Soldiers just like everyone else in America

David W. Kuhns Sr./Northwest Guardian

The Army has a pretty clear image of what it is — but we don’t do so well at understanding who we are.

A few years ago one of those “think tanks,” the Heritage Foundation, examineed who was enlisting in the military. The foundation compared the zip codes from which recruits came with Census Bureau statistics about average household incomes in the same areas.

The results might be surprising to some. The average household income for the nation is a bit over $40,000 per year. The study found that the average family income for the zip codes that provided enlistees was ... a bit over $40,000 per year.

In other words, when it comes to the economic backgrounds of members of the armed forces, we are pretty much average — not poor, not from an under class, just Americans. That is important to remember.

The Army is a voluntary service, but it is not a developing military caste drawing its members from those who have no where else to turn. In fact, I think, Soldiers are motivated to join for all the various reasons they always were — for training, for adventure, for a job, out of curiosity and out of simple patriotism.

The civilian population the Army serves needs to understand that Soldiers are just like them.

Soldiers need to understand that, too.

Twelve years ago, when I was attending the Sergeants Major Academy, a group of educators visited from Chicago to learn about the Army and what it had to offer their students. A dozen of us volunteered to meet and talk about the organization in which we had spent much of our adult lives. I was dismayed by the comments of my peers.

One after another, they told stories of individuals who had been at the point of desperation, only to be resurrected by enlisting in the Army. Stories of dropouts who learned, the impoverished who prospered, borderline criminals who gained honest self-respect — that was all I heard.

These wonderful senior NCOs, out of a desire to show how much the Army offered, painted a picture that met all the stereotypes the teachers already held. The Army, these old Soldiers were saying, was a place for those who were failing in life to grasp a last hope at success.

I finally interrupted one of these tales and said I thought an inaccurate picture was being painted. I asked the other NCOs where they came from. They were pretty much like me — from middle-class America. A couple of us were college graduates; most had some college.

My point then was that the Army has been the savior of many lost individuals, but those people are not who fills the ranks. The Army offers options for everyone. Indeed, far more of those who join the Army come from young success stories than from those with backgrounds of failure.

Enlisting and serving the nation as a Soldier is a positive step in a life of learning, growth and success — not just a life preserver for those drowning in failure.

Soldiers are just like everyone else — that’s who the Army is. And everyone — including Soldiers — needs to remember it.