OneWorld.net (U.S.)

LOS ANGELES, Sep 4 (OneWorld) - Trained as a machine gunner, 32-year-old Jorge Reyes Jr. served 10 years in the U.S. Army and had considered a career in the armed services. But after a tour as a rear gunner on hum-vees in Iraq, he decided to leave the military when his term was up, and is now on his way to college.

© warcomeshome.org (courtesy TELACU)"On my way out -- on my last day there -- an RPG [rocket propelled grenade] shattered our Chinook [helicopter] and it just missed us," Reyes told OneWorld. "I was like, [expletive], on my last day in Iraq I almost get blown up and it was just a week before that that 12 people were killed in a Chinook."

Reyes had to have reconstructive knee surgery, but he considers himself lucky. Four soldiers in his division were shot in the head and lived. One of his closest friends was blinded for life.

"It's those kinds of things that make you understand that there's more out there for you," he added.

Still, it was difficult for Reyes to get on with his life after a decade in the armed forces. He said he had become addicted to the rush of battle and become used to the camaraderie of the service. By his own admission, he spent his first two years as a civilian "doing nothing."

When he finally flew home to Los Angeles and enrolled in the local community college he found himself adrift and failing.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, veterans are much less likely to graduate from college than students who have never served in the military. The department's most recent data shows just 3 percent of veterans who entered a four-year college program in 1995 graduated by 2001, compared with a 30-percent overall graduation rate.

"The hardest thing for me was computers," Reyes said. "I joined the military in 1997 and from 1997 until 2007 technology has changed dramatically, while the only thing I learned during those years was how to clean my M-16 or how to mount up a 50-caliber machine gun."

He also had trouble relating to the other students. At 18-20 years old, most of his classmates were a decade younger than him. They had not been to war, had not been in the military, and their lack of discipline grated on him during class.

His break came when a girlfriend introduced him to the Veterans Upward Bound program after getting a scholarship from the TELACU Foundation.

Founded in 1968 as a series of not-for-profit companies to bring vitality to the run-down, mostly Latino, East Los Angeles section of Southern California, TELACU is home to one of only 44 programs in the United States that helps veterans reintegrate into the education system after a life in the military.

There, Reyes found a friendly atmosphere of fellow veterans, and teachers who taught him computer skills and helped him brush up on the material he learned in high school -- but had since forgotten.

"We're finding that a lot of veterans who don't have a stepping stone program don't complete [college], or they enroll into college and they're placed into remedial English and remedial math," TELACU's Nani Escudero told OneWorld.

"It's not because they're not savvy," she said, "but because they've been away from school for five, ten, or fifteen years, so they don't have that foundation that they had in high school. So we academically prepare them for college-level English and college-level math and also just prepare them for the classroom environment."

With the help of TELACU and Veterans Upward Bound, Jorge Reyes is now passing his classes at Glendale Community College and is planning to transfer into a certificate program in gerontology at the University of Southern California or California State University, Los Angeles.

In the meantime, he's working as a site manager for Casa Maravilla senior center in East LA -- on the job experience he hopes will prepare him for his post-military career.

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