United States of America

Image: The Extreme Truck, a 15,700-pound mobile recruitment vehicle that roams the country dazzling prospective soldiers. Photo courtesy of the US Army

For decades, the US military has been using souped-up mobile exhibits to recruit prospective soldiers. In July of this year, the military deployed the latest addition to a fleet that roves the country hoping to win the hearts and minds of American youth. The new vehicle, known as the Extreme Truck, is equipped with two 32-inch gaming stations, a 60-inch flat-screen television, several smaller TVs, and pull-up and push-up platforms. It has its own Facebook page, which, at press time, has been liked 111 times.

The last time Danieldevel Davis got out of prison it was 2012 and he was 38.

He'd been locked up for six years, which was the longest he'd ever lived in one place. Davis grew up in foster homes, dropped out of school in the 11th grade, and then hit the revolving door: streets, juvenile detention, streets, prison. He's never possessed a driver's license. He's never had a bill in his name.

"I've never had anything in my name," he says.

So, this is what happened when Davis went to fill out his financial aid paperwork at a Virginia Beach technical college.

"Have you registered for the Selective Service?" the financial aid officer asked.

"What do you mean?" Davis said.

"Did you register to be drafted?"

"Huh?"

by Ehab Zahriyeh

“If something happens with Russia,” said one cadet to his classmate at Fishburne Military School, “I’m pretty sure all of us are a little bit, you know, maybe not excited but ready. Because that’s what we want to do.”

Another cadet chimed in, saying, “For our whole lives … since I was a little kid, that’s all I ever wanted to do.”

Harold McCoo, however, was less sanguine about the prospects of the battlefield and his schoolmates’ eagerness to enter war. “I don’t want to see them on one of those plaques that we have over in the foyer for former Fishburne cadets who have passed away,” he said.