Ready, waiting, wonderingBy Bella English
Globe Staff / September 18, 2010
Alex Guittard was in the seventh grade when the country was shaken by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He made up his mind: When he was older, he would join the military and fight the bad guys. As a high school senior, he applied for a scholarship from the Army, and when he got to Boston College he joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.
But in the three years since Guittard signed up, the situation has changed dramatically, and there is a good chance that he and his fellow cadets will not deploy to a war zone after all. After seven years of fierce fighting, the last combat soldiers left Iraq in August, and President Obama has said that the troops in Afghanistan should begin returning home by next summer — around the time Guittard and his fellow Army officers will be graduating.
In return for scholarships and perks such as free meals, ROTC students agree to spend eight years in the armed services after graduation, usually half in active duty, half in the reserves. Upon graduation, they are commissioned as second lieutenants.
As the largest branch of the military, the Army has the largest number of ROTC enrollees. Last year 35,213 cadets were in the program — 520 of them at Massachusetts colleges. Nationally, it’s the largest number since at least 2003; a spokesman said the Army could not readily provide figures from before that year.
Those from the class of 2011 will graduate a decade after the attacks that propelled them into the military and have spent the last three years training for war. That a war may no longer be waiting for them is causing them to reassess their futures. To some, the change is disorienting. To others, it’s a relief. To most, it’s more complicated than that.
unhappycamper comment: Speaking from personal experience, combat zones are not places you want to visit. 
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