Illinois National Guard soldiers who are likely to be deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan range in age from 17 to 64. One in seven is female. Some are high school dropouts, but many more are college graduates or hold advanced degrees.

And unlike the Vietnam War, where joining the National Guard was likely to keep you out of combat, 10 units from the Illinois Guard and others across America make up about one-fourth of the fighting force in the War on Terror. The percentage reached as high as one-third earlier this year.

“Following the Vietnam War, the U.S. military did not want to be in a situation again where it was fighting a war without national support,” said John Lynn, a military historian with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“The notion was that if you create a military that requires the mobilization of the Guard, then you require that the war has national support before you fight it,” he said.
In the Vietnam era, Lynn said, people were drafted into the war, which helped to fuel the resistance.

“The key thing that we found out between Vietnam and subsequent wars was that whenever you call out the National Guard, you’re employing the will of the people because we’re a community-based organization,”  says Lt. Col. Alicia Tate-Nadeau, director of public relations for the Illinois Army and Air National Guard. “That means your next-door neighbor very likely could be somebody who’s in the National Guard.”

The average age of combat troops was 19 during the Vietnam era. In today’s volunteer military, it’s 26, according to U.S. Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. And for National Guard members, it’s 32.

At 37, Cliff Dillon, a police officer in Wheaton and former National Guardsman, was among the older enlisted troops.

Dillon served in the military for 10 years, starting in the Army Reserves and later transferring to the National Guard. After serving in both Afghanistan and Iraq, he retired from the military this spring as a staff sergeant.

His National Guard unit, the 244th Army Liaisons, coordinated between coalition and domestic forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan and helped train the countries’ burgeoning police forces. Because of the nature of the work, his unit was smaller than most and comprised of higher-ranking officers and enlisted Guardsmen. Among the two dozen Guardsmen there were nine officers — including two colonels — and no privates.

Still, the unit covered a wide span of ages and civilian occupations, he said, ranging from twenty-somethings who work blue-collar jobs to full-time Guardsmen in their 40s and 50s.

While training with his unit before they were sent overseas, Dillon had doubts about how some of the younger Guardsmen would perform.

“Before we left, I questioned people’s work ethic,” he said. “But when we were actually there in a situation where things had to get done, the young kids stepped up and actually got things done.”

It was that maturation Dillon was seeking when he joined the military in 1997. Five years out of college, he found himself working a financial desk job that he abhorred.
“That’s why I joined the Army,” he said, “to give me something to do.”

His work in the Army Reserves inspired him to become a police officer, and in turn that law enforcement experience was useful during his term in the National Guard.

In Afghanistan, Dillon said he was placed in charge of security for Kabul International Airport, and he advised civilians on safety protocol.

“My military career changed me more than I can even explain,” he said. “I love what I do now, and I was miserable before now.

Downers Grove resident Brian Hatlen joined the National Guard in 2002 shortly after graduating from North Dakota State University.

“I had a calling to do something,” he said. “It was always something that I wanted to do before I was too old. I didn’t want to regret not doing it so I made the decision to sign up.”

After joining, Hatlen went to school for intelligence officers, where half of his classmates were women.

While women still are not allowed in the infantry or artillery, they have filled significant numbers of positions for job specialties like quartermasters and military police, Hatlen said. As a result, equal opportunity and sexual harassment policies are stressed at almost every level these days, he explained.

At 31, Hatlen said he is older than most members of his unit. Still, the vast majority were older than 20 and had some higher education.

The majority of people he served with also were married and of that group, about half had children.

Hatlen was a newlywed when he was deployed to Iraq in March 2006 to serve an extended tour of duty with his unit.

But no matter the age or the circumstance, he said the National Guard is “all one family.”

However, older veterans bring a different set of challenges from those faced in the Vietnam era.

“Obviously, the older you get the harder it is on your body in a war zone,” Dillon said. “It’s a young man’s game.”

And the regular deployments proved not only difficult for himself, but for his family as well.

“I was getting deployed every two to three years, and I’ve got two little girls at home,” he said. “It was difficult on them. I didn’t want to keep leaving.”

Ultimately, concern for his family was the reason Dillon decided to end his term with the National Guard. Were his family situation different, he said, he probably would still be in.

As of midyear, 10 units of the Illinois Army Guard — with about 650 soldiers — were deployed to the Middle East, along with about 180 members of the Air Guard. There are medical teams from North Riverside, transportation companies from Streator and Delavan, and police units from Bloomington. There are infantry, maintenance, aviation and support troops from units as far north as Chicago and as far south as Mattoon.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, nearly 9,000 of the state’s Army Guard troops have been deployed for at least one tour in Iraq and Afghanistan. That number is 86 percent of the Illinois Army Guard members. More than 3,700 of the state’s Air Guard members have served in the Middle East. In total, the Air and Army Guard have about 13,500 members combined.

As of late July, the National Guard had 38,561 soldiers in Iraq and 6,098 in Afghanistan. Total deployment of U.S. troops was about 187,000 between the two areas.

Since the 9/11 attacks, more than 7,700 regular and reserve troops from bases in Illinois have served in the conflict.

In the Vietnam era — from July 1, 1963, to Dec. 31, 1972 — only about 18,000 soldiers from the National Guard served, mostly in support roles. Meanwhile, more than 120,000 men from Illinois were drafted to serve 24 months, according to the Selective Service system.

It’s not unusual for Air Guard units to serve multiple tours because they’re on four-month rotations, said Tate-Nadeau, the state spokeswoman.

But for the Army Guard, “Of the 120 different types of units we have, we’re maybe talking about five to seven” that have done second tours, she says.

Specialty units with few members are often needed, so they’re deployed multiple times, Tate-Nadeau said. Examples of those are Guard special forces or Army liaison units.   

The nation’s strategic military plan since Vietnam has designated the National Guard as a key component of any war effort.

“We have moved from a strategic reserve to a response force,” Tate-Nadeau says. “The Guard is an equal player in all of our capabilities in the military.”