Where Are the New Recruits?

By MARK THOMPSON

Even as the Iraq war has dragged on, offering no foreseeable end, top Pentagon officials have maintained that the nation's Army is fit enough and big enough to fight it. But last week the military's taut tendons--at the breaking point for better than a year--could be heard painfully snapping from the Pentagon to the Sunni triangle. First came a warning from the head of the Army Reserve that those troops are "rapidly degenerating into a broken force." Then Army officials, speaking privately, conceded that a long-standing policy limiting deployments of National Guard and Army Reserve forces is likely to be scrapped. That's going to make the already difficult job of recruiting--and retaining--such part-time soldiers even tougher. Finally, they added, the continuing instability in Iraq will probably force the Army to make permanent what was supposed to be a temporary addition of 30,000 troops to the active-duty force.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--who has long opposed a permanent hike in the Army's 500,000-strong active-duty force--made himself scarce as these troubling indicators surfaced. The Defense chief has argued that retooling the Army--turning cooks and accountants into trigger pullers and hiring contractors to perform such civilian tasks, among other steps--should generate efficiencies that would ease the strain on the Army without having to boost its size. But other Pentagon officials doubt that such measures will suffice. "We're growing increasingly concerned about the health of the force," an Army personnel officer says. "These deployments are really beginning to take a toll."

Outside observers agree. "The Army's wheels are going to come off in the next 24 months," Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star Army general, said last week. "The data are now beginning to come in to support that." McCaffrey said the service needs to add 80,000 troops to ease the strain brought on by the Iraq war. "We are in a period of considerable strategic peril," he said. "And it's because Rumsfeld has dug in his heels and said, 'I cannot retreat from my position.'"

Because of other commitments overseas, in Europe and Eastern Asia, and because the Pentagon is trying to limit Iraq tours to a year, the Army increasingly has had to rely on the National Guard and Army Reserve to help fill the roster of 150,000 troops in Iraq. Those part-time forces represent 40% of the current U.S. troop strength in Iraq and will grow to 50% in coming months. There were about 160,000 National Guard and Army reservists on active duty last week, including 60,000 inside Iraq. In a Dec. 20 memo published in the Baltimore Sun last week, Lieut. General James Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, warned that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have put in "grave danger" his force's ability to fulfill other Pentagon missions or help grapple with domestic emergencies. "I do not wish to sound alarmist," wrote Helmly, who won a Bronze Star for valor in Vietnam. "I do wish to send a clear, distinctive signal of deepening concern." Helmly's memo split the Pentagon into two camps--those who praised Helmly's candor and courage, and those who found the memo's tone, and its appearance in a newspaper, a little too self-promoting.

But Army officers also have begun voicing concern that they are soon going to run out of Reserve troops to fight in Iraq, which would place even more strain on active-duty forces. Under Pentagon policy, reservists and Guard troops can serve no more than 24 months total on a single military operation. The military has already released some Reserve troops from deployment because they have hit the 24-month ceiling--or offered them a $1,000 monthly tax-free bonus to waive the rule. That money upsets Helmly. "We must consider the point at which we confuse 'volunteer to become an American soldier' with 'mercenary,'" he wrote in his memo. In light of the force crunch, the Army is weighing a change that could compel repeated deployments, of up to 24 months each, for some part-time soldiers.

That, however, would probably complicate recruitment challenges for the Reserves. As it is, says Paul Rieckerhoff, 29, a New York Guardsman who spent a year in Iraq, the Guard has lost its allure as repeated deployments have made it more like the active-duty force. "People in the Guard never thought they'd make up 40% of the force [in Iraq] and have six months of training and a year of boots-on-the-ground overseas," he says. "It's become a serious commitment that's going to disrupt your civilian life indefinitely."

Hard statistics back up Rieckerhoff's observation. The National Guard saw its enlistments fall 30% short of its goal for October and November, while the Army Reserve came up 10% shy of its mark for that period. As a result, the Guard is adding 1,400 recruiters to its 2,700-strong force, the first big boost in 15 years, while the Reserve is boosting its recruiter force by 400, to 1,440.

Recruiters have been given new sweeteners to dangle. The week before Christmas, the Guard and Army Reserve announced that the signing bonus for soldiers willing to commit to six years of service would be increased to $15,000--from $5,000 for the Guard and $8,000 for the Reserve. And although the active-duty Army has been meeting its recruitment goals, planners are taking precautions to keep the numbers healthy. The Army has added 375 soldiers to the ranks of its 5,654 recruiters. Active-duty G.I.s can now earn as much as $70,000 for college, up from $50,000. In outlays that won't show up as costs for the Iraq war, the Army is rolling out more than $1 billion in bonuses and benefits this year to induce young Americans to enlist and to entice those already in uniform to extend their service. There are premiums to be pocketed for signing up for certain jobs--infantry, military police, transportation--as well as for agreeing to ship out quickly to train--and then, probably, go to Iraq.

Robert Scales, a retired Army major general and military historian, believes that the recruitment problem is affecting the Reserves and National Guard first because they reflect the mood of the times more quickly. "The active-duty Army is an insular subculture within the American body politic, a piece of Sparta in the midst of Babylon," says Scales, former head of the U.S. Army War College. He is worried that the shortfall in sign-ups will soon be felt by the regular service. "Those of us who were in Vietnam in 1969 remember all the pronouncements about how good things were going," Scales says, recalling that Pentagon figures at that time showed retention numbers to be solid. "But in 1970 the whole thing collapsed, and the Army simply broke." Soldiers were deserting in droves, enlisted men were fragging their officers, and illegal drug use was skyrocketing.

There are important differences between then and now. A draft was in effect during the Vietnam years, while today's Army is all volunteer. And, in contrast to the Vietnam era, Americans continue to support the troops in Iraq even if many oppose the war. Still, the Iraq war has changed how many young people weigh a decision to sign up for the military. "People used to think they could just join up to get money for college, and so it was easier to recruit," says Curtis Mills, 31, an Army reservist who served in Iraq as a military-police sergeant for six months in 2003. "But with what you see in the papers and everybody being deployed, it's got to be tougher." Mills, of Shapleigh, Maine, spent 11 months recovering from wounds he suffered outside Ramadi when a roadside bomb cut up his arm, leg and back in September 2003. Unable to return to his job as a postal carrier, he gets by on a $2,000 monthly disability check from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Guard officials are not denying the obvious. "There's no question that when you have a sustained ground-combat operation going that the Guard's participating in, that makes recruiting more difficult," says Lieut. General Steven Blum, the Guard's top officer. Roughly one-fourth of the Guard's members have served in Iraq. General Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff who was plucked from retirement by Rumsfeld in 2003, told Congress in November that he was in danger of running out of troops. "It's going to get harder the longer we go with this, no question about it," he said. He pledged to do his best to meet the demand of commanders in Iraq for fresh bodies, but added, "I can't promise more than I've got ... If the Army National Guard or Army Reserve cannot muster and provide the formations that are required, perhaps we need to increase the size of the regular Army."

Pentagon officials have been watching recruitment and retention rates closely. Until this past fall, the figures were reassuring. All but one branch of the military met recruiting and retention goals for fiscal 2004, which ended Sept. 30. The lone exception was the Army National Guard, which came in at 98% strength--342,000 instead of 350,000--on that date. The shortfall was largely attributed to the Guard's missing by 5,000 its recruiting goal of 56,000 soldiers. It was the first time in a decade that the Guard fell short. But then came the even worse performance of October and November.

Lieut. Colonel Michael Jones, the Guard's No. 2 recruiting officer, says 70% of the deficit in sign-ups is the result of soldiers' declining to join the Guard when they leave active duty because they don't want to be sent right back to Iraq. In peacetime, many active-duty soldiers go into the Guard for the extra money and camaraderie. Some of the shortage is due to the Army's "stop-loss" orders, which keep soldiers on active duty past their agreed-on commitments and thus make them unable to join the Guard. But there is another factor in the case of young people right out of high school: parents often steer their kids away from the military. "Mom and Dad understand they're going to go right into basic training," Jones says, "and then be eligible to deploy right away." Even if parents don't object, he says, "it's human nature to flee from risk. It takes a special type of person to join during this time."

The cost of recruiting a soldier ballooned from $7,600 in 1996 to more than $14,000 in 2004. That includes about $2,000 for advertising. The Army has become a more savvy seller, abandoning the "Be All You Can Be" slogan it used for two decades in favor of the more narcissistic "An Army of One" motto it embraced eight months before 9/11, which played off the individuality and independence of today's young men and women and tried to convince them that soldiers are more than mere cogs in a dehumanizing military machine. Today the Army sponsors NASCAR racing cars, football games, rodeo riders and a popular Internet video game called America's Army. But just how much those teenage touchstones do for military recruiting is an open question. A federal study found that although the military doubled its spending on advertising--from $299 million in 1998 to $592 million in 2003--it couldn't tease out the impact of the Pentagon's ad campaigns because "joining the military is a profound life decision."

The war and its impact on personnel are forcing the Pentagon to cut corners in ways that could dull the military's fighting edge. The Guard, for example, can no longer count, as in the past, on half its troops' having had military experience. If current trends persist, soon only one-third will be veterans. "They'll be able to make their numbers, but the question is, How effective is the Guard going to be if its troops don't have much military experience?" says Lawrence Korb, Pentagon personnel chief during the Reagan Administration. What's more, the military may have to begin promoting soldiers with inadequate experience if senior sergeants flee. "Promoting more rapidly leads to a less effective military," Korb says. "We're going to end up with a less effective force and, in another year, I think we could break it."

Despite this roster of troubles, many Army officers remain upbeat. Brigadier General Sean Byrne, the Army's director of military-personnel policy, says that while "the going will be tough" in the months to come, the Army has the tools to keep its force properly manned. "The war on terror strikes home with everybody," he says, "and it motivates them to come on board and stay with us." Rumsfeld and Byrne believe that there is enough goodwill among young Americans out there to fill most of the ranks--and enough money to lure in the rest. Mills, the wounded Army reservist, is the kind of American they're counting on. "My buddies are expecting to be deployed again," he says. "And if I weren't injured and they called me to go again, I'd absolutely go." ???