COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: General
Basic Changes
Kelly Kennedy, Army Times
April 17, 2006
FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Three seats back, duffel bag in his lap, a freshly shorn recruit sat silently surrounded by 20 other stone-faced soldiers.After in-processing at the reception station, the new soldiers boarded the white school bus and waited, knowing their drill sergeants would arrive shortly with those fearsome campaign hats perched above steely eyes and mouths poised to abuse.
Drill Sergeant Herman George boarded the bus.
They waited.
Each scared face stared at his duffel bag as if his mother might pop out and offer up a hug.
They knew what was coming. They’d heard stories from previous generations of soldiers — stories of curse words and push-ups, even hushed tales of recruits being roughed up. But as the bus moved closer to their new barracks, no yelling. tears that had hovered on the brink seeped back inside, shoulders relaxed down into natural positions.
The bus driver turned on the radio. Soon, the private sitting three seats back began bopping his head — just barely.
“If you feel like giving me a lifetime of devotion,” the private started singing along with the radio, “I second that emotion.”
George finally came to life.
“Two-thirteen is the best basic training battalion in the United States Army!” he yelled.
And then, “Get off the bus in a safe, calm manner, hoo-ah?”
Welcome to the kinder, gentler Army. It’s a place where soldiers do push-ups from their knees if they get tired. They perform sit-ups on sleeping mats so as not to bruise their tailbones. If they’re not feeling well, they’re encouraged to report to sick call. And their drill sergeants yell only sparingly.
It’s a world of second chances for recruits who go AWOL or flunk the physical training test; a home to some young adults who haven’t quite stopped abusing their substances; a place where the sick, lame or lazy are encouraged to give it another go.
These are recruits who played video games growing up instead of climbing trees. They are from a generation reared by parents who viewed spanking as child abuse. The only authority they didn’t question was their own.
Overall, they may be softer on the outside than previous generations. But they multitask better. They understand technology. And they volunteered for the Army while watching their possible futures unfold on 24-hour newscasts featuring lost limbs, lost friends and lost lives.
in the middle of a war where the rules change daily, the Army realized that these are just the kind of people it needs — and that the service must retool to make good soldiers out of the Millennial Generation.
“The soldiers have already committed. They know they’re going to war,” said 1st Combat Training Brigade Commander, 13th Infantry Regiment Col. Jay Chambers. “It’s to our benefit to lead them instead of drive them.”
The drill sergeants say they’re seeing a payoff to the new method of training recruits.
“The feedback downrange is that they’re better trained for the fight,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Sandra Emery of 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry Regiment. “They’re better-prepared to infiltrate and command and execute. I wish I’d had these kids when I was in Iraq.”
Army officials say the new generation of recruits learns more effectively when drill sergeants dial back the aggression and intimidation. Rather than confuse soldiers by yelling at them for everything from an untied boot to a misplaced weapon, they make sure the punishment for a missing M16 sticks out.
Instead of pushing recruits past their abilities in physical training, they concentrate on form — and making sure there are fewer injuries. Rather than force soldiers through difficult tasks to meet a checklist, they coach them into good marksmanship habits. And rather than tell impressionable young people that they’re not paid to think, they encourage them to plan their own maneuvers.
When drill sergeants are more mentor than menace, “The soldiers shoot better, are in better physical condition, and their hearts and heads are in the zone,” Chambers said. “In combat, there’s not going to be a drill sergeant — or a sergeant at all. They can’t wait until they get killed for someone to tell them what to do.”
Winning the attrition war
No one woke up one morning and thought, “I wonder what would happen if we were nice to the new guys?” But even before the Army went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, attrition statistics showed something had to be done. A Government Accountability Office report issued in April 2000 showed that in 1998, 36.9 percent of all service members were leaving the military during their first year of service. The Army ranked at the top of the list for lost recruits. The GAO found people left within their first six months for three main reasons: medical problems caused by training, fraudulent enlistment, and performance problems, such as failed PT tests or the inability to adapt to military life. Other reasons included weight issues, character and behavior disorders, and alcoholism and drug use.
But interviews with out-processing soldiers showed that many of them left because of poor leadership techniques, such as obscene language or humiliating treatment, and the GAO concluded that “negative motivation has a detrimental effect on some recruits’ desire to stay in the military.”
In the past, the response has been that those soldiers couldn’t hack it — there was even a sense of pride among those who did make it through that not everyone could.
But it costs up to $15,000 to put a soldier through basic training. The GAO report said that if the services could reduce their six-month attrition rates by 4 percent, they would save $4.8 million a year.
“We estimate that in fiscal year 1996, DoD and the services spent about $390 million in fixed and variable costs to recruit and train individuals who never made it to their first duty stations,” the report states.
After Sept. 11, 2001, when it became difficult to bring new soldiers in, those numbers became even more important. In 2003, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command changed Regulation 350-6 to ban drill sergeants from using abusive language, allow recruits more personal time, give new soldiers seven hours of sleep a night and cut down on injuries.
As of winter 2006, graduating recruits may also earn off-post one-day passes, rather than the on-post family-day passes they received in the past.
In just one year of training changes, the Army is seeing a difference. At Fort Jackson, the basic-training attrition rate stood at 12.6 percent in fiscal 2004. In fiscal 2005, that percentage sank to 8.8 percent, according to Fort Jackson spokesman James Hinnant. Armywide, about 11 percent don’t make it through basic now compared to 18 percent last May.
Accessions Command Chief Lt. Gen. Robert Van Antwerp “called us all in and said, ‘Look. The Army needs us to analyze how we’re doing business,’” said Col. Thomas Hayden, deputy commanding officer at Fort Jackson. “They’re having a hard time recruiting, and we’re losing soldiers. Let’s look at us.”
Still, old hands might be surprised at how rigorously these new soldiers are being schooled in combat skills.
In December, the Army added more warrior tasks and battle drills to the nine-week regimen, and increased the graduation requirements — changes the drill sergeants say make basic training more difficult than it has been in years past.
Hayden emphasized that the changes are geared toward a different generation, but the schooling still results in highly trained new soldiers.
“The more we understand about them — where they’re coming from — and the more we attempt to know them, the better we are able to modify the training,” Hayden said. “It’s kind of weird that we didn’t figure it out earlier.”
That doesn’t mean it’s been an easy sell with the drill sergeants who must make the new approach work.
Discipline and control
At the drill sergeant school at Fort Jackson, four instructors sat around a table and worked out the issue. They said drill sergeants themselves have to take a big share of responsibility for the attitudes and abilities of the Millennial Generation: The drill sergeants’ generation raised them.
“We based our ideas of basic training on movies or what our parents told us,” Sgt. 1st Class Bryson Endrina said. “We expected ‘Full Metal Jacket’ when we got there.”
Sgt. 1st Class Deitra Alam agreed, and said the new training was a challenge for the old-school set.
“As kids, we were physically reprimanded — we were beat,” she said, laughing at how parenting has changed. “These people coming in — they’re not used to that yelling and poking. That’s a shock for them. It’s not a culture they come out of.”
At first, she didn’t understand how the new style would work. “I was like, ‘What does that mean? I got to hand out candy?’” she said. “That’s not what that means. That’s not the spirit behind it.”
Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Walker said he has had soldiers tell him summer camp was harder. “Some drill sergeants say we’re taking their power base away,” he said. “That’s not the case. We have to come up with more creative ways to get discipline to the soldiers.”
All said they eventually saw the changes as good, but sometimes, according to 1st Sgt. Lester Jones, drill sergeants feel as if their “hands are tied by the new rules.
“Soldiers will tell me things thinking they can get the drill sergeants in trouble,” he said. “They truly believe they can control the drill sergeants. The focus has been on the drill sergeants who have done wrong in the past. Now, we can’t do this and we can’t do that. It takes away our authority.”
Some soldiers, he said, need to be yelled at. And drill sergeants should still be able to say who stays in and who goes out.
“Right now, the attrition rate is the focal point, not what the drill sergeant has to say,” Jones said. “They tell you they don’t have to do what you’re telling them, they go AWOL, come back, go AWOL again and eventually graduate. That’s one soldier too many.”
But Lt. Col. Mel Hull, commander of the 1st Battalion, 13th Infantry Regiment, said drill sergeants should earn their reputations for being tough mentally, not because they yell a lot.
“The stress should be on the task,” Hull said. “If the drill sergeantis constantly yelling, and the soldier actually does something wrong on the range, how is it going to be any different when the drill sergeant yells at him for that?”
The yelling isn’t completely gone, however. But because the new privates didn’t go through basic before the changes, they don’t know they’re being treated any differently.
For example, a drill sergeant noticed Pvt. Marcus Kelly of Texas had a tube of toothpaste sticking out of his back pocket during physical training.
“I had to do more push-ups,” Kelly said. “My dad told me it would be all drill sergeants yelling and making us do a lot of push-ups, and what really happened was they yelled at us a lot and we did a lot of push-ups.”
Chambers, the brigade commander, said some of that yelling is necessary, as long as the mistake is specific. “Their expectation is to be yelled at, and they will be,” he said. “There will be some high-octane exchanges.”
‘We all made mistakes at 18’
Lt. Col. Frank McClary, commander of 2nd Battalion, 13th Infantry Regiment, pointed to a couple of military police officers standing with a trainee in the company area.
“We had to call them in when one soldier decided he didn’t want to be here,” McClary said. “I call the MPs when things look like they could get rough.”
Between 7 and 10 percent each cycle still won’t make it, he said, even with the new rules.
“We have one or two go AWOL every cycle,” McClary said. “I put them back in training — it’s at the commander’s discretion.”
During the winter holiday break, four soldiers tested positive for drugs — typically marijuana — in a urinalysis.
“I put them back in training,” he said. “Why? They’re 18. We all made mistakes at 18.”
McClary said the changes can be challenging, but they make sense.
Every drill sergeant interviewed agreed the physical-training program had changed for the better, even if they cringed at the idea of push-ups from the knees.
Early one morning, McClary watched a group of new soldiers doing jumping jacks on their first day of physical training. “Ah, the rhythmless nation,” he said, laughing as the privates flailed about. “They look like popcorn.”
Next to the soldiers lay M16s, sleeping mats and water bottles — the training paraphernalia they carry with them everywhere. “We used to smoke them until they couldn’t see,” McClary said. “But it’s not safe, and there are more effective ways to do it. I don’t see as many in sick call.”
Privates train on rubberized tracks; their new PT pits are made of soft “gravel,” and they wear kneepads and eye protection on the range.
Drill sergeants insist that those with sore knees or ankles go on sick call, they make them stretch longer before runs, and they build the soldiers up through circuit training rather than pushing them to run three miles on the first day.
During fiscal 2004, 1,952 soldiers processed out for medical problems, including PT injuries, at Fort Jackson. In 2005, that number decreased by almost 300 soldiers, to 1,659.
“We’re building them up for the run because we know Americans don’t exercise as much,” Emery said. “The whole thing is geared toward minimizing injuries.”
Several privates said they had no exercise experience before arriving at Fort Jackson. “I like the PT best,” said Pvt. Sharmayne Smith of Maryland. “I need to get in shape — I’ve never exercised before.”
Thinking for themselves
For all the changes aimed at reducing stress and injuries, the training remains tough.
“When I talk to other drill sergeants, they can’t believe the stuff we’re doing now,” said Sgt. 1st Class Travis Haugen of 1-13. “They are training harder. They know that if they make a catastrophic error, there will be catastrophic results because they know they’re going to war.”
Soldiers learn more tasks than ever before, including infantry skills that some drill sergeants themselves had never encountered before Fort Jackson — clearing a room, convoy live fire and advanced rifle training. Soldiers learn how to scout for intel, they carry their weapons at all times, and they shoot from a kneeling position wearing full combat gear. Rather than concentrate on one task, drill sergeants harp on the importance of paying attention to several things at once.
“It’s not easier, but it’s more of a thinking basic training than it used to be,” said Pfc. Bryan Hunter, who went through basic training under the old rules at Fort Knox three years ago as a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadet. “They just train soldiers now, rather than beat them into submission.”
Pvt. John Barnes of Wyoming had also gone through basic before — with the Marine Corps.
“The yelling is still there, but when we’re doing it right, they don’t get on us at all,” Barnes said. “It’s better. It lets us know we’re doing good. And the minute we mess up, they jump right on top of us.”
He said he needs the opportunity to concentrate in the classroom, and it’s easier when it’s not as stressful.
“It’s extremely difficult,” said Capt. Dion Mancenido of 1-13. “They have to learn 39 tasks and nine battle drills, how to be a member of a team, how to run a checkpoint, and they have to spend 13 days in the field.”
By concentrating on what soldiers need to know in a combat zone, Mancenido said drill sergeants spend more time teaching soldiers what they need to survive.
“The fundamental change is really that it’s what they need to know to be successful in Iraq or Afghanistan,” he said.
At “Omaha Beach,” a live-fire range, Pvt. Yeshua Bullock had to make her own decisions about which way to go, which part of a car to hide behind, and which target to go after next. This is also new to basic training.
“We’re trying to teach them how to think, not what to think,” Hull said. “It’s moved from, ‘You don’t need to think, just do what I tell you.’ We don’t need soldiers like that anymore.”
Staff Sgt. Mark Glasgow of 1-13 said he would feel comfortable serving with any of the privates who graduate from his company.
“I’m not going to be doing this for the rest of my career,” he said. “I’m going to be out on the line. And they’re going to be with me.”
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of
articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed
publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen
material relevant to the work of