The Recruiters' War; Under increasingly intense pressure to fill their quotas and "make mission," army and Marine recruiters have been enlisting kids who don't meet basic physical, moral, and educational standards.

Byline: Michael Bronner

Near the western edge of North Carolina, bright-green kudzu vine spills like water down the hillsides of the Great Smoky Mountains. The kudzu seems to close in on the landscape at dusk. That's when Tim Queen likes to run, 10 to 15 miles at a time on country roads-training ground for the Marine Tim once hoped to become.

He's a tough kid. He ranks "cliff-jumping off of waterfalls" high among his hobbies. He's from a tough place: Cherokee County is one of the poorest, most sparsely populated parts of North Carolina, hill country where the descendants of Scotch-Irish settlers still speak with a unique southern brogue that takes some getting used to. (It's also where Eric Rudolph, the accused serial bomber of two abortion clinics, a lesbian nightclub, and Centennial Olympic Park, in Atlanta, lived off the land-and, some say, the sympathy of the locals-for five years as a fugitive before being caught.)

Tim was raised in a small home on seven acres with a brother and two sisters. His father, John, works on the production line at an auto-parts manufacturer. His mother, Sheilah, works at the local trout-processing plant, Carolina Mountain. Like most families in the area, the Queens are capable people, getting by on very little. They grow a lot of their own food-squash, cucumbers, okra, corn, beans, tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, radishes, and watermelons, all out back of their house.

In the spring of 2000, just out of high school, Tim was working part-time with his mom at the trout plant and taking welding classes at the community college. One morning, two Marine Corps recruiters arrived on campus in their dress blues and set up a "fruit stand" (a recruiting table). They rarely made the trip all the way out to Andrews, Tim's hometown, but one of the administrators at the college was an old Marine Corps master sergeant, so they were always welcome. That morning, they caught Tim Queen's eye. "I think I may be joining you soon," he announced.

Tim caught the recruiters' eyes, too. It was crunch time, a couple of days before the end of the month, and they needed one more body to "make mission"-their monthly quota. Timmy Queen would be that body.

The trip to Tim's school was a training run for the younger Marine, Sergeant Jimmy Massey, who'd been on recruiting duty less than a year. He was out with his gunnery sergeant, Tim Dalhouse, being shown the ropes. Massey wasn't new to the Marine Corps. He'd been in for eight years already, several of them working with new recruits as an infantry instructor at basic training at Parris Island. He planned to retire from the Marine Corps an old man; he was in for the long haul, and for many career Marines, doing a tour on recruiting duty is a gauntlet worth running, a roll-of-the-dice that can fast-track your career, all but guaranteeing promotion if you're good. If you're not, however, it can be a career-ender.