TALES FROM THE FRONT:
Promises not kept

Ben Mayer, 24, is a U.S. Army veteran of the Iraq War and a student at UCI.

Army tells teenage prospect he'd get college funds without having to fight. Seven years later, the sergeant has seen combat zones, but no tuition.

By Daniel Tedford

Updated: Saturday, April 26, 2008 9:54 PM PDT

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Editor's note: This is the first in a six-part series about war veterans who are members of the Veterans Student Union at UCI.

You've heard Ben Mayer's story before.

He was a kid growing up in a big city suburb with a family that didn't have enough money to send him to school. An 8-year-old Mayer saw his big brother become a Marine. He said he would never join the military, but as the college years approached, his options were limited.

"I never intended a military career," Mayer said.

To his mother's chagrin, a 17-year-old Mayer bartered a deal to get the education package he wanted in exchange for joining the Army Reserves.

It's not a deal he regrets, but he doesn't feel he was given what he was promised.

The promises?

Mayer said he was told there was "not a chance" he would be deployed to a combat zone, yet he ended up serving in Iraq from October 2005 to October 2006.

He said he was told he would receive in-state tuition for schooling, no matter where he decided to attend. At both UCI and Saddleback College, that turned out not to be the case, he said.

Mayer, 24 and a slouching 6-feet-tall with a narrow face, can be found most days wearing a baseball cap -- most often supporting his hometown Seattle Seahawks football team.

He is set to graduate from UCI this quarter and plans to study abroad before going to law school. He and some of the other student veterans at the university have started a Veterans Student Union on the campus -- a group that gives student veterans the chance to find camaraderie among those who share their experiences.

Mayer, a sergeant, was deployed to Balad, Iraq, with the Army's 10th Mountain unit in October 2005. His specialty was electronics, but he recalls doing only two months of electronics work there.

Mayer coped amid the mortar fire in Iraq by focusing on his tasks but the experience "hit me like a ton of bricks" and "no one knows how to prepare for uncertainty."

But it wasn't all bad.

"Wow," he recalls thinking. "I'm in the cradle of civilization."

Then a different reality would take over.

"I thought about dying," he said. "It's scary. You learn death is everywhere."

You learn plenty of things.

Mayer likes the idea of diplomacy. His instincts are against war, and he struggled with the idea of fighting people he knew nothing about.

"We are supposed to be in opposition, but we don't know who they are or what they stand for," he said. "What could be more personal than setting a mortar off and killing someone? If I could speak their language, some potential best friends could be out there."

His family support made his transition back from Iraq a relatively smooth one. But for some time, Mayer didn't tell anyone at the university he was in the Army. He didn't like the attention servicemen got from civilians, albeit mostly positive.

But when he found out there were other student veterans on campus, he felt at peace with being open about his service. He even helped to hold a public forum on campus in which veterans shared their views and experiences.

Mayer doesn't regret his decision to join the military -- he still has two years left of reservist duty -- but he's leery of what war can do to young men and women.

"They are young, 18 years old," he said of high school students signing up for duty. "To what extent are they really making a conscious decision?"

Mostly, Mayer believes that a promise is a promise, and if soldiers are willing to risk their lives, they ought to get more in return.

"Why don't they give these guys what they deserve?"

Name: Ben Mayer

Age: 24

Hometown: Woodinville, Wash.ington

Career Goal: Lawyer

Voting for: Barack Obama

What most people don't know about Iraq?

"There are a crap-load of civilians there. The amount of civilians there shocked me."

DANIEL TEDFORD may be reached at (714) 966-4632 or at daniel.tedford@latimes.com.