Luke Kamunen began to wonder if he'd made a mistake the moment he
arrived for basic training. He was still in the airport at Fort
Jackson, S.C., with other members of his Minnesota National Guard
unit, when an officer reprimanded him publicly for leaving a paper
cup on his seat in the airport.

   "I was thinking, is this what it's going to be like the whole
time?" Luke said. "I'm not even on the bus yet."

   His twin brother, Leif, started having doubts within weeks when a
drill sergeant indicated they were probably headed to Iraq. Leif
said that possibility had been downplayed by the recruiter who
signed him up in Duluth.

   On Jan. 2, the twins, age 21, and their brother Leo, 20, went
AWOL from the Army. All three failed to return to basic training
after Christmas break in northern Minnesota. Five months later,
Luke has been released from the military, while Leif and Leo remain
absent without leave. They say they plan to turn themselves in soon.

   The Kamunen brothers are an example of a growing problem - Army
desertions have risen 35 percent in the past two years, according
to Defense Department figures. The number rose from 2,450 in 2004
to 3,301 in 2006.

   There are many more who go AWOL - tens of thousands who leave
without permission for anywhere from 24 hours to 30 days.

   "In any large group of military, you are always going to have
some people change their minds," said Dennis Schulstad, a retired
Air Force brigadier general and a former Minneapolis City Council
member. Soldiers who desert are only a fraction of the 2.5 million
in the military.

   But Ronald Krebs, a political science professor at the University
of Minnesota, blames the sharp rise on the "unfathomable pressure"
that recruiters are now under. He says that forces them to lower
standards and recruit people who might be less stable.

   "Lower-quality recruits desert at much higher rates than
higher-quality recruits," said Krebs, author of "Fighting for
Rights: Military Service and the Politics of Citizenship,"
published last year by Cornell University Press.

   The Kamunens are typical of young recruits who go AWOL, said Sam
Diener of the GI Rights Hotline, a national organization that
counsels soldiers. "The recruits are disproportionately rural,
mostly high school graduates who aren't sure what to do next," he
said.

   Still, the Kamunens' situation is unusual, simply because there
are three of them. "I've talked to thousands and thousands of
AWOLs," said the GI Hotline's Bill Galvin. "And I don't think I've
ever heard of two brothers going AWOL at the same time."

   .

   A subdued reaction up north

   The brothers' decision to walk away has made barely a ripple in
this northern Minnesota county.

   "I hadn't heard of it," said Robert Langenbrunner, commander of
the Cloquet American Legion post. Recruits pledge to serve their
country, he said. "I'm dead set against" anyone going AWOL "unless
there's something traumatic, like a death in the family."

   Bruce Ahlgren, mayor of Cloquet, noted that a couple of years
ago, three soldiers from the area died in Iraq. "It hit our area
very hard," he said. "I think young kids have a tough situation
when it comes to war."

   Ahlgren doesn't know the Kamunens. "They signed up for a reason,
and for whatever reason they changed their minds and will have to
suffer the consequences," he said. "But I am certainly not going to
condemn them for it."

   Carlton County's jobless rate is more than 6 percent. "It's
really hard to find a job that's going to pay what you're worth,"
Luke said. "You either work for McDonald's or as a janitor."