50 years after end of draft, fewer enlisting
Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the all-volunteer armed forces, a day that ended the U.S. military draft and ushered in what many political leaders say became a more professional era in the armed services.
Retired Army Lt. Col. Bob Orkand — a former Houston high school teacher — commanded an all-volunteer infantry battalion in Georgia from 1972 to 1973, as part of the experimental VOLAR project designed to help the U.S. army transition to complete volunteerism.
Amid the U.S. military withdraw from Vietnam, widespread public objection to the draft and the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Orkand said it was a difficult time to transition to an all-volunteer force. And to this day, he continues to hold mixed feelings about the change.
Orkand — later the commander of VFW Post 6182 in Katy — said he is still debating whether ending required military service was the right decision.
“Some form of service, be it Peace Corps or teaching in the inner-city schools — maybe it’d be a good thing for our nation, for young men and young women upon graduating from high school to serve two years in some form of community service and then get their college paid for,” Orkand said. “I’d be all in favor for something like that if that ever came about.”
Orkand, who saw combat with 7th Calvary Regiment, George Custer’s former outfit, during the Vietnam War and then remained in the Army for a 20-year career, said he was not a volunteer.
“I was drafted out of Columbia University during my senior year,” Orkand said. “Can you imagine that? One semester to go, and doggone Uncle Sam said, ‘I need you.’”
Retired Sgt. Kayla Giuliano, a “Motor T” operator in the Marine Corps, was deployed overseas twice: to Iraq in 2006 and Afghanistan in 2010. On her second two-year trip overseas, the Afghan deployment, Giulinao said she ran over five explosive devises with her truck and earned a combat action ribbon.
A high school sophomore in Florida during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Giuliano said she made the decision to serve in the military after tearing apart her knee and losing a scholarship to play soccer in college.
“I had signed up halfway through my senior year, so I was already locked in before I even graduated high school,” Giuliano said. “I would put money that most who graduated in 2002 and for the next decade joined because of Sept. 11th.”
At the time she joined the Marines, Giuliano said the branch was just 6 percent woman.
“I’m incredibly fortunate that I was born of a generation that women were allowed to volunteer, so I’m very thankful for that,” Giuliano said, “I have a lot of older aunts and older cousins that say they wish they could have [volunteered], and they could have. They were in the time frame that could have, but they knew it would have been frowned upon by the males in the family.”
An internal Defense Department survey obtained by NBC News in 2022 found that less than 10 percent of young Americans eligible to serve in the military had any inclination to do so, the lowest number since 2007.
And despite reducing its recruiting goals, the Army expected to miss its goal by at least 21,000 active-duty troops in 2023.
Now a public affairs professional in Colorado with the Department of Veterans Affairs, Guiliano said she thinks serving the United States is one the best things a citizen can do.
“Moving forward right now, women in the military are the fastest growing demographic, and it’s actually the fastest growing demographic in the VA for getting their benefits,” Guiliano said. “So I know the generations behind me of woman are wanting to serve, which I think is really, really cool.”