Since someone evidently thinks we still harbor a teenager under our roof, there arrived in the mail the other day, addressed to said former teenager, a handsome brochure declaring on its cover, "Your life is about to change forever."

And no, it wasn't meant to be cynical.

This was a recruitment piece for the Army National Guard, and it pulled out all the star-spangled stops.

'"You cherish freedom, your country, your friends and family," went the narrative. "Serve in the Army National Guard and you'll defend America, its values and those you love most."

There was a time when such high-flying rhetoric would have seemed, well, overwrought for an organization that, despite the importance of its duties, remained distinctly removed from the front lines of our nation's conflicts. Sure, a Guard unit might be sent into harm's way, but it just didn't happen very often.

That was then. Now it's a different story entirely. As The N&O's Jay Price reported a few days ago, North Carolina's Army National Guard contingent numbers some 9,900 troops. About half of them face the daily risks and hardships of service in eastern Iraq, where any given patrol or supply run can become a nightmare of crashing RPG rounds or roadside bombs.

The brochure-writers offer fair warning, of a sort. "You'll normally train part-time," they tell their young prospects, "but you'll be ready to serve whenever and wherever you are needed." Got it? "So you can go to college or work full-time. In the Guard, you'll train to be a citizen-warrior...ready to serve anytime, anywhere." Including places where terrorists are thick on the ground.

It's hardly a surprise that the Tar Heel Guard is pushing the recruiting pedal to the metal. The organization's North Carolina recruitment chief, Lt. Col. Mark Nelson, told Price that sign-ups for the year ending Sept. 30 totaled some 1,400, compared with a goal of 1,700. One problem is that regular Army soldiers, having had a bellyful of wartime service, aren't joining the Guard in the accustomed numbers once their active duty stints are over.

Don't get me wrong -- the National Guard's forthright appeal to the patriotism and ambition of young men and women on the cusp between high school and who knows what seems perfectly fair, even helpful in explaining what could be a fine avenue for many.

Yes, there are risks. But that's always been the case for those who shoulder the burden of national defense.

Still, a debate is heating up these days over whether that burden is being fairly distributed. It's a familiar issue, with echoes from the Vietnam era, when draft exemptions kept many young men of privilege out of uniform, or when connections in high places yielded shelter in a National Guard that seldom sent its members into battle.

Conversely, draft board quotas often were filled from the ranks of the poor, the uneducated, or even people like my basic training pal Bruce Guex (pronounced gay), a wise-cracking kid from Wisconsin who told me he'd been in some kind of trouble and was allowed to choose the Army over the local slammer.

Today's armed forces, of course, are 100 percent voluntary -- but it's reasonable to wonder if the hardships of service continue to be borne by Americans whose prospects for civilian success would be limited. The military has long offered a path of upward mobility for young people who might not have other good options simply because of the circumstances of their upbringing. So are the rest of us satisfied to let them do the fighting and dying on our behalf?

As might be expected, recruiting pressures are intense not just for the National Guard and reserves but for the regular services as well. There's a bit of a surprise, though, in the extent to which those pressures stem from the services' high standards, not a shortage of candidates. It's the rare recruit who doesn't have a high school diploma, and trouble with the law typically means thumbs down. Those allowed to join tend to be sharp, committed to the notion of serving their country, and generally squared away.

All of which suits the top brass to a T. It surely was more difficult to turn draftees and people who enlisted mainly to avoid being drafted into effective troops. Today's high-tech military just doesn't have much room for Beetle Bailey.

So we've come up with a recruiting system focused on bright kids who for one reason or another aren't following the crowd into college, at least not right out of high school. What has to be hoped is that they fully understand what they're getting into. For those who answer the call, anticipating the rewards but recognizing the risks, it's hard to be sufficiently grateful.

But there's gratitude also for those who didn't have much of a choice -- remember my friend Bruce Guex. You can find his name in black granite on a certain wall in Washington, panel 30W, line 54. Assigned to the 196th Light Infantry Brigade in Vietnam, he stopped a bullet on March 6, 1969. He was 19.