Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War [Hardcover]

David Axe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 2007

Undergrads with guns. That is how war correspondent David Axe summarizes the bifurcated existence of some thirty thousand cadets currently participating in Reserve Officers Training Corps programs at 270 U.S. colleges and universities. In Army 101, Axe takes readers inside an Army ROTC program in his investigation into the training and lives of student-cadets being hardened into the next generation of volunteer citizen-soldiers.

Drawing heavily from candid interviews conducted with cadets and trainers of the Gamecock Battalion at the University of South Carolina, Army 101 traces the experiences of a representative mix of students--freshmen to seniors of both sexes and many races--essentially minoring in the military while also pursuing regular undergraduate degrees in diverse fields. Axe invites us along to witness the quagmire of confusion in a nighttime training exercise, the immersion into procedures and jargon of the classroom, and the high aspirations of candidates at Airborne School. Replete with a vivid account of the annual Ranger Challenge--the varsity sport of ROTC--and a campus visit from the commander in chief, George W. Bush, Axe's narrative follows the unit through the exercises and experiences that are designed to recast the cadets as junior officers in America's long war on terrorism. Not all guns and marches, the volume also explores the rivalry and revelry that define the cadets' off-hours as much as they characterize the lives of all college students.

Respectful of his subjects' motivations and achievements, Axe is also critical of the training they receive. ROTC is an uneasy marriage of civilian and military existence and, according to Axe, produces officers who can demonstrate the best and worst aspects of both worlds. His investigation exposes chinks in the armor and draws attention to program weaknesses, from the physical and emotional strain of dual lives to sexual harassment, war protests, disheartening morale, and other reasons why cadets wash out. Axe also interrogates military and government policies that unequally distribute the rewards and responsibilities of service.

Army 101 is an insider's look at the current state of training and the cultural values being taught to those who will soon join the ranks of nearly ten thousand ROTC graduates already serving in activity duty around the globe. This is the story of the USC Gamecock Battalion--undergrads with guns.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In the opening pages, portraying an infantry platoon tensely awaiting the enemy, Axe seems to start his ROTC report at the end, with new soldiers in the field. Actually, he's describing a combat exercise to home in on one of the book's four focal figures and the different objectives of students and instructors during such exercises. Both know this is play. But the cadets must go at it for real, with the trainers watching, looking especially for leadership capability. Recounting the experiences of University of South Carolina cadets, particularly those of two men and two women, Axe presents ROTC functions, such as Ranger Challenge, a competition involving skills and actions required of special forces soldiers, and Airborne School, which teaches jumping out of planes at low altitudes. He also discusses ROTC culture, which is disproportionately African American (three of the four focal students are black) and, like the professional military, biased toward men; one woman is sidelined because she can't do a pull-up suited up, and the other, an ace soldier who matches the men even at drinking, must realize she probably can't have an infantry career. Axe's concrete prose, his lack of prejudice and partisanship, and his respect for every cadet and army educator he limns, as well as for the ROTC itself, make this massively informative little book great reading. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap

"Through candid interviews with a representative group of ROTC cadets, David Axe gives us an honest portrait of the young people who choose to become Army officers in this age of the global war on terror and willingly sign up to confront the hazards of deadly combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. By extension, Axe grants us insight into the overall ethos of our all-volunteer military forces in these first years of the twenty-first century."--John W. Gordon, professor of national security affairs, United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College

"David Axe offers an insightful look at a premier ROTC program, and the making of the minds and bodies of the young men and women who will be the backbone of the next generation of Army officers. . . . The officer candidate cameos he shapes are of highly motivated, physically fit young men and women but with a dubious facility for critical thought. Army 101 is well worth reading for what this holds for the future."--Walter C. Rodgers, former senior intelligence correspondent for CNN and author of Sleeping with Custer and the 7th Cavalry: An Imbedded Reporter in Iraq

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 111 pages
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press (February 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570036608
• ISBN-13: 978-1570036606
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,493,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Is this about my ROTC unit?, April 1, 2007

By 

Samuel Brown (Fort Rucker, AL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War (Hardcover)

When I heard that a book had been written about my ROTC unit during the time that I was a cadet, I was intrigued. I was also curious, how I never really knew that anyone was working on such a project, especially when I should have known. I was for all intents and purposes a cadet who was in the center of things within the unit, including its Cadet Battalion Commander in the fall of 2005. All I remember was reporter coming to a couple of our field exercises and taking pictures while hardly talking to anyone. David Axe's Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War is a biased and consistently inaccurate portrayal of the Gamecock Battalion during the time that I was cadet.

To start with, Army 101 is ripe with inaccuracies about the ROTC and the Army in general. Axe quotes graphic running cadences that I have never heard, and he talks about cadets using M60 machine guns in training at Fort Jackson. Not once do I recall having M60 machine guns on any field training exercise. He makes several attempts to interject cadet lingo, but gets it terribly wrong. For instance he mentions that the cadet in charge the Ranger Challenge team was referred to as the "Ranger Daddy." As a four year Ranger Challenge team member during the period covered in the book, not once do I remember that term being used seriously. My favorite thing is the contention that most of the Cadets belonged to fraternities or sororities. There were a few cadets who participated in Greek organizations, but as I recall most did not. In fact, I would argue that "frat guys" were looked down on amongst the cadets with a few notable exceptions.

I will admit that The Gamecock Battalion had its faults. I remember the old Sergeant that was sexually harassing the female cadets. The man was a pig. The thing is, he was exposed, and he got what was coming to him. I also readily admit that the training exercises were not precision examples of infantry tactics, but poorly orchestrated gaggles of people. The thing is, the real infantry soldiers conducting raids in Iraq started out learning how to patrol by walking in poorly orchestrated gaggles. Axe hints at this, and begins to make that point that ROTC uses infantry tactics as its training vehicle to teach leadership. The problem is that he doesn't emphasize it well. The point of those exercises literally was to see how the cadet leaders reacted when things went bad, and not to prepare them for conducting the perfect raid on an insurgent bomb making factory in Fallujah. New Lieutenants coming out of ROTC still have a great deal of full time training before they get sent out onto the battlefields.

Furthermore, Axe seems to have cherry-picked the cadets that he interviewed to back up his obvious anti-war and anti-Army bias. He for the most part bases his book the few cadets who failed, had doubts about the program, felt persecuted, were sub-standard, and or were not respected by the majority of the cadet battalion. I would not argue with wanting to present that side of the story if he had based his book on the majority of cadets. The majority of young men and women were there to learn how to be leaders so that they could simply go and serve their country.

My question is this, why wasn't I interviewed? Why weren't the majority of fellow cadets like me interviewed? The answer comes when I look up that the wall as I write this review. On the wall above my desk are the framed mementos of my time in ROTC. I look up and see my diplomas from Airborne School and Air Assault School. I see my Commission. I see the things that would in Axe's eyes, made me one of those "hardcore" cadets hell bent on getting to the "sandbox" so I could start killing savages. To him I would be a blood thirsty killer, because I was a "squared away" cadet, and not one of the minority of cadets with a chip on my shoulder. Thing is, if he had taken the time to ask me or the majority of my fellow cadets some questions he would have not been able to write this book the way he did. He would have had to write a story about young men and women who joined up to serve their country, have an adventure, be leaders, and do their part despite all the hardships. He would have to write a book about people who see that there is a job to be done, and they figure that it might as well be them leading in its completion. Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War was written about the University of South Carolina's Army ROTC, but it was not written about the USC Army ROTC that I served in, and led.

- 2LT Samuel T. Brown
United States Army, Aviation

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Amateur Journalism with an Axe to grind, February 25, 2008

By 

Ryan M. Crosby "clamchowdah222" (Fort Bragg, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War (Hardcover)

Full disclosure: I am a serving Army officer, a product of ROTC, and OIF veteran. I'm no right-winger, didn't vote for Bush, and was glad to see Rumsfeld go. But I went into Army 101 thinking it would be a snapshot of ROTC, for better or for worse, and was unpleasantly surprised by the tone of this micro-novel and the half-truths I found on every page.

It was a very quick read, without any weighty intellectualism to slow me down as I tore through this nasty little book. Axe-- a writer for the Village Voice, no less-- finds a way to work his anti-war sentiment into every crevice of this book while simultaneously failing to accurately capture the spirit and motivation of the young men and women who are preparing to lead the next generation of American Soldiers. Axe skips out on the key notes-- the patriotism of these cadets, their desire to serve their country, regardless of our President or foreign policy-- and then dishonors them by highlighting their shortcomings and smears the more motivated amongst them with the typical catcalls of warmonger and babykiller, although couched in more contemporary terms. Other comments here suggest that he missed the more motivated and "squared-away" demographic of cadets, and I'm unsurprised that he found time to talk to the ones who couldn't hack it. Smart, motivated, successful young men and women who are eager to serve their nation and willing to face death in defense of their principles aren't the sort of thing that gets a lot of ink in the Village Voice.

I hate to use the term "agitprop", but I'm afraid this book is little more than that, and rather unexceptional agitprop indeed. Michael Moore writes books like this, only with better research, less obfuscation of his bias, and just as much ignorance.

Not worth the money in hardcover, and I doubt it will last the test of time. Skip this, or wait until a paperback copy lands in the free book bin of your local second-hand book store.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Great Subject - Disappointing Results, May 3, 2007

By 

GraniteSapper (Corvallis, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War (Hardcover)

As a current ROTC Professor of Military Science, I was very excited to learn that a book had been written about Army ROTC. I ordered a couple of copies and I and the staff read on, hoping to incorporate the book into our Freshman course. I will say that the book is at least written at the high school / college freshman level, so it has that going for it (and that it can be read in a couple of hours). Unfortunately, Axe does a woeful job in accurately portraying a "Year in the Life" of an ROTC program, and too often intersperses expletive-laden descriptors as color commentary, and throws in the occasional Political-Military opinion into the mix, disrupting the flow of the narrative and turning off many readers in mid-stream.

This book did not do its theme and subjects great justice, and I hope a better book on the Reserve Officer's Training Course does surface in the near future - particularly in these times our nation deserves a better appreciation as to what its sons and daughters do to adequately prepare them to be junior leaders in this ever-changing Contemporary Operating Environment.