On Sept. 11, 2001, Col. Mark Milley '80 was stationed in Hawaii as chief of staff of the 25th Light Infantry Division of the United States Army. At three o'clock that morning, he was roused suddenly from his sleep.
"Sir, turn on your television," he was told. "Our nation is under attack."
Minutes later, the base was on full alert, and though no one knew exactly what the situation was, Milley and his men were ready to defend their country.
Milley was not the only Princetonian standing at arms that day. Each year, half a dozen or so University graduates enter military service, either as part of their commitment to the on-campus Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), through the Marine Officer Candidate School or through a bevy of other military recruitment programs.
For these men and women — from career military officials like Milley to newly-commissioned alumni or ROTC cadets — the aftermath of 9/11 was filled not only with the pain and sadness that so many Americans shared, but also with a newfound sense of purpose and mission.
Some, like Second Lt. Gabriel Legendy '05, completed ROTC training, became officers and were subsequently deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Others, however, including Gabriel's brother, Conrad '07, grew estranged with some of what the U.S. government was doing after the attacks and decided to part ways with the military, pursuing other means of serving their country.
"The events of 9/11 brought meaning to my future commitment and a very real perspective on the world and service in the U.S. Army," said Kyle Torpey '04, now a first lieutenant serving as an engineer in a search-and-rescue unit near Washington, D.C, the same unit that responded to the attack on the Pentagon.
The decision to serve
Though the attacks didn't cause a bump in the number of Princetonians signing up to serve, it bolstered the motivation of those who had already decided to do so, said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Williams, an officer with the Tiger Battalion who was training cadets after 9/11.
"What we started seeing a year after it happened was [an attitude among the cadets] of, 'I'm really going to serve a purpose. I'm going to live up to that Princeton motto. I'm really going to do something that has an impact on what happens in the world.' "
For other cadets, however, there was frustration that the country was only then waking up to something they had known for some time: that America was vulnerable and that more Americans needed to sign up to defend their country.
"The attacks on September 11 made me very angry," said George Schwartz '07, an ROTC cadet. It wasn't because the attacks had affected him much personally but "because people were surprised that it happened, especially after the USS Cole and [African] embassy bombings" had occurred just a few years before.
"It took 3,000 Americans to die to get people motivated. Maybe if we had taken action sooner, we might have saved those lives," he said.
For Schwartz, who has wanted to join the military since he was 12, the prospect of combat did not deter him from service. "I was relieved when I heard we were going," he said. "It's going to be unpleasant, but you ask for it and you get it. I didn't join up so that I would not have to do my job."
The Iraq campaign
Gabriel Legendy joined the Tiger Battalion at the end of his sophomore year, two weeks after the U.S. military entered Iraq. The 9/11 attacks occurred three days after he had moved into his freshman dorm room. He joined ROTC out of a sense of duty.
"I am grateful for the opportunities and liberties I have as a first-generation American," Legendy said in an email, "and a few years of service is a price I'm willing to pay to ensure that the next generation can enjoy those same opportunities."
Legendy was deployed to Iraq exactly eight months after graduating from the University, and attended Basic School and moved to Germany in the interim. He is currently deployed on his first tour of duty in Iraq, serving in the 39th Transportation Control Battalion, stationed at Baghdad International Airport.
"It's tough to put up with the day-in, day-out aspect of Iraq," Legendy said. "It's difficult to come in each day with renewed enthusiasm, knowing that no matter how well you do your job today, tomorrow could eat you alive, and the day after tomorrow you'll be at it again."
First Lt. Peter Hegseth '03, similarly compelled by a sense of duty, entered the Army reserve after completing his infantry training. A week after he had started work at Bear Stearns, an investment bank in New York, Hegseth's unit was called up for duty. He had a month to prepare before shipping out to Guantanamo Bay.
After a yearlong deployment in Cuba, Hegseth returned home for two months before deciding that the active duty army was the place for him. He requested a transfer to the 101st Airborne Division and joined it in Iraq two weeks later, serving as a platoon leader and civil affairs officer in both Baghdad and Samarra for 13 months.
"I very much had the feeling that I was missing something," Hegseth said of his return to civilian life. "When I was in school I was very much behind the decision to go into Iraq, so I felt the need in some way or another to back up my words."
"I thought that what we're doing in Iraq is very important and, if we fail, what would that mean for our national security interests for years to come?"
The choice to get out
On September 11 of this year, five years after the attacks of 2001, Conrad Legendy, Gabriel's younger brother, was on a flight back from Afghanistan. But he wasn't returning from military service there. Instead, he had been teaching English and German at the University of Herat.
Legendy, a former ROTC cadet, decided last year that he wanted to disassociate himself from the U.S. military. Two years earlier, while still a University freshman, he had taken a course on Afghan history, assuming that it would figure significantly in his future work. He was hooked. He spent the summer before his junior year in Afghanistan. It was there that his plans began to change.
In Afghanistan, he watched sporadic news reports of Hurricane Katrina, its devastating effect on the United States and the federal government's slow response. "So as the response to the storm shocked the country ... I was still in Afghanistan wondering if ... maybe there really was serious incompetence at the highest levels of our government," Legendy said in an email. "I like to say that I'm willing to risk my life for my own stupid ideas, but not for someone else's, especially if I'm unconvinced they know what they're doing."
Only years earlier, he had been a staunch advocate of the policies of the Bush administration and had looked forward to serving in the military. "I was an idealistic guy and believed every word the government said ... so hell yeah, I supported the war in Iraq," he said. "When I ended up getting to Princeton, it seemed like the natural thing to do, to join ROTC."
When Legendy returned to Princeton from Afghanistan, he told his commanders about his decision. "I was pretty surprised by their reactions," he said. "It meant a lot to me that none of the officers tried to convince me to stay with it, knowing that my mind was made [up]."
Gabriel Legendy took no issue with his brother's decision to leave military service. "We joined for different reasons," he said. "His decision to leave was also for his own reasons, which I support."
Since leaving ROTC, Conrad decided to further his interest in the region and its future through other means. "Working with people in Afghanistan has a much more direct relation to 9/11 than just being in the military," he said. "Let's not forget, they were the Taliban/Al-Qaeda alliance's first victims."
Along with teaching in Afghanistan this past summer, with his advisor, Near Eastern Studies professor Michael Barry, Legendy devised a plan to have a nongovernmental organization fund travel to Afghanistan for University students, but that organization withdrew its support after riots in Kabul on May 29 this year.
For other ROTC graduates like Cpt. Sarah Apgar '02, there were different reasons for reconsidering a career in the military. Apgar joined ROTC her freshman year; entered the 52nd Engineer Battalion, part of the 101st Airborne Division, after graduation; and served in Iraq during the first year of military engagement there.
The September 11 attacks had occurred during Apgar's senior year at Princeton, and she sensed some changes in her own attitude and that of her fellow cadets. "It was all very surreal at first," she said in an email. "We hadn't been trained in college at all for [combat deployment overseas] as the focus was on leadership opportunity and the money we were getting."
"The [new] reality of the Army was very different from what the Army was selling at the point when we had [joined]," she said. "It affected [us cadets] most in terms of attitudes, putting a new face on this institution and what the job meant in terms of actually going to fight for something, for freedom overseas."
In Iraq, Apgar and her unit encountered a multitude of challenges, several of which she did not expect. "The reality of what happens on the ground is that your resources are extremely limited," she said. "Having to convoy for eight hours to reach a construction site was not something we were prepared for, and using river rock instead of gravel doesn't really make roads very well."
Apgar will be leaving the Army for civilian life this fall, after completing her required four years of service. "Going through the last four years, I was open-minded," she said, "but it's not the lifestyle that I want to sustain."
"The biggest problem now is that having done this and been through this, it's an awful experience," she added. "There's a mass exodus of officers who don't want that lifestyle and are very frustrated. The Army's biggest challenge in the post-9/11 world will be losing a lot of the young people that otherwise signed up for this but now realize it's just not worth it."
Others, of course, disagree.
"I believe that cadets now have a cause," said Sgt. First Class Lee Morales of the Tiger Battalion. "Everything has a cause and effect. The kids that are here now have a real belief for the cause and as to what they're going to contribute."
"In their hearts, they want to be part of the solution as opposed to part of the problem."
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