AMY SZPARA

LAPLACE – While most of his friends back home were enjoying the summer before their senior year of high school, one LaPlace teen was up at 4 a.m. daily spending the long hours of the hottest months of the year on a rifle range firing an M-16, on the roads of Ft. Sill running miles and marching with a heavy rucksack on his back and in the mosquito-ridden woods training for battle. David Cortez, 18, of La-Place, is a senior at Riverside High School this year, but he spent the first couple of months of summer in Okla-homa completing his basic training for the Army. After graduating from basic Aug. 10, Cortez returned home for a few days of relaxation be-fore time for school to start back Aug. 16. He will spend nine weeks next summer at Ft. Jackson, S.C. training as a light wheel mechanic working on Hum-mers and two-and-a-half ton trucks. This year will be devoted to three classes at Riverside daily, drilling with the Louis-iana Army National Guard one weekend a month at the Jackson Barracks in New Or-leans and visiting area high schools to recruit for the National Guard. Cortez is a member of the National Guard, and he chose to do his basic training this summer and his advanced individual training next summer. By August 2002, he can be back in time to start college, having never missed a beat. College is part of the reason Cortez chose the National Guard. He plans to attend a college in Louisiana and is considering Louisiana Tech in Ruston and Louisiana College in Pineville. If he attends a public state college, he will receive full tuition exemption. He will also receive the Mont-gomery G.I. Bill while attending classes. Aside from college, Cortez had other reasons for joining the military. “I needed a little discipline,” he said. “I also wanted to get my parents to really trust me, to get ready for the world.” According to Cortez, his parents, Eddie and Patty Cortez, were “quiet” when he told them he wanted to join. “My mom told me to think about it, and my dad was real quiet. I did it in a period of a week,” he said. After taking the ASVAB, a standardized test given to people considering the service, Cortez was contacted by a recruiter. Of basic training, he said, “It was rough, but if you just did what they said, you got through it,” he said. “The hardest part would have to be the gas chamber, overcoming the fear of going in there.” Soldiers in training are required to enter a gas chamber wearing a gas mask, then remove the mask to recite their full name, rank and social security number. The gas burns the skin and membranes causing the eyes and nose to run. “I was not a good gas person,” said Cortez, who added that he vomited in the chamber. But, he was good at throwing grenades and received an expert badge for his precision. “I can’t shoot, but I can blow stuff up,” he said, adding that he is a “marksman” shooter. Cortez also found he wasn’t half bad at his physical fitness tests, as he scored fairly high on the tests. Excitedly, he added he got to fire a grenade launcher, a rocket launcher and a Squad Auto Weapon (SAW). “The first day you couldn’t think of anything,” said Cor-tez of his introduction to the military. “They just kept screaming at you.” He added that waking up at 4 a.m. isn’t as difficult as it seems. “The drill sergeant runs in and screams at you. When the drill sergeant wakes you up, you get up,” he said. Cortez said the best thing about basic training was hanging out with battle buddies, the friends he made from around the country. He plans to keep in touch, and one of the guys is a Louisianian who is also in the National Guard and will be training with him at Ft. Jackson. Cortez said he decided to break his training up so he didn’t have to go straight through. “I got at least half of it over, and after I finish next summer, I can go to college,” he said. He will be the youngest recruiter in Louisiana this year. The 18-year-old E-1 will go to high schools to recruit, since he will only attend school a half day. He will also be getting paid for recruiting. He will recruit in area parishes such as Orleans and St. James. Now that Cortez is back home, he said, “You find out that everything changes. When you come home, everything has just changed. My maturity has changed. My parents treat me different, like an adult. It’s nice.” Cortez said his friends are starting to get used to some of the military lingo he picked up, and they are even starting to understand the “new him.”