It's not as if there were some grand scheme or blood oath. It just happened this way: Three buddies from rural Damascus High School set off for the nation's three military academies.
Shawn "Garrett" Linton, homecoming king, set out for the U.S. Naval Academy; James Bennett, who talked of reaching the Joint Chiefs of Staff, headed to West Point; class valedictorian Paul F. Geehreng, followed his love of flying to the Air Force Academy.
The trio -- three of the four legs of the Damascus relay team -- charged from their graduation in 1993 into a military ailing from the frustrations of downsizing.
Five years later, at a time when pilots, ship commanders and submariners are staying in the military only long enough to pay back the requirement for their expensive training and to land jobs in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street, the three Montgomery County friends say they will put in a full 20 years.
In the face of widespread failure to retain its officers, the military apparently did something right with Linton, Bennett and Geehreng.
Says Linton: "I've got friends back home who already feel stuck in dead-end jobs that they're not happy in. I don't have that problem."
On the nation's birthday, it's appropriate to ask: Who are the 1.2 million women and men in Army, Navy and Air Force uniforms?
With the ranks shrunk to the lowest level in a generation, how can the Pentagon prevent more of them from leaving to take a bite of a booming economy? The Navy Times, for example, surveyed officers earlier this year and found that three of four were considering leaving the Navy, as were 95 percent of the Navy aviators.
All three branches are struggling to retain more officers, offering them bonuses and pay boosts, master's degrees and limits on unwanted travel.
"We ask these people to be gone from their families a lot," said Capt. Lane Willson, head of Officer Plans and Policy for the Navy. "They start comparing what they're doing for a living to the private sector and wondering if they can have a better lifestyle there."
The Damascus three say they are hooked on the perks of a military lifestyle: global travel and postgraduate education. And while they sometimes feel like another tree in a very big forest, they have made close friends and grown professionally by staying optimistic -- and footloose.
The trio has set foot in 30 countries.
As officers, they rank in the top 15 percent of their branches, bosses over lower-ranked enlisted personnel who may be twice their age. The pay is $37,000 to $47,000. But housing is free, they get extra money for food, 30 vacation days a year and free military flights around the world.
Military's drawbacks
The biggest problems arise from the fact that not since before World War II have so few people been in uniform, which means longer tours overseas and no banker's hours for anyone.
Jim Bennett has been engaged to be married twice, only to see 14- to 17-hour days unravel his nuptial plans. One fiancee couldn't stand how the Army could send him 10 times zones away at any moment and how he couldn't say no.
"The Army is the bane of my personal life," he said, driving through his hometown and past Damascus High -- coincidentally, on graduation day last month.
Still, looking back on his aimless high school days, Bennett realizes that the Army was the perfect job.
"I was a good problem-solver, could think quickly on my feet, liked to lead, and wasn't truly excellent at any one thing; rather I was pretty good at a lot of things," he said.
After West Point, Bennett went to Army flight school in Alabama. He shipped off to Colorado Springs in 1994 to begin three years of flying and supervising a platoon of Blackhawk helicopters, scary-looking 60-foot, dual-propeller workhorses. As platoon leader at age 24, he was in charge of $25 million worth of equipment and telling wizened vets what to do.
"If you're their boss, they'll do what you tell them to do," said Bennett, a stout man whose roundish face, topped by a short stubble of dark hair, breaks easily into a smile. "But until you earn their respect, that's all they'll do. No more."
A downside of military life is that the Pentagon decides your fate. Then again, you are never in one place long enough for it to wear on you. "So, if you hate what you're doing, stick it out and in a year you're somewhere else," Bennett said.
Somewhere else is half a world away, South Korea. Bennett hopes his forthcoming stint there will help keep the lure of civilian life at bay by leading him one step closer to his goal: becoming an astronaut, an opportunity a few Army aviators get each year.
'It's a great job'
But first he was best man at the wedding of his best friend, Paul Geehreng, who discovered how to make a relationship work: Marry another military person. His wife, Charlotte, is an Air Force nurse;, by policy, they will be assigned to the same base from now on.
Geehreng grew up across the street from Bennett, in a similar one-story brick rancher surrounded by farmland that's now suburbia.
Unlike Bennett, Geehreng has long known that the Air Force was the ultimate outlet for a childhood fascination with flying that started as bird-watching and evolved into model planes.
"My first research paper in fifth grade was on World War I aviation. By junior high, I was writing to the Air Force Academy for brochures," said Geehreng, who is taller and thinner than his Army buddy, with an angular face and sharp chin.
"It seemed the only logical way to combine a passion for flying and a calling to serve. That probably sounds pretty corny, but that's how I feel."
Geehreng almost didn't make it. After graduating from his academy, his less-than-perfect eyesight disqualified him as a pilot. But as a navigator he serves on a C-130 fat-bellied cargo jet that delivers troops and supplies to remote locations across Asia and the Pacific.
Geehreng, the best-traveled of the trio, has been to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Micronesia and more. He and Charlotte used their vacation days to visit Russia, China, Singapore.
Said Geehreng: "It's a great job. I've gotten to see the world."
And that's why he stays. To see the world while keeping the world at peace.
What doesn't motivate him, he said, is the prospect of war.
"A lot of people make the mistake of picturing military people as warmongers," Geehreng said. "Sometimes I wonder how I would react under fire, but I certainly don't hope for a war."
Life after the academy
Garrett Linton is about as far from war as a military man can be. With a wave of blond hair and deep blue eyes set against a suntan, he looks more surfer than soldier.
These days, his duties begin around 9, and he gets home by 5, giving him plenty of time to exercise, dine with his wife, Christi, or walk on the beach with their dog, Baxter.
As a student at the Navy's post-graduate school in Monterey, Calif., he's getting a taste of what college would have been like someplace other than the Naval Academy. He wears his uniform once a month and can come home for lunch to a rent-free house.
"Military life agrees with me a lot right now," he said, during a recent return to Damascus to see his sister get married -- to a 1996 Naval Academy grad.
A year ago, life was much less agreeable. Serving on the destroyer USS Peterson out of Norfolk, Va., often kept him away from his wife for months. Linton would rise at 4: 45 a.m. to beat the military traffic, returning home at 6 or 7 p.m. That would be followed by lengthy "underway" tours to Greece, Italy, Israel, Cuba and Ecuador. Once he was gone half a year.
Linton said he's glad he and Christi -- whom he met while on spring break in Florida in 1993 -- are waiting to start a family. Six months away from a newborn would be more painful.
"But that's one of the reasons I joined the Navy," Linton said. "It's one of those bittersweet things. When you sign up for the military, you know what you're getting into, and when Christi signed on to be my wife she knew what she was getting into also."
He will spend another year in Monterey getting a master's degree in space systems operations, then head off to a career in cryptography (deciphering codes).
The master's gives Linton not only a new appreciation of Navy life, but also a leg-up for a job after he leaves the Navy.
"You've always got to keep that in the back of your mind," he said.
Former U.S. Rep. Beverly B. Byron -- who nominated the Damascus trio to their respective academies -- sits on an executive panel to the chief of naval operations, which has told the Navy that a key component to retaining officers is giving them advanced degrees.
She said the challenge for today's military is today's youth.
"It's a different young person today than it was 20 years ago," she said. "But there is still a solid group of young Americans who are willing to serve."
Example: During the past week, another 4,000 reported as freshmen at the three academies.
Surviving -- and thriving -- in a downsizing, downcast military
A trio of friends from Damascus High School graduated from the nation's three military academies in 1993. Each now plans a long military career at a time when more and more of their classmates and predecessors are leaving the military for private-sector careers.
Shawn "Garrett" Linton, 27, lieutenant, Navy
Damascus High School: ranked 14th in class; captain of soccer, basketball, track teams
U.S. Naval Academy class rank: 951 out of 1059
1993 classmates still in Navy: 95 percent
Class of 1983 still in Navy: 64 percent
Current job: student at Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, Calif.
Pay: $37,188
Marital status: married
Goal: cryptographer (codebreaker)
Size of U.S. Navy: 390,000; 10 years ago: 600,000 (down 35 percent)
James Bennett, 26, captain, Army
Damascus High School: class salutatorian (just a fraction of a point behind Paul Geehreng)
West Point class rank: 140 of 1037
1993 classmates still in Army: 81 percent
Class of 1983 still in Army: 33 percent
Current job: in charge of air traffic teams, Camp Humphreys, South Korea
Pay: base pay, $37,188; with extras, about $48,000
Marital status: single (engaged twice)
Goal: astronaut
L Size of U.S. Army: 487,000; 10 years ago: 770,000 (down 37%)
Paul F. Geehreng, 26, captain, Air Force
Damascus High School: class valedictorian
Air Force Academy: ranked 120 of 959
1993 classmates still in Air Force: 92 percent
Class of 1983 still in Air Force: 53 percent
Current job: navigator for C-130 cargo plane, Yakota Air Base, Japan
Pay: base pay, $37,188; with extras, about $48,000
Marital status: married, as of July 3, 1998
Goal: squadron commander or diplomat
Size of U.S. Air Force: 373,000; 10 years ago: 566,000 (down 34%)
Pub Date: 7/04/98