Of course most of those 55% in the Regular Army are citizens, but the (admittedly ill-chosen) expression "citizen soldiers" refers to what are normally part-time soldiers, who normally serve only short stints.

Incidentally, someone above said the Reserves and National Guard are "young people". It ain't necessarily so. There's a lot of them who are long in the tooth, with graying hair, who have been in those organizations for many years. My ex-son-in-law Bob is one of those; I'd say he's got to be 45 anyway.

And then there are the officers who thought they had served their time and were out. An officer is on the hook for life, if he hasn't affirmatively resigned his commission, and there's a number of officers who thought the service was behind them 20 years ago who have been recalled.

Dave Oesterreich