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Losses Color a Patriotic Town's View of the Iraq War
"But whatever they ask me to do, I'll do it."
To be sure, Prattville's new enlistees offered a range of opinions about the war.
  An 82nd Airborne Division honor guard carries the casket of Pfc. Stephen Bicknell into First United Methodist in Prattville as family members follow at right. Bicknell died in Iraq Oct. 15. (By Lloyd Gallman -- Montgomery Advertiser Via Associated Press) |
None offered criticism of President Bush. None advocated pulling out immediately. Some said it was a Christian duty to give other countries their freedom. And Army and Marine recruiters say this year's yield is as large as last year's.
The attitudes here stand at odds with national polls on Bush and the war. Support for the war has dipped nationally to less than 40 percent, according to Washington Post-ABC News polling.
But the recruits' willingness to serve is not the same as an uncritical belief in the war.
"The kids don't look at it as being for or against the war," Principal Lee Hicks, a former Marine, said of those signing up. "They're just for the country."
In Prattville, Byard said, "I think folks want to get our guys home."
Prattville and surrounding Autauga County ranked last year in the top 100 places in the United States in terms of Army recruits per capita, according to an analysis by the National Priorities Project, a liberal research group based in Northampton, Mass., that questions Bush's Iraq policy. Other smaller counties scored higher per capita, but Autauga generated 31 enlistees for the Army and Army Reserve in 2005, according to the analysis. Several others enlisted with the Marines.
A pleasant suburb of Montgomery, Prattville is a place where Friday-night football reigns as the leading social event. Many of the city's residents work in the state capital, in neighboring Montgomery County, or at the nearby Hyundai plant, the paper mill or Maxwell Air Force Base.
The graduates have other options. About 60 percent of the Prattville senior class annually goes on to college, school officials said. But recruiters from one branch or another visit the high school at least once a week, Hicks said, sometimes bringing out Humvees and other vehicles to wow their audience.
The recruiters often try to put the potential dangers of military service in this perspective:
"How many murders have there been this month?" asked Army Command Sgt. Major Cory Olson of the Montgomery Recruiting Battalion, which handles Prattville. "I don't have the statistics. But I'm willing to bet that more people have been killed in the U.S. than in any of the places we are currently occupying."
