Why You Should Enlist in the National Guard Before Commissioning

By James B. · National Guard Infantryman · ROTC Cadet · Ranger & Sapper School Graduate

Of all the routes to a commission, writes Army veteran Eric Milzarski at We Are The Mighty, “only one in-road immediately garners respect, admiration, and loyalty.”

He’s talking about Mustangs, officers who were enlisted before they commissioned. This is the case for becoming one. There’s a program that lets you do it: enlist in the National Guard, go to college on the Army’s dime through the Simultaneous Membership Program (SMP), and commission through ROTC. It pays you roughly $1,600 a month to be a full-time student. And it gives you the one thing no commissioning source can put on a training schedule: years spent as and with the Soldiers you’ll one day lead.

At 19, after a year playing college baseball, I walked into a recruiter’s office and signed as an 11B in the National Guard. I went through Infantry OSUT at Fort Benning like every other private: the smoke sessions, the drill sergeants who instilled discipline the hard way, and the camaraderie that only forms between privates who are cold, tired, and hungry at the same time. That’s where you first learn what hardship takes out of a Soldier, what it builds in him, and why. Then I went back to my unit and did the job. Line Soldier. Drill weekends. Annual training. The reality of the profession I will one day lead men through.

The Guard gave back fast. As a private first class, I earned a Ranger School slot through the Ranger Team Leader Initiative, a Guard pipeline that sends top-performing junior enlisted Soldiers to the hardest leadership school in the Army. I graduated with my tab before most of my peers in ROTC learned what a battle drill was. Later, as a cadet, I earned a Sapper slot through ROTC and graduated from Sapper School too.

But the schools were the bonus. The most important lesson from my enlisted years was simpler: I watched good leaders succeed and bad leaders fail, and I learned exactly why each one happened.

Soldiers sort every leader into two categories: leaders who have GAS (give a sh*t) and leaders who don’t. Empathy goes further than any leadership model they teach in a classroom. A leader who has been in that Joe’s shoes knows exactly what he’s asking of him: the reality behind his orders, the weight of them, and the detail it takes to brief a task so a private actually understands the task, the conditions, and the standard. You can’t fake that understanding. You either carried the weight once, or you didn’t.

I’ve served under the leaders who don’t have it. The ones who planned training just to fill time. The ones who didn’t put in the effort to sustain us with enough ammunition for the range, or even chow. Nothing collapses, because the Army never fully collapses, but everything runs at half speed. Effort drops to the minimum. Problems get hidden instead of reported. Good Soldiers quietly walk at the end of their contract. A formation without GAS still marches; it just loses its direction.

And I’ve served under the other kind. The team leader who gives up his own sleep so the platoon leader’s plan is ready by morning. The NCO who pushes a pay problem up the chain of command until every one of his Soldiers gets paid. The PL who talks to each and every Joe knows where he’s from, the hardships he goes through, and what kind of leadership he individually responds to. Soldiers will ruck farther and fight harder for that leader, not because they were ordered to, but because he earned it.

Here’s what I’ve noticed about the best lieutenants I’ve served under: almost all of them saw poor leadership somewhere first and built their own style as the answer to it. That’s the education.

When I commission, I won’t have to go through that trial and error. I met the Soldiers I’ll lead back in Basic. I’ve been one of them.

The program that makes this path work is the SMP. A Guard or Reserve Soldier serves in their unit and attends ROTC at the same time: during drill weekends, you work alongside the platoon leaders you’ll soon become, and during the school week, you’re a full-time student. Between drill pay, the GI Bill with the SMP kicker, and the ROTC stipend, that’s roughly $1,600 a month in your pocket, on top of state tuition assistance that in many states covers the tuition bill outright. And every enlisted year counts toward your years in service for pay purposes as an officer, a head start worth tens of thousands over your first years as a commissioned officer.

The path has fine print. Scholarship money can lock you into a component before you understand what you’re giving up; read every line before you sign. It takes longer than showing up on a four-year scholarship, and you’ll spend drill weekends in the field while your classmates sleep in.

Good. That’s the point. The Army needs LTs who’ve carried the radio, pulled security at 0300, and watched both kinds of leadership up close, because those lieutenants already know exactly which kind they’ll be.

If you’re thinking about the officer corps, go be a Soldier first. The full breakdown of the program (the money, the timeline, the contract details) is in the complete SMP guide at WarfighterForged, built from the path I’m living right now.

My leadership style didn’t come from a PowerPoint. It came from seeing the results of how I’ve been led through my enlisted years.

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James B. is a National Guard infantryman, ROTC cadet, and graduate of Ranger School and the Sapper Leader Course. He writes at warfighterforged.com.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.