Final Week: Lives of Student Soldiers

A self-proclaimed “nerd extraordinaire,” John Stivers, 25, said he did not seem like the sort to go into the military after high school.

He said he had a lot going for him and was accepted into his Ivy League dream school, where he hoped to study medicine. Yet, when finances restricted his college choices, Stivers decided to enlist into the Marine Corps with the intention of working his way into college.

Stivers, now a sophomore in Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences, was deployed to Iraq with the first wave of troops in 2003 and saw the war unfold from the frontlines. His experience there was something he never would have expected.

“. . . I never failed before, not like this, going into the Marine Corps, going to war, having all my plans go to the wind. That was the biggest failure I ever experienced in my life,” Stivers said.

Stivers, like many other high school graduates, was lured into the military by prospects of financial support for college. Many students who are currently enrolled in colleges have already completed tours of duty in Iraq, bringing back haunting memories. Others who are waiting to be deployed are forced to juggle preparing themselves mentally and physically for war and maintaining the necessary grades and responsibilities that go along with the life of a ROTC college student.

Stivers said he entered the Marine Corps in August 2000 after graduating high school in a Chicago suburb and, after serving a full term in the Marine Corps, was given $80,000 for his education.

Now a biochemistry and molecular biology student — who still aspires to attend medical school — Stivers said he takes his education very seriously.

“I really want this,” he said. “I had to kill to get here.”

While Stivers admits the military is a “calling” for some, he said he views his time in the Marine Corps as “a stepping stone to something else,” adding that college is the primary reason most people join. Yet, Stivers said during basic training, recruits were told, “if you joined for college, you joined for the wrong reasons.”

Months out of high school, Stivers said he was sent to the San Diego Marine Corps Recruiting Depot for 13 weeks of drill and combat training.

“I felt my brain cells dying each day,” he said about his first months with the Marines, adding that “there was the rare brain” among his fellow recruits.

The recruits were told that, “we have a war every ten years and you guys are due,” and Stivers and his fellow Marines did not take the statement seriously until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Following the attack, the Marines went into “lock down” and began extensive preparation.

In February 2003, Stivers was sent out with the first wave of troops to Kuwait, where the military awaited news about Iraq. Within 24 hours of notification, Stivers had drawn up a will and left for Kuwait, where camps had not yet been finished for the troops and a “tent city” had been constructed.

With the Fifth Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, Stivers drove supplies and troops into Iraq and worked in communication, following just behind reconnaissance missions and infantry.

In Iraq, Stivers stayed in a palace abandoned by Hussein, and performed his duty as night-time mission gun-watch atop the palace roof in a chair pulled from Hussien’s office — one, he said, he believes the leader himself had sat in.

After returning from Iraq, Stivers spent the remainder of his tenure with the Marines in the United States and re-entered civilian and student life.

“I accept responsibility for what we’ve done,” he said. “I’m just cynical about the whole thing. I don’t see an answer.”

“I just went over there

to do my job”

Unlike Stivers, 19-year-old Ben Fortier felt the Marines was “something I always wanted to do.”

Six months after graduating high school in Rhode Island, Fortier was activated for duty in December 2005. He spent seven months in Iraq.

“I just went over there to do my job,” he said. “I didn’t do it for the college money or anything.”

Fortier said he spent his days patrolling Fallujah as part of the Weapons Company Mobile Assault Platoon. Working out of Camp Baharia, Fortier and two other men patrolled a five-mile by five-mile section of Fallujah, looking for roadside bombs.

Fortier describes himself as creative and plans to study film editing, refuting the stereotype that “Marines are stupid.”

“There are a lot of really smart guys over there,” he said.

Fortier said since returning to the United States he experienced a significant change from regimented military life to civilian life, adding that he has been received well by people in his hometown. He said he set to begin his studies at the New England Institute of Technology in the spring.

Fortier said he often thinks about his time in Iraq and his battalion: the First Battalion, 25th Marines.

“Some situations remind me of something that happened over there,” he said. “Loud noises, things like that — loud noises over there mean bombs and guns.”

Fortier said the Marines offers a class to those who are leaving active duty, coaching people on making the transition back into civilian life.

He said he remains in contact with the men from his unit.

“There’s a lot I’d rather not have happen,” he said. “The two guys in my truck came home and that’s what matters.”

“There’s a lot things I just took for granted,” he continued. “Over there, we even took life for granted. We’d be talking to our buddies and they wouldn’t be there the next day. There are not foreshadowing clues like in movies. We’d go out and patrol and they never came back.”

Preparing for war

Patrick Farrell — a School of Management sophomore — has not yet seen duty in Iraq, although he is training to enter the Army National Guard as a second lieutenant after graduation from BU and the Army ROTC.

“I try to maintain a regular life,” Farrell said, despite 6 a.m. physical training sessions before full days of academic classes, ROTC classes and leadership labs.

Farrell said his father graduated in 1968 from the University of Scranton in the Army ROTC and served in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps during Vietnam.

“I always thought I would spend some time in the Army,” Farrell said.

Although a four-year scholarship was not the reason that Farrell joined ROTC, he said the benefits are generous.

“It’s a really sweet deal that they set up for you,” he said, adding that “it’s a symbiotic relationship” between the Army and students.

After graduating with his class, Farrell said he plans to go into officers’ basic training. Branch assignment is dependent on ROTC graduates’ performance on a test administered between junior and senior years, personal preference and academic performance. Forty percent is based on GPA.

Farrell said he recently joined the National Guard unit of the Army and has begun monthly training sessions in Melrose.

“It makes it more real what responsibility I’m going to take,” he said of the weekend-long training with other Army recruits.

While Farrell said the ROTC does not directly address the problems of balancing the college social scene and Army commitments, “they understand what it is to be in college, and they leave it up to you to act accordingly. You do need to take yourself seriously.”

According to BU ROTC program officer manager Beri Gilfix, veterans are eligible to apply for scholarships at BU. Soldiers receive educating funds, veterans’ benefits and Reserves stipends to help a veteran pay BU’s tuition, but “in general that will not be sufficient to fund an entire Boston University education.”

Gilfix added that National Guard enlistees in Massachusetts are eligible for full-tuition scholarships to any public state school. She said the BU Army ROTC program receives approximately 200 applications each year, and 15 four-year scholarships were awarded to students in the class of 2010.

The Army ROTC program also offers other scholarships for shorter periods of time, based upon the program’s available funding, she said.

According to literature released by the Department of Veterans Affairs, qualified active-duty veterans may receive money for education at a rate of $1,034 a month for full-time study. The VA will pay an additional amount, called a “kicker” or “college fund,” if directed by the Department of Defense. Veterans may receive payments for a maximum of 36 months.

Education benefits for Reservists and National Guard members differ from those offered to active duty veterans.

In a Sept. 2006 press release, Vadm Norb Ryan, Jr., president of the Military Officers Association of America, said “we treat our Guard and Reserve veterans like second-class citizens when they return from a deployment.”

While active-duty veterans have 10 years to use their benefits, Guard and Reservist members of the military are only eligible for benefits if they are still serving.

“We put them in a catch-22 situation. We deploy them so much we make the benefits hard to use while serving, and then we refuse the benefits if they leave,” Ryan said in the release.