Many military service members have served multiple tours of duty post 9/11

Many military service members have served multiple tours of duty post 9/11

By Justo Bautista / The Record (Hackensack N.J.)
Sunday, September 11, 2011
HACKENSACK, N.J. - Cleveland Atwater, the night manager at a ShopRite in Rochelle Park, N.J., spent his first tour in Iraq leading a Marine fire team against insurgents in Fallujah.

"We took fire every day and we fired every day," he said. Three men in his unit were killed. Back home, he was initially wary of strangers. "I was always on guard," he said. Less than two years later, he was deployed again.

In the war on terrorism, that is one of the enduring legacies of the 9/11 attacks. The Marine slogan "The few, the proud" sums up the situation for all of the service branches. They are stretched to their limits.


Since 9/11, less than 1 percent of Americans have been doing the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of the more than 2 million soldiers who have served in those war zones, nearly 800,000 have been deployed more than once, according to the Department of Defense.

But Atwater, 34, said he never thought about statistics while dodging rocket-propelled grenades.

"All the guys that went over there were hard chargers," he said. "They wanted to be there.

The draft ended in 1973, and it is unlikely to be revived. But a draft won’t solve anything if draftees don’t want to fight, some veterans say.

"It’s not a numbers game," said Eric Hollenstein, 27, a Riverdale, N.J., police officer who served with Atwater. "It’s about heart. I want people that volunteer and want to be there."
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