off cell phones.

“I want to say yes to this,” he told Egeberg, “but my mom is going to say no.”

Bond and McCoy had to hurry to other appointments. Near the school’s front doors, McCoy looked back in search of Timperley, who was down the hall talking about how shrapnel shattered nerves in his leg.

“Adam,” he cried, “let’s go.”

A few teenagers standing nearby jostled and teased each other. They fell silent when Timperley limped by, into the parking lot and out of sight.

Then they started goofing off again.