Multimedia: Six in Uniform

The recruits

A local soldier and five recruits explain why they've chosen a life in uniform.
Watch now »

Slide shows
Four recruits join military ranks
Staff Sgt. Lee Lewis, U.S. Army
Michelle Christopher, Army recruit

Photo by James Lee
Special to The Star

"I wasn't good in school but want to do something with my life," Christopher Maciel said about joining the Army. He scored high on the military's aptitude test and could have qualified for non-combat jobs. He is shown with his mother, Amparo Maciel.

Photo by James Lee
Special to The Star

Christopher Maciel reads a U.S. Army study guide. The Oxnard man said the Army was the best prospect for him after he dropped out of high school last year. He's now training to go to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Sitting on a couch in his parents' Oxnard home, Christopher Maciel burned some time playing the video game "Medal of Honor, Pacific Assault."

Fiddling with the controls of his brother's PlayStation, Maciel only half paid attention as his character "Pistol Pete" wandered the jungles and caves of Guadalcanal and blasted Japanese soldiers.

"I never really liked school," said the compact 19-year-old with a goatee and close-cropped hair.

His fingers flew on the game controls for a moment. "I wasn't good in school but want to do something with my life," he said in a street slang kind of drawl.

On the day that many kids his age graduated from high school, Maciel took a flight to Fort Benning, Ga., to begin nine weeks of basic combat training. Instead of preparing for community college or punching the clock on a collection of minimum wage jobs, Maciel was getting ready to go to Iraq or Afghanistan, a prospect he was perfectly comfortable with.

"They had a lot of jobs to choose from, but I picked infantry," he said. "I think I'll be happier doing that. I mean I don't want to go and kill anyone, but you do what you got to do."

The Army, he said, was his best prospect.

After he dropped out of Pacifica High School in Oxnard last year, and spent a year doing minimum wage jobs at a sandwich shop, a shoe store and a restaurant, he started talking to Army recruiters.

"Everything they said all sounded good to me," he said, "'cause the war in Iraq, I was supporting that since it started but I wasn't able to do anything about it."

As Maciel and the rest of the "future soldiers" stood in two straight lines with their arms folded behind their backs, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Wolf, the Oxnard Armed Forces Career Center commander, told them to hold steady on their goals and focus on getting ready for shipping out to basic training.

Wolf said they could celebrate but warned them about drinking or getting into trouble.

"It's very, very important that you don't shoot yourself in the foot by doing something stupid or hanging around someone who's going to do something stupid," Wolf said. "Don't fall for that peer pressure because you're too close. So don't go out there and do something that's going to get yourself or someone else hurt or killed. I've seen that before. ... Remember what you came in for. Be proud and disciplined."

Though Maciel puts off a street vibe, he grew up in a comfortable house with his parents and his little brother. He had a tough time in school, but it was because he didn't like algebra, not because he was getting into trouble, he said. And although his grades in school were not top notch, he scored high on the military's aptitude test and could have qualified for other non-combat jobs.

Many of his friends have told him he's making a mistake, and his parents worry about him, he said.

"They want me to do something that's less risky," Maciel said.

But since making the decision to join, he said he hasn't had any doubts.

"At first I just wanted to go right away, you know. But waiting gives me some time to get everything ready," he said about two weeks before heading off to basic training.

He met a girl he liked during that time but decided not to take things further with her.

"That's why it's easy to go, like I didn't leave anybody behind," he said.