Tag Archives: recruiting

by | September 7, 2012 · 7:24 am

Changes in Recruiting

Looks like the Army is making some changes in how it conducts its recruiting operations. (Warning- Link to NY Times)

The Army has begun remaking its recruiting structure, a change it aims to complete by 2015. Donald Herth, chief of advertising and public affairs for the Army’s Columbus Recruiting Battalion, based in Ohio, said the staff and duties of recruiting offices would be consolidated to make better use of resources and bring recruiting “more in line with everyday Army life,” where soldiers are deployed as teams.

In the past, recruiting officers worked alone, identifying prospective soldiers, processing their applications and preparing them for basic training.

Kathleen Welker, a public information officer for the Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky., said recruiters failed or succeeded on their own merit.

“But the fact is, even though they are all trained, just by virtue of personality, not everybody is as good at everything,” she said.

Under the new model, recruiters will be deployed as teams from centralized offices that have civilian employees to handle much of the administrative work. A handful of such consolidated centers are up and running. One in Coney Island, in Brooklyn, is scheduled to open this month, and will be staffed by recruiters from three nearby offices that are closing.

I’d love to see more details on how this new approach works. As it is, I’ve got some pretty strong concerns.

While there are a fair number of one or two man recruiting stations, particularly out West, most stations are already 5 or 6 man stations. My personal experience was in a station that typically had 5 Active Duty recruiters, two Reserve recruiters, and a station commander. We covered a the northern half of Lake County, IN, with Gary, East Chicago, Hammond and a slew of smaller towns in our catchment area.

One of the key elements of any success we had as recruiters was that we lived in the community in which we worked. When I spoke to the parents of a prospective soldier, there was every likelihood that I’d shopped at their business, or knew mutual acquaintances or had some mutual link with them in the community. Selling the Army is an exercise in trust. If your community doesn’t trust you, no one will join the Army through you. And the only way to establish that trust is to be known. That’s pretty hard to do if you aren’t there full time.

As for civilian administrative support during the enlistment process, you’d think that handing that phase off would allow recruiters more time to prospect and actively recruit. But as a recruiter, I’d have  been very, very leery of it. Recruiters establish a level of rapport and trust with their prospects. By and large, I liked the people I recruited, and like to think they liked me. More importantly, they trusted me.*  But until that person actually flew out to their initial entry training, the sell was a soft one. I put a lot of effort into recruiting a troop, and I sure didn’t want someone else screwing it up. The only time the prospect was out of my control was when he was sitting down with a counselor at the Military Entrance Processing Station. That was fine. A “two man rule” ensured that nothing hinky was going on. His job was to make sure the enlistment was valid. But he also was dedicated to treating each enlistee well. He got graded on his numbers too, you know!

But a civilian processing paperwork for an enlistment will essentially have no incentive to protect that soft close with an enlistee. And it doesn’t take a whole lot for someone to back out of a verbal commitment to enlist. One bit of carelessness or lack of rapport can mean a lost enlistment. And I’m not sure how the Recruiting Command can overcome this challenge. If anyone has details, I’d sure like to know.

*Sure, everyone likes to say their recruiter lied to them. I’ll buck that trend. Both my recruiters were honest with me. Sure, they tended to paint things in the best possible light, but they didn’t really promise me breakfast in bed during basic training, or any of that crap. And I tried to be very honest with my recruits. After all, the very first thing they did after Basic Training was to come home and tell all their friends what the Army was like. Having the first words out of their mouths “SGT XBrad is lying liar what lies!” was not what I wanted. 

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by | August 20, 2012 · 8:14 am

Speaking of G-Jets…

Every recruiter had his own government issued vehicle. The General Services Administration would lease cars for a three or four year term, and parcel them out to recruiting stations. While we might switch cars from time to time, most of the time, we had one car, and used it for all our official business.

Unlike the hassle of getting a tactical vehicle dispatched (basically, permission from battalion to take a vehicle out of a motor pool), these cars had a fairly low administrative overhead. We didn’t have to detail every point we travelled to, just our total daily mileage. A fleet credit card handled refueling at damn near any gas station.

They weren’t very luxurious cars, but they weren’t that bad either. Back in the Old Army, the Army actually bought fleets of cars itself. My recruiter had a Chrysler K-Car. And back then, all non-tactical Army cars came in a hideous pastel light green color. It beat the baby blue of the Air Force, but not by much. In my day, GSA cars came with AM and FM radio. Heck, we even had air conditioning! Sadly, no cruise control. Given the number of trips I would make along the Interstate to South Bend and Indianapolis, that was annoying, but hey, I was Army Strong!

Since we typically ignored local speed limits, and drove like bats out of hell, GSA cars were known almost universally as “G-Jets.”

As the New Guy in the recruiting station, my first G-Jet was, of course, the oldest, crappiest car at the station. It was a Ford Tempo that had been ridden hard.  Recruiters spend a lot of time in their cars. And apparently, the guy I replaced was a fat ass, because the cushion on the driver side seat was shot. There were plenty of holes in the cheap upholstery as well, since he had also been a smoker.  And three winters in northwest Indiana meant the paint job was lookin’ a tad rough as well. Still, it ran. Of course, it was pretty gutless.

Soon, I was tasked to go to Indianapolis and trade it in for a new car, a 1995 Chevy Corsica. Woot! Not exactly a muscle car, nor yet a Beemer, but still, not too embarrassing to be seen in. I dropped off the old Ford, signed my John Hancock on the bottom line taking possession from some fat GSA civilian, and headed back home. I’ve never owned a new car. This thing had less than a dozen miles on the clock. The “break in” period for it would consist of driving 160 miles back to the station as fast as traffic would allow.

I was about a mile from the exit that would deposit me at the recruiting station when a big old chunk of asphalt the size of a Baby Ruth bar was kicked up by the truck in front of me. It spanged off the hood, bounced up and hit the top of the windshield and disappeared behind me, scaring me silly in the process. The windshield didn’t crack, but as soon as I could get a look at the outside, I found a gouge in the hood about an inch long that went clear through the paint and primer down to bare metal. The top of the frame for the windshield had a fair dent as well. I think I was the only recruiter picking up a new car that day that had to fill out an accident report. Never did get either dent repaired though.

—–

Our station was in a strip mall that had a huge parking lot, but very few successful businesses, so it was almost always  empty. On mornings with a new snow, I’d head out before the snowplow came, and do donuts in the snow for a while. Not terribly satisfying in a front wheel drive car, but better than nothing.

—–

G-Jets were for official government business only, so one of the big rules was, don’t take your G-Jet home. That’s what your own car was for!.

Well… did you know it occassionally rains like heck in the midwest? They even have flash floods from time to time.  And so it came to pass, one recruiter (not me!) heard a real frog-strangler comin’ down upon his abode one night. And lo, the waters did rise. His home was in a place called Frog Holler, of all things. And his whole street flooded. He sure picked the wrong night to bring his G-Jet home.  The water reached almost to the roof of the car. It didn’t get swept too far away, but the car was a total loss from flood damage. I’m not sure what song and dance they gave battalion, but the recruiter somehow managed to avoid having to buy the car.

I’m not sayin’ I never took mine home. I’m just sayin’ mine was never ruined in a flood.

—–

I was heading down US 30 on day, and as it turned out, a recruiter from another station just happened to fall in behind me. As I stopped at a light, he decided to have  a little fun at my expense, and pulled up right behind me and very gently nudged my car with his. Very, very gently. I didn’t even notice it, or notice him behind me. So at the next red light, he decided to tap me just a little harder.

Oops.

He forgot that cars in the 90s didn’t have metal bumpers. He gave me a pretty good jolt. And just about tore off the front bumper of his car. I hopped out, saw a few scuff marks on my rear bumper. I jumped back in and hauled ass. Given that every accident report was supposed to have a police report attached, I don’t know what he told battalion had happened, but I never heard any more about it. And no one else ever wanted to play bumper cars with me.

—-

Time passes us all by. Ford had had their turn, and so with Chevy. After about 3 years, it came time to bid adieu to the Corsica. Off to Indy to swap out cars. About 50 of us were picking up new cars that day. The Corsica wasn’t much to look at, and was hardly a thoroughbred, but it was a good solid car. I was just getting the driver side seatcushions to fit my butt. I swapped it for some crappy Plymouth.  It was the most gutless thing I’d driven in years. I had to stand on the gas pedal just to get it to move. The seats were awful. The ergonomics of the whole car were bad.

On the trip home from Indy, the car almost stalled a couple times. This was the days before cell phones were quite ubiquitous. I was pretty concerned that if I did break down in the middle of nowhere, I might be there a while. As it turns out, by the time I did manage to limp back to the station, the battalion had been swamped with calls. Almost half of the recruiters who picked up Plymouths that morning had broken down on the way home. Must have been a batch of “Monday” cars. But hey, at least it had cruise control!

—–

G-Jets stateside were from the Big Three automakers. Gotta keep those government dollars at home. But in Germany, things were a tad different. There, the Status of Forces Agreement led to the Army (not GSA) buying fleets of non-tactical vehicles from the Germans. So when I was the XO’s driver at Brigade, I had my tactical vehicle (at first, an M1009 CUCV~ essentially a 1977 K5 Blazer, later I had a Humvee). But the Brigade also had a Volkswagon Van. Painted a bright yellow, it was inevitably known as the Banana Wagon. I actually drove that more than my truck. The CO and the CSM had their own drivers, but if the trip involved taking the Banana Wagon, we’d pretty much get tasked to drive whomever. The CO, Dan Zanini, went on to three stars. The CSM Gene McKinney went on to notoriety as the Sergeant Major of the Army, and a court martial.  My boss, the XO, David Ozoleck, retired as a Colonel and went into industry. Neat guy. Smart as a whip, fun and funny. Great leader. The Army missed an opportunity when he didn’t get a maneuver battalion command.

The Banana Wagon placed the driver well ahead of the front wheels. That took me quite a while to get used to. And I never could get the mirrors just right. It had a huge blind side on the driver side. More than once I almost merged into passing cars. But after a while, it got to be pretty fun to drive. Comfortable, spacious, and a decent ride and surprisingly good power. It wasn’t a Porche, but it was German engineered.

—–

I drove a few other G-Jets in my time, including a Dodge Rampage in Army Lime Green.  I even drove a big old Mercedes cab-over truck my unit had leased to help move people out during the drawdown in Europe-

“XBrad, you got a civilian license?”

“Yes, First Sergeant!”

“OK, drive this truck anywhere the Lieutenant wants to go!”

**looks at truck much, much larger than any I’d ever driven before**

“Yes, First Sergeant!”

What? You wanna tell the First Sergeant no?

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by | · 8:03 am

Back in the day…

Roamy keeps bugging me to tell stories about my time in the Army. The problem is, I told all the interesting stories way back in the first year of the blog.  The fact is, most of my time in the Army was a 9 to 5 job.

Round about 1997 or so, when I was on recruiting duty, I had to run up to the Military Entrance Processing Station for the Greater Chicago area, which is just outside the perimeter of O’Hare airport in a township called Des Plaines.   It was a good 2 and a half hour drive from our recruiting station in northwest Indiana. Of course, everyone drove their government issue cars like maniacs, so it was closer to 2 hours even.

Now, Company and Battalion pounded into us at every opportunity that getting a ticket while driving a government vehicle was the most horrific thing ever, worse than kicking a puppy. Woe betide the recruiter that got a ticket. On the other hand, woe betide the recruiter that spent more than two hours getting up to MEPS….

So it came to pass that I was haulin’ ass up to Des Plaines, on the Tri-State Expressway. And busily weaving through traffic in a manner that exemplifies poor road manners. And thus came to the attention of the Illinois State Police. As I saw the blue lights flash in the rear view mirror, a heavy pit formed in my stomach. As I coasted to the side of the road, I trembled in fright. What would the chain of command do when I got a ticket for 88 in a 55? Bend my dog tags? Stamp my meal card “no dessert?”

I pulled my license, and then kind of got to wondering just where was the registration for a GSA vehicle? I knew the US government was self insured, but I don’t think it ever occurred to me to even look for the registration. And there was no real proof written anywhere that I was, in fact, authorized to operate the vehicle. Was I going to get hauled off to jail?

Crap! The guy I was going to pick up wasn’t even MY recruit! It was one of the other recruiters in the office. Why did I get stuck playing taxi driver? Whatever excuse the other recruiter had, it wasn’t good enough, or I’d remember it.

A glance in the rear view mirror showed the  Smokey hat and mirrored sunglasses being donned, and soon, an old an wizened Trooper began his walk to the driver side window. I rolled down the window preparing my excuses.

1. It wasn’t me!

2. I didn’t do it!

3. The sun was in my eyes!

4. These four cylinder Chevy Corsicas just have way more power than I’m used to !

5. I was chasing Illinois Nazis!

Long service with senior NCOs prompted me instead to follow another course of action. I kept my damn mouth shut.

The Trooper leaned into the open driver side window and pronounced my fate…

“Slow the hell down, son!”

He turned, walked back to his cruiser, and rode off into the sunset.

I rode off too. About 30 miles an hour slower than I had been going.  

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by | March 13, 2012 · 11:12 am

Should the Military Enlist Deaf Soldiers?

Keith Nolan, presenting at a TED conference event, makes a strong case for it.

(video under the fold because of autoplay issues)

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by | September 27, 2010 · 12:54 pm

Not bad, Air Force, not bad…

Finally, the Air Force does something besides building golf course that just happens to have runways nearby…

H/T: WNU

Heh: from the comments-

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by | April 21, 2010 · 12:41 pm

Will a hot lunch be the downfall of the Republic?

Yesterday saw news stories about a new group of retired officers who’ve started an organization called Mission: Readiness that wants to address the problems of a limited pool of recruits available to the services because of failure to meet height and weight standards for entry.

National security is threatened by the sharp rise in obesity rates for young people over the last 15 years, the group Mission: Readiness contends. Weight problems are now the leading medical reason that recruits are rejected, the group says, and thus jeopardize the military’s ability to fill its ranks.

In a report released Tuesday, the group says that 9 million young adults, or 27 percent of all Americans ages 17 to 24, are too fat to join the military. The retired officers were on Capitol Hill advocating for passage of a wide-ranging nutrition bill that aims to make the nation’s school lunches healthier.

As a recruiter, I faced this problem fairly often. Some guys (and girls, of course) were so obese, it was a waste of my time to talk to them. They would never overcome the challenge of losing enough weight to enter. Why should I try to talk them into joining when they would never be eligible?

Other cases, borderline folks, were a different matter. Some were dedicated to joining and would put in the effort to lose weight and meet the standard. Other folks, well, they liked what I was selling, but not that much.

Of course, being fat wasn’t the only disqualifier for service. There were myriad other medical conditions that would preclude entry. But I’m not a doctor, so while I would screen applicants for potential problems, I’d make the doctor justify not letting them in.  There were times when it seemed there was no rhyme or reason to which conditions were unacceptable, and others were fine. But if I knew of any issues, and had the records to explain them, I’d have a much better chance of my applicant being accepted.

As a rule of thumb, we figured that only about one third of any graduating high school class was qualified to enlist- mentally, morally, and physically. That didn’t even address their desire or propensity to enlist. So you can see what a challenge finding qualified enlistees was. As the population gets fatter and more sedentary, it will continue to become more difficult.

On a side note, while perusing the comments on this topic at Lex’s place, one of the commentariat linked this little gem.

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by | December 15, 2009 · 7:06 pm

Fatboy slim

I think I’ve mentioned before that I hated recruiting.  I met a lot of great people, but so much of the job was a pain.  Finding people that wanted to join the Army wasn’t much of a challenge. Finding qualified people that wanted to join was a huge challenge.

I talked to a lot of people every day (which was a challenge in and of itself- I’m not the most outgoing person) and even a lot of people that were seemingly a good fit for service were, for one reason or another, ineligible.

There’s only a limited pool of potential recruits, and it isn’t as big as you may think. First, the target market, people from 18 up until their mid-20s isn’t the largest demographic in the country. Then, add in minor things like having a high school diploma, being physically and medically qualified, having a clean (enough) criminal record and passing the ASVAB test. Pretty soon, you’ve whittled down the pool even further. How much.

According to Wired Magazine, as much as 75% of the demographic is unqualified. Ouch. Fatboys seem to be the biggest component of that.

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by | June 23, 2009 · 11:46 am

New changes to Basic Combat Training

Not surprisingly, the experiences of returning soldiers has had an impact on the training new soldiers receive when they first report to the Army and undergo Basic Combat Training. Also not surprisingly, the Army is a large beauracracy, and any change takes time. Sometimes, too much time.

Here’s an interesting article on some of the changes in Basic Combat Training, now that experienced leaders from Iraq and Afghanistan are rotating back to run the training installations:

We were very much trained in the old way, and given our previous long familiarity with firearms, found it grating and somewhat insulting.  We understand the peacetime Army’s concerns about safety, but the effect was so oppressive as to undermine any real competence with weapons.
Our Basic Rifle Marksmanship training was actually slightly different from most people’s of the era. The Army was on the cusp of adopting the M-16A2 to replace the M-16A1 and considered revamping the marksmanship course at that time. Most troops, when firing for qualification, would fire 20 rounds from the prone supported position, resting the rifle on a sandbag, at targets ranging from 50 meters to 300 meters. They would then fire 20 rounds from a foxhole supported position, at the same targets. The targets would pop-up for a period of time, falling either when hit, or when their exposure time expired.
Pop up target
Pop up target
Our own training was somewhat different. We actuall fired on a “Known Distance” range for familiarization, firing at 200, 300, 500, and 700 yards. This was far in excess of ranges normally required by the M-16 series rifles, but did serve to inspire quite a bit of confidence in our abilities.
Pits of a "Known Distance" rifle range.
Pits of a “Known Distance” rifle range.
After that, we fired as well on the regular qualification range, with pop-up targets at the usual 50m-300m distances. But we fired a somewhat different course of fire.  We fired 10 rounds from the kneeling position, 10 rounds from the prone unsupported position, 10 from the prone supported position, and 10 from the foxhole supported position. We didn’t consider it the best course of fire possible, but it was certainly more realistic than the regular course of fire. In combat, especially in the offense, there are few opportunities to find a good supported position to fire from. And while firing from the prone is condusive to good marksmanship, and lowers your profile, making you a smaller target, very often, lying in the prone will prevent you from seeing anything. Think of a field of knee high grass. What will you see while you are on your belly?
Sadly, this was the only time  we fired this course of fire. The Army didn’t adopt it, and we spent the rest of our Army career qualifying every six months with 20 rounds on our belly, and 20 rounds from the foxhole.
Mind you, this was the Basic Rifle Marksmanship course. As implied, there is an Advanced Rifle Marksmanship course of fire as well. People outside the infantry have to be content with BRM. But infantrymen, in the later part of their training, move on to ARM. My memory is a little fuzzy on the details of the various courses of fire in ARM. There was an opportunity to fire on full-auto, which was fun. We also fired “instinctive” courses, engaging pop-up targets while walking at short ranges, say 25m to 75m. Still, given that this firing was done on a nice open field, it wasn’t terribly realistic.
The article doesn’t mention it, but one aspect of the new firearms training is that not only will recruits be issued their weapons earlier, they will carry them loaded at all times.  Not with live ammo, to be sure, but they will have a magazine in the weapon, with a few rounds of blank ammo. This is an excellent way of reminding troops to always pay attention and consider the weapon loaded at all times. It will breed familiarity for the weapon without breeding complacency or contempt. And removing the infantile requirement for rodding the weapon on and off the range shows a bit of respect to the native intelligence of our soldiers.
What say you? What changes should be made to weapons training in Basic Combat training, and to the Army as a whole? What other training evolutions in Basic should we adopt or delete?

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by | June 18, 2009 · 8:49 am

Gays in the Military

Recently, with the election of President Obama, the subject of gays in the military has garnered attention again. Currently, by law, the military follows the policy of “Don’t ask, Don’t tell, Don’t pursue.”  That is, the military no longer asks potential recruits if they are gay, and if the servicemember doesn’t announce that he or she is gay, the military won’t pursue allegation that they are in fact gay. The application of this policy is of course, often flawed. There’s no such thing as a perfect policy.

I’m curious what my readers think of allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Should we scrap DADT and go with a policy allowing openly gay soldiers to serve? Should we keep DADT? What are some of the practical problems with either option?

We supported the pre-DADT policy on prohibiting gays to serve. And we came to realize that DADT was not the end of the Republic.

Our concern with gays in the military has never been about gays per se. It has been about the ability of military units to form cohesive teams with high esprit de corps.  This is absolutely critical to success in combat.  It may or may not be fair to exclude gays from the service, but the military isn’t about fairness, first and foremost. It is about winning.

In our own experience, we believe that openly serving gays would have had a very disruptive effect on units and hurt the ability of teams to perform at their peak. The military serves under conditions that few other occupations impose. The close quarters of both garrison and field duty, let alone combat, mean that you are cheek by jowl with your co-workers not only during duty hours, but off duty time as well, to an extent that most people can scarcely comprehend.

Our service began almost a quarter century ago, and ended over a decade ago. It is quite possible attitudes towards gays in the public sphere have changed a good deal in the interveneing years. I see a lot of older folks decrying any attempt to allow gays to serve. I also see quite a few mid to senior NCOs and mid-grade officers with the same stance.  But  I’m seeing an increasing number of junior servicemembers who think the current policy is outdated and should be scrapped. I’m also starting to see some numbers of mid- to senior-level officers who think gays should serve openly.

We have an open mind on the topic right now. Our concern is not social justice, but what is the best way to fill the ranks with motivated servicemembers who can fight and win.

Now comes Argent, a longtime friend of our humble blog. He has a definite viewpoint. He is openly advocating for  gays to serve openly in our military, and has started a blog to promote that. It is intended to be a venue for serious discussion of the topic, so please stop by and see what he has to say.

Argent, also known as Aaron, is an interesting character. He’s Australian, openly gay, and has never served in any military. But he is a robust supporter of the military, both his and ours. And he is self taught enough to have a good grasp of most military concepts, even if he doesn’t know the inner workings and the exact feel of the culture. But most interestingly, he also wants to not only  advocate for gays in the military, he wants to give the gay community a better understanding of the military. He sees his task as building a bridge between what are essentially two separate cultures. As we have seen our task here as helping the public better understand what their Army is all about, we can certainly support the latter endeavor wholeheartedly, even as we are undecided about the former task.

So, where do you stand? Take the poll, and leave your comments. I’m interested in hearing from servicemembers of all branches and grades, of course, but I’m also deeply interested in hearing from the civilian community (it’s your Army, after all) and from the gay community. It’s an emotion laden topic for many, so I’ll ask that you please keep a civil tongue.

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by | June 11, 2009 · 10:16 am

An Outside View…

The Army is a large organization. And like any large organization, leadership and management are important parts of successfully achieving the organizational goals.

Troops start leadership training from Day 1, mostly by learning how to be a good follower, but soon learn leadership and management both by on-the-job training, and through the Army’s formal schools system. There isn’t a pay grade in the Army where you stop learning leadership and management.

The Navy of course, is much the same. They take a justifiable pride in their ability to train and teach leadership. Unlike a business, they can’t really go out and hire mid-level managers. They have to grow their own.Currently, there’s a fad in the Navy to adopt business practices as the best way to manage the Navy’s assets and people. This is not universally appreciated by the sailors and officers in the fleet. Some are downright skeptical.

But the Army and the Navy are also somewhat insular organizations, with limited interaction with the rest of the community. So it is nice sometimes it is nice to see what others think of what the Navy is doing. As a part of an effort to better explain what the Navy is and does, they recently invited several influential bloggers, most of whom are not affiliated with the services, to partake in brief “embark” aboard the USS Nimitz and see what life was like aboard a nuclear aircraft carrier underway and conducting operations.

Bill Reichert is an entrepenuer and blogger. Here’s a taste of his take on how private business can learn from the Navy (and I would argue, most of this applies equally to learning from the Army).

4. Recruiting and Training: There is a common misperception that the military attracts the lower performers in our society who have no other choices. The Navy is very fortunate to have more people who want to join than there are available slots. But more important, the men and women who make it through training are astoundingly competent people. The lesson here is that it’s not about fancy degrees and prior polish; it’s about a commitment to excellence in each individual, and the willingness to work to exhaustion to make sure you live up to your commitment.

Go over to the excellent USNI Blog and see his other nine points.

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by | June 9, 2009 · 4:08 pm

We own the night…

We’ve mentioned the Nightstalkers before, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR). They’re the Army’s dedicated unit to provide aviation support to special operations. They are the most highly trained helicopter unit in the world.

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by | June 1, 2009 · 9:45 am

Shooting at a Recruiting Station

KATV, in Little Rock, brings us news of a horrific crime. Two soldiers, back from overseas deployments to either Iraq or Afghanistan *, were gunned down outside the Army Navy Career Center in West Little Rock, AR. The suspected shooter is in custody. One victim is dead, one is in serious condition.

Per the article, neither victim was a recruiter, but rather part of the HRAP, or Hometown Recruiter Assistance Program. HRAP takes a young soldier, and sends him to his hometown. He works with the local recruiters to tell his or her experiences to potential recruits, typically the soldiers friends and classmates. After all, who you gonna listen to, the recruiter, or your buddy who thinks the Army is the neatest thing since sliced bread?

During my time as a recruiter, I worked in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America (at that time, anyway). I never had any problems, but some of my co-workers did. More than one had a gun pulled on them. The only guy in my office who’d ever been shot, got shot at home.

I also worked with several HRAP’ers over the years. Some were great. Some were just looking to spend a little time at home. But I can tell you this, none of them expected to be gunned down in their hometown.

Given the immediate supposition on the political left that the murderer of Dr. Tiller, abortion doctor, is representative of everyone on the right, will they also make the supposition that the murderer of these young soldiers is an antiwar activist, and representative of their cause?

I’m told Arkansas has the death penalty. Here’s hoping they use it.

*Yahoo is reporting neither soldier had yet been deployed, which is more in line with the HRAP as I recall it. Most of the time, soldiers are sent to HRAP immediately after Initial Entry Training, while they still have close ties to the community.

Via: Ace

Update:

The Little Rock Police confirm that the shooter was  a Muslim convert. Islam is a disease.

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by | March 19, 2009 · 10:39 am

Inside Special Forces

We’ll get around to giving a more in-depth explication of the Army’s Special Warfare community, but I just found this excellent National Geographic special on Hulu and thought I’d share it with you.

This movie is a few years old, but is still an interesting look at the operations of a Special Forces detachment.

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by | February 15, 2009 · 1:19 pm

Thoughts on a draft

It isn’t often I turn to a guy wearing a Batman suit for inspiration for posts here:

FYI, Richard Nixon is a hero to me. When I was in college, my lottery number was 13 and my Selective Service classification was 1-A. I expected to be drafted upon graduation when my student deferment expired — meaning, I was bound for Vietnam. This was not something I really wanted to do, being recently married, and after having served my country with rigorous duties in a Boy Scout marching band.

But, by the time I graduated, the war was over, and the draft was over, following the Paris Peace Talks. All this happened on Nixon’s watch.

Of course, after the Paris Peace Talks, the ARVN collapsed and South Vietnam became a communist dictatorship. So maybe I should have been drafted. I’m conflicted about this 35 years later.

I wanted to talk about this a bit. As someone who has enlisted voluntarily (twice!) from civilian life, and as a former recruiter for the all volunteer force, I fully support the AVF. The transition to the AVF after the Vietnam war was a very rocky one, with the service having severe trouble just finding enough people to join, let alone finding quality people. In the late 70′s, drug use was rampant, racial tensions high, unit readiness was in the toilet, and discipline was so bad, officers were sometimes fearful for their own safety should they visit the enlisted barracks. That’s no way to run an army. Much of this was a result of the antipathy much of society had for the Army after Vietnam. An even larger cause was the fact that Army pay was pitiful.

The Reagan buildup is often seen in terms of hardware. Oddly enough, most of those systems were actually developed and procurement began during the Ford and Carter years. Where Reagan really made an impact was in the personnel sphere. He boosted pay by a huge margin, making life for servicemembers if not comfortable, at least tolerable. And the Army itself took some hard steps. Random, universal urinalysis testing for all hands helped put a dent in drug use. When the Army made the decision that it would rather be shorthanded with good people than fully staffed with bad people, something else happened. People who previously would have walked away at the end of their enlistments started sticking around. Soldiering is a hell of a lot more fun when you aren’t spending all your time dealing with a bunch of hopped up druggies. Improving the facilities soldiers lived in helped a lot as well.

The other Reagan helped solve by throwing money at it was training. The Army put an awful lot of intellectual capital into deciding how to train. But it took a ton of money to put that into practice. And in the 80′s, there was finally enough money for fuel, ammo, spare parts and training aids to get out and train forces to a fare-thee-well. The results of this payed off handsomely, as seen in Desert Storm.

Even now, with our Army fighting two wars and supporting untold numbers of other operations globally; with soldiers deployed from home at rates that were utterly unthinkable when I served; in the midst of what was until recently an economy with an extremely tight labor market, we are still able to recruit a force of a quality that even Reagan era leaders could only dream of. For years, we’ve seen doomsday articles about how the Army is broken or soon will be. Yet enlistments are still keeping pace, even as we seek to raise the endstrength of the Army, and reenlistments are at historical highs. This isn’t to deny the challenges that the Army faces, but it’s a little early to claim the sky is falling.

To say that the All Volunteer Force has been a success is a bit of an understatement.

But what about the Draft Army of the Vietnam era? When I say I don’t want a draftee Army, let me be clear that in no way am I trying to minimize the magnificent service millions of Americans provided, at not only great inconvienence to themselves and their families, but at great personal risk. When their country called, they answered. Some stayed in the Army. But the vast majority did their duty to the best of their ability, went home, and picked up their lives where they had been interrupted. I’ve known folks who were drafted and never forgave the Army for that. I’ve known others who were drafted and thought it was a great experience. But mostly I’ve known people that were drafted, did their service and left that behind them. As to folks who were elegible for the draft yet received deferments? I can’t say I blame them. Provided they used no chicanery to avoid service, they did nothing wrong, and have no reason not to hold their honor as intact. The question only they can answer is, “If your country had called you to serve, would you?”

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by | January 19, 2009 · 11:48 am

Recruiting in tough times…

As always, I stopped by Neptunus Lex to check out the latest news on culture and the Navy. As always, he brings some interesting information to us, this time on the sudden appeal of military service during tough financial times.

I recruited from 1995 to 1999. If you recall, this was during the dot-com boom, and the economy was enjoying rather robust growth. Good paying jobs were plentiful, and the area I recruited in also had a large number of colleges and universities within easy commuting distance.

Further, the area I recruited in was not one that viewed military service as being the “employer of first choice,” for reasons mostly cultural. These influences tended to make selling the Army a difficult task. Not impossible, but you had to talk to a lot of folks to find one that would say “yes.” Further, finding someone to say “yes” who was qualified, mentally, morally, and physically, was a challenge. I was in direct competition with car manufacturers, steel mills, and construction and contracting firms for the pool of available young men. And they all tended to pay better.

As for high school students and recent graduates, I was in direct competition with universities and community colleges. Consider this- high school counselors are evaluated almost solely on the percentage of their students who go to college after graduation. What they weren’t evaluated on was whether those students graduated from college, or whether a college education fit those students goals for employment or otherwise fulfilled the student’s needs. To say that most counselors were less than enthusiastic about my recruiting efforts would be a bit of an understatement.

Then too, I was in direct competition with the other branches of the service for the same pool of potential recruits. While there were (and are) minor differences among the services qualifying standards, generally speaking, if you are qualified for one, you are qualified for all. And every branch is going to be wooing you. Further, I was also in competition with the Army Reserve recruiters (they worked side by side with me in the same recruiting station) and the National Guard.

So you can see that the challenge of finding 2 qualified applicants every month was daunting. Not impossible, no, but it was pretty damn rare that I had a qualified applicant walk in ready to go. In the NYT article linked above,  Dr. Curtis Gilroy, the director of accession policy for the DoD, properly describes the All-Volunteer Force as an “all recruited force.”

world-war-1-recruiting-poster

Occasionally, when a recruiter was struggling to achieve his mission, he or she would lament to his superior that it was impossible in the good economy to find applicants in their catchment area. This argument was rarely met with any sympathy.

I recall a meeting at the Indianapolis War Memorial that our battalion had. Our battalion commander addressed just that argument. He reminded us that the nation’s people did not exist to serve in the Army, but rather that the Army existed to serve the nation. The whole point of the service was to help the nation achieve peace and prosperity. “If I catch you hoping for a recession, I’ll nuke you into next year!” T’was a lesson I took to heart.

More than once, I found potential recruits who were wholly qualified, but had no great desire to serve. If that young man or woman had a solid plan, they had my best wishes. Often, when you spoke to a young man or woman, they would immediately tell you, “I’m going to college.” Fair enough. But a few probing questions would soon tell you that they had no idea what they were going to college for, what they wanted to study, how that major would help them, how they planned to pay for school or pay off student loans. Those were the folks that I would recruit.

I had a dual obligation. I was of course responsible for providing recruits to the Army. But I was also responsible to the recruits. I had to do my best to make sure they understood what they were getting into and to set realistic expectations for what they could achieve and what they could expect to receive for their service. Not all my recruits were happy with their decision to enlist. But I do take pride that a great many did.

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by | January 12, 2009 · 10:12 am

Fat Camp

As a society, America is getting fatter (your humble host as well!). That poses a real challenge for the services, as the standards of service haven’t changed. There’s only so many people to recruit from in America, and having a significant portion render themselves outside the pool of qualified applicants makes maintaining and growing the Army that much tougher.

This isn’t a problem that has suddenly appeared, either. We certainly faced it ten years ago when I was recruiting. Very often I would have potential recruits who were motivated to join, but just couldn’t pass the height/weight portion of the physical. We would work with them as best we could to slim them down, but our resources were limited, and the applicants often had limited time to devote to improving their physical shape.

In light of this, the Army is considering a “Fat Camp” for those recruits who are otherwise fully qualified to serve, but need to improve their weight and their physical conditioning. Many on active duty will bemoan this as further softening of the standards, but if the new recruits can get in, slim down, and meet the physical standards, I think it will be worth it.

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by | December 24, 2008 · 12:27 am

Airborne all the way!

Anyone who has watched more than one Army recruiting commercial is probably aware that the Army has paratroopers. And when I was a recruiter, a lot of young men (and not a few young women) wanted to enlist to be among the jumpers. The history of the Airborne forces in the Army is relatively short, dating only from 1940, but they’ve managed to pack a lot of heritage in that short span of time. They have seen their role evolve as technology has changed, but the fundamentals of airborne assault remain very much as they were almost 70 years ago.

The Army’s first look at airborne troops actually came in 1918, when Gen. John Pershing, commanding the American Expeditionary Forces in France was looking for a way to bypass the Germans trenchworks and put a force behind his lines. Pershing and Gen. Billy Mitchell considered putting one or two soldiers on small planes and dropping them by parachute, hoping  to put the entire 1st Infantry Division behind the enemy lines. The war ended before they could do much more than start planning. That’s probably a good thing, as later practice would show there were challenges they hadn’t really considered.

While there was some interest in the concept of airborne operations during the years between WWI and WWII, nothing was done. The Army was terribly short on money, and the Army Air Corps didn’t have money to buy planes capable of carrying paratroopers. Mostly the Army kept an eye on developments in Russia and Germany. For the most part, the Army didn’t really see a need for large scale airborne operations. That changed pretty quickly with the successful German assault on Fort Eben Emael.

Fort Eben Emael was a Belgian fortress guarding a key river crossing that the Germans needed to seize in order to outflank the Maginot Line in their invasion of France. Any ground assault on the fortress would cost a lot of casualties and worst of all, cost a lot of time. Instead of a frontal assault by ground troops, the Germans landed a 78 man force by glider right on top of the fortress. Using shaped charges (the precursor to modern HEAT warheads) they breached the fortifications and forced the surrender of 1200 Belgian troops in one day.

The second German operation that got our Army’s attention was the invasion of Crete. The Germans airdropped troops into Crete, and despite appalling losses, managed to secure and airfield and bring in enough reinforcements to displace the British from this key island base. The German losses were so heavy the Hitler forbade any further large scale airborne operations.  Allied leaders, however, learned a different lesson.

In 1940, the Army dipped its toe into the airborne waters by starting a test platoon to learn what the challenges and opportunities of this capabiltiy were. From that very modest beginning, a large force soon blossomed. One of the challenges the Army knew it was going to face was that it would have to make a lot of amphibious assaults during the war, the invasion of France being just the most prominent example. Looking at history, the learned that getting ashore wasn’t the real problem. The challenge was staving off the inevitable counterattack shortly after landing. By using airborne divisions to seize key road junctions and other terrain, the Army could buy some time to build up its forces ashore to defeat any counterattacks, helping to insure the success of any landings. And that’s just how the Army tried to use its airborne forces. At first, it didn’t always work the way they had planned. For instance, the 82nd Airborne in Sicily was scattered so badly that it couldn’t really seize any terrain objectives. But what it did do was so confuse the Germans that they couldn’t figure out where to counterattack until it was too late.

The original design for airborne divisions consisted of one regiment of paratroops and two regiments of infantry that would be flown in by glider. Being a glider grunt wasn’t a very popular option. Paratroops were volunteers, and got extra pay ($50/month, when a Private’s pay was $50/month). Glider guys didn’t get the chance to volunteer, or unvolunteer for that matter. Nor did they receive extra pay. By the time of the Normandy invasion, the Army had enough trained paratroops and, more importantly, enough planes to carry them, that the mix was changed to two regiments of paratroops and one regiment of glider infantry. In fact, later during the war, by reinforcing the divisions with another regiment, they effectively had 3 regiments of paratroops and one of glider infantry.

One of the real limitations of the airborne division in WWII was the limit on equipment size that could be airlifted in. This meant a real limit on the firepower of the division, as only smaller artillery pieces could be brought in by air. Also, while jeeps could be brought in by glider, there was no way to lift in trucks. That meant until the division could link up with ground forces, it could only move as fast as it could walk. If ground forces didn’t link up quickly, airborne forces could be surrounded and chewed to pieces. Doctrine called for a link-up in 48 hours or less, and for the airborne forces to be pulled out and held in reserve. Not surprisingly, it didn’t always work that way. In Normandy, the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions both fought in the line for a month after linking up with ground troops. Same thing happened in Holland. During the Battle of the Bulge, the 82nd and the 101st were the only US divisions not committed to the line when the Germans attacked. They were quickly shipped in by truck to Bastogne and other critical points in the line, where they fought as conventional, if elite, infantry. The US would field five airborne divisions in WWII, the 11th, 13th, 17th, 82nd, and 101st.

After WWII, only the 82nd and 101st would stay in the active Army. The Air Force bought greatly improved transports such as the C-119 and the C-123 (which actually started out as  a glider design) which were capable of dropping equipment such as trucks. This gave the airborne divisions far more mobility and lethality on the battlefield. During Korea, both airborne divisions served stateside as a strategic reserve in case the Soviets stirred up trouble elsewhere.

During Vietnam, the 82nd and 101st both served in the war, but neither made any significant combat jumps. Instead, they served as conventional light infantry. The only US combat jump of the war was made by the independent 173rd Airborne Brigade.

After the Vietnam War, the 101st was converted to an air assault division, moving mostly by helicopter (some units do retain airborne capability), leaving the 82nd as America’s sole airborne division. Since then it has served as the nation’s quick reaction force, able to put a brigade in the air in less than 18 hours, ready to jump anywhere in the world. The 82nd fought in Grenada, jumped into Panama in 1989, served as the first forces on the ground in Desert Shield and have made numerous deployments in support of the war in Iraq.

These days, supported by Air Force C-130, C-17, and C-5 aircraft, the 82nd can drop all of the division’s equipment and theoretically can be sustained by airdrop. And everyone in the division jumps, from the cooks to the division commander.

And while technology has greatly advanced, the role of the airborne hasn’t changed all that much. In WWII, the airborne would seize key terrain to allow ground forces to follow on. Today, we might expect to see the 82nd jump to seize airfields and ports to allow heavy units to be deployed to the war zone.  And of course, they still offer a theater commander a complete and well trained infantry division, ready and able to execute all traditional infantry missions.

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by | August 24, 2008 · 2:16 pm

I must be doing something right….

Now, this post is targeted at a specific audience, but if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

The Army Recruiter’s Wife asked me to put some of my thoughts on recruiting duty together as a guest post for her. I’m always happy to share my opinion. Just remember that most free advice is worth what you pay for it.

Understand that I got out of that business about 9 years ago.
A little history- I was an 11M DA selected for recruiting. As it was, I was trying to make up my mind where to go next, Germany, Drill Sergeant, or Recruiter. I knew my tour in Ft. Carson was just about done and that the unit was going to be drawn down. DA made up my mind for me.

I didn’t put a great deal of thought into where I wanted to go. I was (and still am) single, so one place was pretty much as good as another. I didn’t have to worry about schools, hospitals, special needs, or employment. I put three places down on the dream sheet. Seattle Battalion, since I’m originally from the area and still had family there; Atlanta Battalion, as I have a Southern heritage and still have lots of relations there, and Indianapolis Battalion, as that’s where the schoolhouse was then. I enjoyed Indianapolis and the surrounding area. Sure enough, I got Indy
Battalion. What I didn’t count on was getting sent to the Highland Recruiting Station, which covered Gary, Indiana. I thought I was pretty worldly, with tours in Hawaii, Germany and Colorado behind me. Gary was a total culture shock. I’d never spent any time in the Midwest and it was very strange and different. You expect that in places like Hawaii and Germany. It took me a good while to get used to it.

You’ll hear a lot of talk about how tough recruiting is in (insert your market here) and how the guys in some other place have it much easier. Don’t listen to the whining. The way the catchment areas are set up for each recruiter is quite sophisticated and gives each recruiter a large enough pond to fish in, not just in terms of raw bodies, but in terms of propensity to enlist.

One of the challenges that I saw new recruiters families often face was that they had been with the Army long enough to get used to having that support system around. Suddenly, it ain’t there. My company headquarters was 120 miles away, and battalion was 170 miles away. You have to plan ahead for anything needing support. There are also usually only a handful of Army spouses around, also. Getting settled in without that support structure is tough.

For spouses who have had their husband deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan or some other garden spot, you will be surprised just how much they are gone. Sure, they’re home every night. Late at night. There were times that I worked 7am till 9pm on a regular basis. I wasn’t very good company by the end of the day. You will feel cheated that after waiting patiently all that time he was deployed, you are deprived of him once again. There are ways to counter this. Try to set up a lunch date. One of my fellow recruiters met his wife for lunch every Tuesday, come hell or high water. It helped him a lot. Take leave. You won’t get a chance to take a 30 day leave, but working a 7 day in each quarter isn’t that hard. And don’t forget, there are a lot of civilians out there who put in the same hours recruiters do.

Join some type of community organization. It doesn’t really matter what kind, the point is to meet some locals who can then refer you to things like a good doctor, tell you which schools are good, where the best deals are, that sort of thing.

I didn’t enjoy recruiting very much. Part of it was because I’m a fairly introverted person. Going up to a total stranger and starting a conversation is very difficult for me. That’s a real handicap for a recruiter. Still, success in the recruiting business is a numbers game. The more people you talk to, the more likely you are to find someone to join. Every recruiter hates the phone. They will all tell you they do better face to face. Maybe, but every recruiter I knew had generated more contracts by phone contact than any other single means. After a while, you get pretty comfortable on the phone. I hated the phone as much as any other recruiter, but I soon learned it was easier for me to cold call someone than to walk up to them. Often when I did meet someone face to face, they knew who I was through a previous phone call. I’m terrible with names and probably didn’t remember them, but they remembered me, and that was the important thing.

For the most part, I liked my applicants and recruits. There were always “problem children” who were on the fence, or couldn’t stay out of trouble, but that just comes with the territory. Most of the folks I worked with were decent folks, both the applicants and their parents. I knew I was doing something right when I got invitations to dinner. And if I didn’t like the applicant, I kept my mouth shut and tried like hell to not let it show. If someone wants to join the Army, they deserve as much attention from me as anyone else.

Recruiting was a little weird in that I had less supervision than ever before, and yet, more micromanagement. I would stop by the office in the morning, update the station commander on my plan, let him know what I had in store for the day, then head out. I was on the road most of the day. In the afternoons, around 4:30 or 5, I’d be back in the station to start hitting the phones. Sometime between then and the end of the day, I would have to sit down with the station commander and go over exactly what I had done, how many people I’d met, how many calls had I made, had I made any appointments or conducted any appointments and what were the next steps for the applicants I had in the pipeline. As a rule of thumb, I had two to three good actions a day, that was a good effort. By actions, I mean either a good, solid appointment made, or conducted, or some other tangible step taken toward getting an applicant in. If I missed mission the previous month, or it looked like I wouldn’t make it that month, I’d probably end up discussing my work and my plan with the First Sergeant as well as the Station Commander. That seems like micromanagement, and is rarely comfortable. Most of the time, though, they were pretty helpful.

A.R.W asked if her husband could continue his volunteer work. Specifically, he enjoyed runs, walkathons, and other sporting events supporting a favorite charity. By all means, continue to support them. Just make sure you wear your Army PT uniform! And don’t forget to pass out business cards. Remember, everything you and your recruiter do, is recruiting. I wore my Class A’s to church. If someone asked about it, I answered. Dinner with the girlfriend? Ask the waiter if he wanted a real job! It takes a while to learn to balance work and life, but it can be done.

Each recruiting battalion has a specialist to help with healthcare. Get their name and number and make friends with them. They can be a great asset in dealing with TriCare. Especially for families in the special needs categories. Most doctors in the real world don’t deal with TriCare much, so it is very handy to have a guide and advocate ready to walk you and them through the system.

Recruiting duty is not the nightmare it is painted to be. It is tough, hard work, but if it were impossible, no one would do it. As it stands, quite a few folks decide they like it and convert to 79R. Or at least they look back on it fondly when they return to the “real Army.” Let me wish you good luck. Go Army.

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by | July 10, 2008 · 8:49 am

An Army of Stupid

One of the continuing memes we’ve heard for many years is the the Army is the employer of desperation for the underprivileged and mentally feeble. We saw this with Senator Kerry’s odious remarks about studying and staying in school, “or you wind up in Iraq.”  There is a strong perception among our population that people join the Army because they can’t do anything else. This, however, is completely false. Cassandra, the lovely and talented hostess of Villainous Company, has spotted another example of someone pontificating about the service without the necessary knowledge to do so without beclowning himself.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- the challenge I faced as a recruiter wasn’t finding people that wanted to join the Army. The challenge was finding qualified people that wanted to join the Army. Roughly a third of the population is excluded from service by means of scoring in the bottom third of the ASVAB. Then there are the hoops of academic credentials that must be jumped through. We’ve seen much gnashing of teeth about the lowering of standards in recruiting, but if you look at the chart on Cassandra’s post, you’ll see that even though more folks with GEDs are being accepted, they are by far still the exception to the rule.

The Army and the other services are in direct competition with both industry and colleges for their recruiting markets. The same attributes we want in a recruit also make these folks attractive to schools and businesses. The demonstrated ability to graduate school, stay out of significant trouble with the law, and desire to work and grow. Added to this, the services also have to screen for physical ability in a way that few employers can. That we are able to find any qualified recruits at all is something of a miracle and certainly a testament to the character of today’s youth.

There are as many reasons to join the Army as there are people in the Army. Still, most people are motivated to join for one or more of the following reasons.

Training- many people want to receive training in a job skill that will translate directly to civilian employment, such as heavy equipment operator.

Education- The GI Bill and Army College Fund are huge incentives for people that want to pay for college.

Adventure- If you’ve lived in the same place all your life, getting out, seeing new places and doing new things has great allure.

Money- You’ll never get rich in the Army, but you can provide for your family.

Service to country- Lot’s of people feel indebted to our country and feel the need to give back in some way.

Few people join for just one of the above reasons. Usually, it is a combination of several of them, with one leading the way. Often, the reason they tell people isn’t the real reason. I justified my enlistment to  my parents in large part because of the money for education, but I really joined for adventure and service. If we were to ask people in the service today why they joined, I’m not sure they would give an accurate answer. I know that the longer I served, the more important service to my country became.

Saying that the service is the last chance employer, though, is a slander on those who choose to serve, particularly since it flies in the face of all available evidence.

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by | July 2, 2008 · 4:43 pm

Recruiting and Waivers

My last job in the Army was as a recruiter. The news for the last 7 years has often looked at the recruiting numbers of the Army and the other services, parsing them to spot trends toward a broken force. Some on the left are hoping to see the numbers fall and like to scare folks by saying that we’ll soon have a draft. Um, no. That’s the last thing the Army or the other branches want. The other theme often bandied about is that the quality of the services are falling. You can expect to see this news touted to support that view.

Let me give you a little background on waivers. Every person who joins the Army must be physically, mentally and morally fit for service. Finding people willing to join the Army was never a problem. Finding people that met those three criteria was the challenge. Something as small as a patch of psoriasis could be enough to disqualify someone physically, and whether they could receive a waiver was always a big question. As a recruiter, I had no influence on the physicians who reviewed the waiver applications. The mental qualifications were a kind of complicated. Everyone who joins the Army has to pass the ASVAB test. That’s the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. Many of you may have taken it in high school as a warm up for SATs. What constituted a passing grade depended on your level of education. The test is scored on a curve, and the bottom 32% of the population fail the test. For a long time, people that had only a GED needed to score in the 50 percentile or better just to qualify. Whether we would grant them a waiver depended on how many other GEDs were trying to get in. If my recruiting battalion (which covered all of Indiana and the northern half of Kentucky) had space for 3 GEDs that month, it would generally be first come, first served. The fourth guy (or gal) who showed up with a GED was out of luck. The numbers actually allocated changed from month to month, based on the needs of the Army. This has been relaxed somewhat, both because of the pressing needs of recruitment and because many people now pursue nontraditional high school education, such as home school.

Finally, morally qualified. One of the first questions we asked was “have you ever been arrested, cited, charged, held or convicted of any crime?” I don’t care if charges were dropped, of if it was just a speeding ticket. If you spoke with the police, I needed to know. If there was a criminal history, we’d check it out and go from there. But even if we couldn’t get the prospect to admit to any criminal history, if they wanted to join, we would check police records at the city, county, and state level for every place they lived, worked or went to school for the last three years. Often, applicants would have some sort of record (though they usually told us, first). Let’s take a look at a typical case.

Mike was a high school graduate when I met him. He hadn’t really thought much about the Army, but he quickly became interested in working as a cannon crewmember. He took and passed the ASVAB with no problems. He didn’t appear to have any physical problems and I didn’t think the physical would find any. He did, however admit to a misdemeanor burglary charge. I ran the police checks on Mike and got a surprise. He had been arrested on felony burglary charges. That’s a disqualification right there. The next step was to go to the court and get their records on Mike. Mike’s charge had been reduced to a misdemeanor and he plead no contest. He was “conditionally discharged”, meaning that if he didn’t get into any further trouble with the law for one year, the charge would be dropped. Mike kept his nose clean and in due course, the charge was dropped. But as far as the Army was concerned, he was still disqualified. I had to help Mike apply for a waiver for enlistment. My rule of thumb was to test how bad the guy wanted to join. I would take care of all the Army paperwork, and Mike had to go get everything else, such as letters from his neighbors, teachers, clergy (I told him if he didn’t have any clergy, now would be a good time to find some!) and writing an explanation of why he thought he should be given a second chance.

After collecting all the materials for the waiver I sent it to my company commander. He reviewed it for completeness and accuracy, and to ensure that Mike could qualify for a waiver. My CO then sent it to the Battalion Commander, who had to decide to grant or deny the waiver. In this case, the waiver was granted, Mike went on to join the Army, serve his enlistment, and return home to attend college.

One reason more people need waivers these days is that more people are being charges for crimes that in the past, the police would have given a warning or handed them off to their parents. In addition, many crimes that were formerly misdemeanors are now felonies.

When you read or hear stories about how the Army is full of felons and thugs, take that with a grain of salt.

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