Soldiering into ROTC

COLONIE -- Joe Hughes patrolled the remote, snowy, mountainous terrain of eastern Afghanistan from platoon-size "firebases" with fewer than 30 men.

Today the headquarters of this soldier from Delmar has changed from one of the world's most notorious border regions to the basement office of Siena College's Reserve Officers' Training Corps program.

Once an Army sergeant, he's now an ROTC cadet. The 24-year-old freshman takes classes with younger students new to operating as a squad and rolling out of bed for 6:30 a.m. physical training.

Hughes belongs to a small but growing group of combat veterans in Siena's ROTC battalion and others around the country.

Learn more about available ROTC programs and financial benefits.

Instead of the traditional four-year path from college freshman to 2nd lieutenant, these troops are signing up for ROTC -- the Army's largest officer-commissioning program -- after fighting overseas as enlisted soldiers.

The Capital Region's Army ROTC program, based at Siena, currently has four combat veterans among its roughly 100 cadets, up from just one last year. That figure is expected to nearly double soon, a development the battalion's new commander, Lt. Col. Andy Morgado, described as "amazing."

Nationally the number of ROTC cadets with prior enlisted service has increased from 3,858 in 2004-05 to 5,059 in 2008-09, although that still represents only 16.5 percent of the 30,721 cadets, and the overall percentage has not changed dramatically.

To the veterans, ROTC is a way to advance their educations with generous scholarships, and then to enter the Army's leadership.

To their classmates, facing their first deployments, the veterans in some ways already are leaders.

"Everybody wants to know, 'What's it like? Where were you? What'd you do?'" Hughes said.

The 2003 Bethlehem High School graduate described himself as an "everyday student." The patches on his uniform tell a different story.

On his arm, there's one for the 82nd Airborne. On his chest, another denotes combat experience.

And on a computer in the ROTC office, the student displayed his own real-life photos to match the stylized recruitment posters on the wall: Hughes mounted behind two machine guns on a Humvee, concertina wire on its hood. Hughes with hammer and nails, building a base.

All of these come from a 15-month tour that kept him on the move around Afghanistan. When students ask about it, he strives to be helpful, not a know-it-all jerk.

"I know what I'm doing, but I try not to be 'that guy,'" he said.

Programs like Siena's are the main paths to becoming an Army officer. Other routes include West Point and Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Ga.

The rise in veterans joining ROTC programs comes as the Pentagon, coping with two wars, is seeking to expand the program's output of lieutenants. The quota is now 4,500 annually, an increase of 600 over the 3,900 annually through 2004. ROTC fell 200 short of its target this year.

Scholarship dollars have increased. Now ROTC can pay full tuition for any student awarded a scholarship. It's a useful tool given the high tuition of many of the 273 campuses that host ROTC.

"We are in fact in competition with the private sector for the top quality students," said Army ROTC spokesman Paul Kotakis.

Locally, the ROTC battalion draws about 30 percent of its students from Siena, 30 percent from UAlbany, 30 percent from RPI, and the rest from smaller schools.

More combat veterans isn't the only change for the battalion.

Morgado, 36, took over command this year from Lt. Col. Michael Papadopoulos. Morgado's entire teaching staff has combat experience, compared with perhaps one instructor when he was an ROTC student at Lehigh University in the early 1990s.

That helps them enliven what can be a dry curriculum with relevant war stories.

Like the time in 2003 that Morgado arrived with the 4th Infantry Division in Khanaqin, an Iraqi town filled with what Morgado characterized as major Arab-Kurd animosity.

"I'm now the mayor of Khanaqin," Morgado said, telling the story in the satellite ROTC office in UAlbany's physical education building, which is next door to the pool.

He had no interpreter. Locals gave him one who spoke German and Kurdish. He spoke neither.

How do you keep the peace in pidgin German?

"Nothing in my Army training had prepared me for that," Morgado said. "But I needed to learn fast. It's that kind of thing that we're trying to impart to these guys."

Check out Military.com's ROTC Network.