Filling in the ranks

Military recruiters faced lower numbers in fiscal 2005 and are working to bring up those totals for next year. The armed forces are working against both uncertain potential enlistees and their concerned parents who see combat abroad as a large disincentive to signing up.

It’s “Red Time” at the Army Recruiting Office, and Sgt. 1st Class Troy Crittendon’s recruiters have engaged their targets. The team of corporals and sergeants are in the middle of a mandatory call session, where they check up on potential recruits from mid-Missouri. Each recruiter calls as many as 40 high school seniors an hour to discuss school, schedule appointments and ease fear and anxiety by sharing stories of their own tours of duty.

Some calls include parents. Others end with plans to schedule a training run or, as the recruiters call it, a PT test.

Responses on the other end of the line vary. Some students are eager to hear the recruiter’s pitch. They see the Army as an economic opportunity or, raised with a patriotic ethos, as a calling. Other potential recruits are less thrilled but consider the military a necessary step toward a college education. Still others are simply too polite to ask the recruiters to stop calling.

Along the walls of the recruiting office are photographs of men and women who have recently enlisted, accompanied by a brief summary: the high school they attended, their current station and military occupation and the enlistment bonus they received.

With his broad shoulders and gray Army sweat suit, Crittendon — everyone calls him Sgt. C. — could pass for a gym coach. Crittendon has managed Columbia’s recruiting office on Broadway for nearly two years now, and if he feels the pressure of meeting the Pentagon’s monthly recruiting quotas, he gives no indication.

But, like many recruiters around the country, Crittendon and his staff are having an increasingly difficult time meeting the Army’s need for soldiers. In fiscal 2005, which ended Sept. 30, the active Army sought to bolster its forces by increasing the national recruiting quota from 77,000 enlistees per year to 80,000. It fell short by more than 6,600, the widest margin since 1979.

Falling numbers

Historically, rural areas like mid-Missouri have provided the Army with the largest percentage of recruits. But that stronghold has started to weaken. The Mid-Missouri Company, which encompasses an area from Rolla to Washington, hit just 78 percent of its goal. The St. Louis Battalion, which covers eastern Missouri and south and central Illinois (and includes the Mid-Missouri Company), also suffered this year. After finishing first in recruiting nationwide in 2004, it dropped to third in 2005.

The result has placed a greater burden on the U.S. military and, according to some critics, has weakened the armed forces. With conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, many soldiers are being forced to endure multiple tours of duty in those countries. That, in turn, has had a negative effect back home, says Joel Hartman, a retired MU professor of rural sociology.

“Their families are left behind,” Hartman says. “Their employers are left in the lurch because they have no workers, and they must either replace the workers or shut down the business.”

Almost from the beginning of the Iraq War in March 2003, U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, has underscored the sacrifice of soldiers from rural America. Skelton found that through May 2005, roughly 43 percent of all servicemen killed during Operation Iraqi Freedom came from rural hometowns with populations less than 20,000 people. By contrast, about 29 percent of the soldiers killed were raised in urban communities with more than 100,000 people.

Perhaps the strongest statement about the current state of the military was made in late November by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who is a 37-year veteran of the Marine Corps. In a speech before the U.S. House of Representatives, Murtha warned that the Iraq War was putting the future of the U.S. armed forces at risk and beginning to take its toll on troop morale. He called for an immediate redeployment of forces from Iraq.

“Our military and their families are stretched thin,” Murtha said. “Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down, even as our military has lowered its standards. Defense budgets are being cut. Personnel costs are skyrocketing, particularly in health care. Choices will have to be made.”

Reliance on rural communities

The military’s dependence on recruits from rural areas dates back to at least the Vietnam War, says David R. Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. A mix of cultural and economic factors found in rural communities contributes to that dependence. Jobs are fewer, and wages are lower. The kind of middle- and working-class young people that live in rural areas are attractive to the military, Segal says. Children from wealthier families often have more diverse career opportunities, while the poorest potential recruits tend to lack a high school diploma, adequate health or a clean police record, all of which can disqualify them from the service.

Meanwhile, the military struggles to compete in urban areas, says Rex Campbell, MU professor of rural sociology.

“The military has not kept up its pay scale,” Campbell says, “which makes it less attractive to suburban kids.”

Recruiters also benefit from the patriotism harbored in small towns.

“People from rural communities tend to be more conservative and patriotic,” Campbell says. “They feel the need to serve their country. It’s a part of their heritage.”

Crittendon agreed.

“Patriotism is a natural thing in everyone’s heart,” he says. “For some people, it’s their calling, and they go with it immediately. Others might be deterred for a time, but they’ll act on it eventually.”

Patriotism was what prompted Ryan Lanman, a senior at Hickman High School, to enlist in the Marines in July. By joining nearly a year before his high school graduation, he can participate in weekly training sessions at the recruiting station in Columbia to help him prepare physically and mentally for the rigors of boot camp.

“I was raised this way,” says Lanman, who was dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt and a camouflaged ball cap as he ate a bowl soup at Panera. “My parents never wanted me to take my freedom for granted.”

Lanman recalls how as a senior patrol leader for his Boy Scout troop, he made everyone slow down as they recited the Scout’s oath, which pledges allegiance to God and country. The ritual had become a rote formality, and Lanman’s troop recited the lines quickly, almost thoughtlessly.

“It had bothered me a little bit,” Lanman says. “But my assistant patrol leader and I began to say the oath louder and slower. Slowing it down made the words stay there, sink in more, so they actually heard each word separately.”

Lanman’s father was accepted to West Point before breaking his leg in a skydiving accident. His mother, who immigrated to the U.S. from Trinidad as a child, tried to enlist with the Air Force but was disqualified because of a spinal curvature. One grandfather served in Korea, and an uncle fought in World War II.

His other grandfather, a paratrooper, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He rarely discussed the war with Lanman but did tell him one story. He was manning a machine gun while his squad was passing through a town. Instinctively he swiveled the gun around and started shooting at a window. Later, the battalion found a sniper, lying dead next to the window.

“I know the risks,” Lanman says of military duty. “There’s going to be stuff like that everyday if I get sent to Iraq. But that doesn’t stop me from doing it. It’s part of the job.”

The branch of service he joined mattered little to Lanman.

“I had already made up my mind to join,” he recalls, “and didn’t care about money issues or where I’d be stationed.”

A month passed between his first meeting with a recruiter and the day Lanman and his parents signed the waiver required of recruits younger than 18. Although his father left the decision to join the Marines to his son, Lanman’s mother made sure he understood the risks.

“We talked a lot before he signed,” says Lorraine Lanman. “No matter how proud of him I was, I had to play devil’s advocate. But he told me, ‘Mom, if I don’t do this, I will always feel like I should have served.’ ”

Crittendon acknowledges that parents often pose problems for his recruiters. Time after time, he says, teens arrive at the recruiting station excited about the program but later acquiesce to their parents’ fears by declining to join.

“Sometimes even grown men can’t overcome objections made by their parents,” Crittendon says.

A parent’s suggestion simply to weigh carefully both benefits and drawbacks can be challenge enough for recruiters. Rhonda Allen of Jefferson City says that her stepson tested for the National Guard after being attracted by the college funding opportunities.

“Then my husband started talking to him,” Allen says. “He told him, ‘You know you’re going to go to Iraq.’ That changed his mind. My husband didn’t push him into that decision. He just sat him down and made him really consider the situation.”

Allen’s stepson is now a freshman at MU. He’s paying for his education with student loans and a part-time job.

Continued financial appeal

About 20 miles north of Columbia, Sturgeon is just far enough off U.S. 63 that a driver must really have it in mind to visit. The downtown, which straddles the railroad tracks, offers one hardware store, a bank, a grocery store, a gas station, an antique store and two beauty shops.

Few economic opportunities exist in Sturgeon. For a while, William Stewart, 17, worked at the Columbia Mall, but gasoline for the commute ate into most of his wages.

On a weeknight in October, Stewart sat in his basement bedroom finishing a college application between jarring rings of the phone. A counselor from Collins College in Tempe, Ariz., called to see how his applications were coming along. His Army recruiter called to inquire about his intent to join and whether he had lost any weight.

Stewart began receiving calls from recruiters about a year ago. He finally agreed to meet with them. But he missed the body-fat test by 2 percent and has been taking a conditioning class in school.

“I’m gaining weight, but it’s muscle,” Stewart says. “My gut’s getting smaller, and my neck’s getting thicker.”

Stewart wears baggy clothes and talks with a nervous smile that betrays the self-consciousness of being a likable teenager who happened to fall outside of the typical high school cliques. He sometimes wears a burnt-orange Texas Longhorns hat, set backwards on his tangled mop of light brown hair.

Stewart plans to join the Army Reserve before going off to study game design at Collins College, where he expects his tuition to cost $60,000 by the time he graduates.

“I’m at the point where I’m applying to college and trying to find some way to pay for it,” Stewart says. “The easiest way to do it is by joining the military.”

Stewart thought about securing financial aid to pay for his education, but he talks about debt with the trepidation of someone who has seen his family struggle with economic stability.

“I don’t want to be in debt for my whole life,” he says. “Except maybe for a new car.”

False expectations

For some recruits the military’s priorities conflict with their own desires.

The National Guard seemed like a fun thing to do, as well as a way to pay for college, when Jaimee Timmerberg joined in summer 2000. She was just about to begin her senior year at Warrenton High School and recalled her brother’s commencement ceremony for the National Guard.

“I saw everybody marching, calling cadence and thought it was really cool,” Timmerberg says.

The National Guard promised Timmerberg full reimbursement for her college tuition. But, to date, the benefit has gone largely unused. Timmerberg graduated high school in spring 2001, enrolled in a community college and started taking classes. She was in her second phase of Guard training when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001.

“They took us into a room and had us watch fifteen minutes on TV,” she recalls.

Less than a month later, Timmerberg reported for security duty at Lambert Airport in St. Louis, the youngest on assignment. She had just turned 18.

Timmerberg, a bridge engineer, served an 11-month tour in Iraq. When she returned, she planned on starting classes.

“But then they started talking about another deployment,” she says. “So I held off.

“Everybody’s starting and stopping and getting pulled out in the middle of class,” she continued. “They’ll yank you out two weeks before the end of your semester, and then you’ve got to drop out. And so you start all over.”

Timmerberg has just finished a six-year commitment. Meanwhile, her college dreams have proceeded in fits and starts.

“I have six credit hours, and I’m 23 years old,” she says. “All of my friends have graduated and begun their careers. I’m just starting.”

On a sunny day in mid-October, Timmerberg, just back from her tour in Iraq, sat in the gravel parking lot of her grandmother’s antique shop in Truesdale, a small village near Warrenton. With her mother, Timmerberg helped with the sale of items donated by friends and neighbors. The profits, such as they are, pay for care packages sent to local troops in Iraq.

“You know when you sign the papers that you have to go if something happens,” Timmerberg says. “But they don’t explain a lot of stuff.”

Even though she has fulfilled her active duty commitment, Timmerberg is committed to two years of inactive duty and could still be called back to Iraq. Meanwhile, she and her boyfriend, who is also in the Guard, are planning to buy a house in Wentzville. Both are saving money by living with their parents. She works at a tooling company, ordering parts, and intends to enroll at St. Charles County Community College next spring.

Timmerberg’s mother, Theresa, says she had high hopes that the National Guard would help both her children receive a college education. Instead, she says, she had to endure having her son and daughter in a shooting war halfway across the world.

“It’s kind of a scam,” Theresa says.

High school recruitment

Two Army recruiters set up a table at the edge of the lunchroom at Hickman High School, their usual Tuesday spot. On the table were stacks of Army stickers and informational handouts. A laptop computer flashed through an advertising program. Across the hall, in front of the main office, representatives for the Marines and Navy stood behind their tables.

Cory Schmidt, a senior, talked with Army Cpl. Ryan Dubuque. Schmidt anticipates finishing high school a semester early and then starting basic training in January for the National Guard. Schmidt, who was attracted by the college money and enlistment bonus, plans to start school at Moberly Community College and then transfer to MU.

“You — show me a push-up,” says Dubuque to the small crowd of kids gathered around the table.

One student knelt on the ground, planted his hands wide apart and started to work. His arms trembled, and the battle with gravity was soon lost as he flopped on the floor.

Schmidt dropped and ran off 10 push-ups, brisk and precise. A student jumped on his back, then another. Schmidt groaned and nearly crumpled under the weight. His faced turned red with strain, but somehow he managed to straighten his arms and lift them up.

“He did it,” says Dubuque, clapping his hands.

“Those boys are crazy,” says Samantha Cortez, a junior, who watched from a table while eating lunch.

Cortez says she has worked since age 12. Family troubles forced her to leave her home two years ago, she says, and she just moved to Columbia last month to live with her aunt. Cortez never considered the military until she stopped by the Army recruiting office with a friend recently. By the time she left, Cortez was determined to sign.

Since that meeting she has jogged each night and improved her diet. She visits the recruiting office nearly every day to chat and keep herself motivated. She is studying for the military aptitude test with the hope of becoming a military police officer with the K9 unit.

“I’ve never wanted something so bad,” Cortez says. “The Army offers so much. They’ll give me a job and responsibility and the direction for a way to go.”

Christin Young, a sophomore, isn’t so sure about the military. He filled out the Army’s recruiting survey, which asked for personal information and ended with the statement “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!!!!” a message that, for military recruiters, can surely cut both ways. Young says he might be interested in joining the service but will wait until he talks with his parents.

“It’s a mom thing,” he says. “She’s concerned for me. But if it’s the only way to get to college, I’ll go straight into the military.”

Concerned parents

Across the country, parental fears, exacerbated by the rising death toll in Iraq, have escalated to fevered activism. Grass-roots groups run camps that teach students how to counter pitches from recruiters. More than 300 communities now promote opt-out events for students, and 24,000 families have so far requested that their children not be contacted by recruiters while they are in school. In November, voters in San Francisco passed a largely symbolic referendum stating that the city opposes military recruiters in public schools.

Nancy Turner Myers, whose son is a junior at Hickman, expresses similar reservations.

“I think it’s so outrageous that recruiters are allowed in schools,” Myers says.

Still, Myers seems to be in the minority in Columbia. Concerns over recruiters in schools appear mild at best. Only seven parents have requested that their children be removed from military call lists, says Assistant Superintendent Lynn Barnett.

But that number will likely increase in 2006, when a military opt-out form will be included in high school student handbooks, says Phyllis Chase, superintendent of Columbia Public Schools. Though the form has existed for some time, it will now be made more accessible to parents and students.

The decision came shortly after Chase and school board member Darin Preis met with a Columbia group called Democracy for Missouri on Aug. 31.

“It was a bold step made by the superintendent and the school board,” says Bill Monroe, interim chair of Democracy for Missouri. “They recognized that some parents might not want their kids exposed to constant calls from recruiters.”

A surge in opt-out opportunities for high school students would be just one more obstacle that recruiters like Crittendon and his staff would contend with. Hartman also says that the dwindling support for the war — more than half of Americans now say it was a mistake to invade Iraq — can also hurt recruiting.

“When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, people were lined up around the block the next morning, ready to sign up for the military,” Hartman says. “They realized that it was a necessary action. But for this war, every reason used to legitimize us going into Iraq has been proven to be manufactured.”

That view has likely not escaped the notice of recruiting age high school students.

“We talk about the war in school all the time, and people don’t like the idea at all,” says Mallorie Oswald, a senior at Hickman High School.

Another problem is that the constant turnover among recruiters hampers their ability to forge the relationships necessary to entice a young man or woman to consider a military career, says Danny Bayles, a guidance counselor at Montgomery County High School.

“That’s one of the issues we deal with all of the time,” says Bayles. “The turnover with recruiters is so high that it’s hard to develop a relationship with somebody. It’s constantly changing.”

Dave Teeter, another counselor at the school echoed that sentiment.

“Every time a recruiter comes through, it’s a completely different face,” Teeter says. “Kids will start the process with one face, and when they reach their senior year, they have to deal with someone new.”

For their part, recruiters confront a limited pool of eligible candidates. Fewer than half of American youths between the ages of 16 and 21 meet military standards to serve, according to a September report by the General Accounting Office. A quarter of them fail the health requirements due to obesity, asthma, depression and other afflictions.

“Most of them can’t pass the basic aptitude test,” Crittendon acknowledges, “and that’s pretty sad.”

The road ahead

As the U.S. military commitment in Iraq intensified and troop levels in the country rose to nearly 140,000 — more than half of which are Army soldiers — pressure to meet monthly quotas intensified. Breaches of recruiter conduct became more common. By April 2005, reports surfaced of recruiters threatening candidates or recommending ways to circumvent military standards for service. Substantiated recruiting improprieties increased from 95 in 1999 to 122 in 2004, a 28 percent jump. This spring, the Army suspended regular activities across the country to reinforce its ethical conduct.

While discussions for withdrawing American forces from Iraq continue in Congress, recruiters are heading into 2006 on a roll. In the last four months of fiscal 2005, the active Army beat its recruiting goals, signing up 32,409 men and women — 3,750 more than during the same period in 2004.

In October, the first month of fiscal 2006, the Army exceeded its goal by 5 percent.

The military worked quickly to reverse the slide of early 2005, says John Warner, a professor at Clemson University who studies the economics of military defense. Enlistment bonuses have been a critical element of the Army’s compensation package since it first began the volunteer force in 1973. Earlier this year, Warner says, the Army began extending those bonuses to recruits whose score on the Army’s aptitude test, called the AFQT, would have disqualified them in the past.

Enlistees’ bonuses average $12,000, says Warner, but can be much higher, depending on the recruit’s military occupation; the toughest jobs to fill earn the largest bonuses. In April, the Army began paying the top bonus of $20,000 to recruits who sign up for three years in the infantry, cannon crews, satellite systems and food services.

“The incentives are set up to steer people into areas of high priority,” says Douglas Smith, Army recruiting spokesman at its headquarters at Fort Knox.

Smith adds that serious discussion is under way to increase enlistment bonuses to $40,000, which would require congressional approval.

The late 2005 surge in recruits is also the result of more recruiters. Overall, the Army added 1,300 recruiters in the last year, Warner said, to a mission that had seen significant cuts since 2001.

In Columbia, the Army Recruiting Station picked up two new recruiters in August, bringing Crittendon’s staff to full strength.

The National Guard has also nearly doubled its recruiting staff but introduced a recruiter assistant program last week, so it won’t have to maintain such a large staff indefinitely, said Lt. Col. Mike Jones, as reported in Friday’s USA Today. Missouri is one of five states included in the pilot program that will pay a $1,000 bonus to Guard members who encourage friends to join and will add another $1,000 when those friends come to basic training.

Crittendon’s path to the military began in his hometown of Jacksonville, Fla. While two older brothers had joined the military, Crittendon received a scholarship to play football at the University of North Carolina, where he was a starting defensive back. But during his junior year, Crittendon’s father died and he lost his passion for the game. He dropped out of school, drifted for a time, then found work at AT&T.

“Then one day it just hit me,” he recalls. “I walked into an office and enrolled on the spot.”

After tours in Somalia and Bosnia, he became a recruiter in 1997.

The Army’s recruiters still face an uphill battle, but optimism is part of the game. Despite the relatively poor performance of the Columbia station in 2005, Capt. Robert Kellam, commander of the Mid-Missouri Company, is pleased. Columbia has made recruiting goals in each of the last three months, and the Mid-Missouri Company finished in the top 10 percent of all companies in 2005. He still regards mid-Missouri as prime territory for new recruits, and now that his stations are operating at full strength, he expects to meet his 2006 goals.

“It’s a big mission, but we’re confident that we’ll make it this year,” Kellam says. “I see nothing but blue skies ahead.”