COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Personnel Crunch
Army sweetens the pot looking for recruits in Alaska
GEORGE BRYSON, Anchorage Daily News
September 23, 2007
You might have seen them on tables at the state fair in Palmer --stacks of attractive brochures offering thousands of dollars in
signing bonuses to join the U.S. Army, and much more cash later on if
you decide to go to college.
Anyone between the ages of 17 and 42 is welcome to apply, but the
Army especially has its eye on teenagers. And if you offer it, they will come.
"After school gets out, the kids really start showing up," said Staff
Sgt. Chad Sanstede, manning the Army's state fair recruitment booth
in late August. "We get quite a few stopping by -- and quite a few parents."
Helping to catch their attention this year is news about a $20,000
"quick-ship" signing bonus that new recruits might receive if they
complete their processing and agree to depart for active duty prior
to Sept. 30 -- the deadline for the Army to reach its annual recruitment goal.
"We've actually had quite a few kids come in because of that," Sanstede said.
Considering the bonus is greater than an entire year's pay for the
average first-year soldier, it's no wonder. But that's not the only
monetary incentive at the booth.
Right now the Army is also offering a variety of additional bonuses
for those who sign up for certain hard-to-fill military assignments
-- from the dangerous ($25,000 for petroleum supply specialists in
Iraq) to the skilled ($12,000 for soldiers who serve as linguists).
The greatest inducement of all, however, is the $72,900 the Army is
willing to contribute toward college after a recruit's military
service is over.
No one should join the Army for cash incentives alone, says 1st Sgt.
April Letourneau, who works in the regional recruitment office in
downtown Wasilla.
"If you're signing up for the bonus, you're signing up for the wrong
reasons," she says.
Then again, concern about whether today's recruits' motives are
misplaced hasn't stopped the Army from offering ever-greater cash
inducements simply for signing up.
Some critics call bonuses a "hard sell," but people who receive them
consider the money good news, local recruiters say.
"You can call it whatever you want," says 1st Sgt. Jay Clegg at the
Alaska recruitment headquarters at Fort Richardson. "It's an
incentive. I've been in the Army for 24 years and I've never seen
anything like it."
The latest offer -- the quick-ship bonus -- was partly prompted by
the Army's failure to meet its spring recruitment goals, which raised
fears it might also fall short of its fiscal year 2007 goal of
enlisting 80,000 new soldiers, Pentagon observers say.
The downturn isn't new. As the popularity of the now
four-and-a-half- year-old war in Iraq has continued to wane on the
home front, Army recruits have proven harder to find -- in Alaska as
well as the nation.
According to Maj. Jeffery Brown, commander of the U.S. Army
recruitment mission in Alaska, enlistments here started to slip in
2003, the year the U.S. invaded Iraq -- falling from a high of 380
recruits in fiscal year 2002 to 206 recruits in 2005, when the
Pentagon fell far short of enlistment goals nationwide.
The Army responded by boosting its number of recruiters in the field
and increasing cash inducements for military service. (Over the past
four years, the Pentagon's "bonus pool" has nearly doubled -- from
$759 million in 2003 to $1.6 billion today, according to the Marine
Corps Times.)
Perhaps as a consequence, Army enlistments in Alaska have risen 39
percent in the past two years, from the low in 2005 to a projected
total this fiscal year of 286 recruits -- still about 40 recruits
short of the assigned goal for Alaska.
Brown partially credits the improvement to his cadre of about 25
recruiters based in six locations statewide, including two in
Anchorage (in the Northway and Dimond malls) and one each in Wasilla,
Soldotna, Fairbanks and Juneau.
But he thinks it's also characteristic of Alaska, with its tradition
of Army and Air Force bases and its high percentage of veterans.
"You've got a lot of patriotism going on here," says Brown, who
arrived at Fort Richardson in 2005. "And I attribute that to people
wanting to serve their country."
That could possibly describe Stewart Johnson and Daniel Dunn, two
seniors at Unalaska High School -- who flew 800 miles from the
Aleutian Islands to Anchorage on Monday to take their oaths of enlistment.
One year ago, as 17-year-olds -- each with his parents' permission --
Johnson and Dunn joined the U.S. Army Reserves under the Delayed
Entry Program, which made them both part-time soldiers.
On Tuesday they effectively upgraded that status to "full-time,
regular Army," with two-year periods of enlistment that will commence
as soon as they graduate from high school next June.
In choosing to make the switch, they forfeited thousands of dollars
in signing bonuses for having initially joined the Army Reserves as
high school students (though each will likely recoup much of that
with new signing bonuses, according to their recruiter -- who noted
that both Dunn and Johnson scored "well above average" on their Army
entrance exams).
"Even if I didn't get any bonus I'd still do it," said Johnson, who's
hoping the background he'll gain in military aviation will lead to a
lucrative job as a civilian pilot.
Dunn is less certain about his job future, but he feels good about
joining the Army, just as his older brother did three years before
him. Knowing that the odds are good that he'll probably be sent to
Iraq wasn't a deterrent.
"When I went in to enlist, I didn't really look at it, like, the
politics of the war," he said. "All I wanted to do was serve my
country -- like be there just to fight for freedom. I don't care if
the war is about oil, or whatever the politics are. That's not what
it's about for me."
Johnson, whose father was in the Air Force and who has wanted to join
the military ever since he was a kid, feels the same way.
"I don't really care about the politics, if they say it's this or
that," he said. "I'm there because I know that guys like me, guys
like Daniel, will need buddies there to help protect them and be
around them and encourage them. The Army takes things as a family.
... You really are brothers."
Some of them were staying in the same hotel as Johnson and Dunn
Monday night on the eve of "enlistment day" processing the next
morning. Others had already joined up and were preparing to fly off
to basic training.
Among the latter was Track Palin, the 18-year-old son of Alaska Gov.
Sarah Palin and honorary "First Son," a potential "quick-ship" bonus
winner himself, heading off to Fort Benning, Ga.
Bonus talk can be deceptive, critics say. In many cases strings are
attached. Some incentives require higher than average scores on
entrance exams (the $20,000 quick-ship bonus is limited to recruits
who score in the top half of the exam).
Other bonuses require longer periods of enlistment -- as in the case
of a new Wasilla area recruit, who didn't want to be quoted or named,
who'll receive an extra $34,000 for shipping early and enlisting for
five years as a satellite technician.
The educational incentives can be problematic too. To qualify for the
maximum in college aid, you have to pay a $1,200 non-refundable
deposit, remain in the military for more than three years, score in
the top half of the military exam and be willing to enter one of the
less popular military specialties.
According to the Army, there were 320 substantiated cases of
"recruitment improprieties" in 2004, up from 213 in 2002.
Brown, the Army recruitment commander for Alaska, said there haven't
been any such cases here.
"What I tell these guys on a daily basis is to be honest (with
potential recruits) ... and straightforward, " Brown says. "You hear
of recruiters down in the Lower 48 getting in trouble and doing
unethical things, and we want to stay away from that."
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