Uncle Sam hustle to keep the ranks filled: targeting the young, the military's recruitment tactics pitch a job with enticing perks—and the rarely mentioned chance to kill or be killed

National Catholic Reporter, March 21, 2003 by Claire Schaeffer-Duffy

Keeping the military ranks filled with able-bodied soldiers is no easy task. This series takes a look at some of the strategies--from video games to, increasingly, money for college--used to attract young people to the military. Next week's installment investigates the growing presence of military programs and military academies in the public school system.

First in a series

Aralanis Clayton, a senior at Dunbar Vocational High School on the South Side of Chicago, is a muscular boy with cinnamon-colored skin and a yes-ma'am/no-ma'am politeness that's endearing. His mother's only son and the middle child of a large famfly, he comes across as a sensitive, conscientious kid. In his room, amid the sports posters and model racing cars are photos of wide-eyed toddlers and preschoolers--his nephews, cousins, a godson.

Aralanis wants to be an architect. When he was small, he watched a lot of Home Gardening TV and taught himself how to draw buildings "just by looking."

"I want to do interior decorating," he says quietly.

This summer, Aralanis plans to enlist in the Army Reserve. It's one of the perverse paradoxes of the boy's life that his only perceived path to studying architecture could include a detour through war. He seems clueless about the troop build-up in the Guff. His friends told him he wouldn't see combat, that he "could do computers or drive a truck." But if it comes to that, "Well then, I'll do what I gotta do," Aralanis says.

His mom was in the Army. He always wanted to be in the Army; he has even worked his way up to lieutenant in his high school's Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC). He is hoping to get stationed in Virginia, near Hampden College where, his cousin said, they have a good architecture program.

In recent months NCR has taken a look at recruitment and at the significant time and resources the military now devotes to keeping the ranks filled with young men and women. The military's efforts include extensive advertising campaigns and a growing presence in public school systems.

This year the U.S. military will recruit 330,000 Americans for its active and reserve units. With the suspension of the draft in 1973, after three decades of conscription, America returned to relying on an all-volunteer force. Unlike their Israeli or Greek counterparts, young Americans are not mandated to give two years of their life to the military. Not for now, at least.

Uncle Sam gets his soldiers another way, through big bucks hustle and an impressive array of promotional tactics. The promotions arsenal includes cutting edge television ads; a free computer game with deadly combat in virtual reality; glossy brochures prominently displayed in every high school guidance counselor's office in the country; recruiting ships; recruiting 16-wheelers; recruiting vans; recruiting stations tucked in the comers of America's inner cities. All of that is backed up by a cadre of recruiters, 15,000 at last count, who pound the pavement, make phone calls, staff tables in malls, go into high schools and make more phone calls in order to pitch a job that offers enticing perks and, although this is rarely mentioned, a chance to kill or be killed.

Judging from the numbers, the sales pitches have been successful. With the exception of a drop in enlistments in 1998-99, all four branches of the armed forces have met or exceeded their recruitment quota since 1980, according to Major Brenda Long, director of Accession Policy.

This year the defense department allocated $2.7 billion for recruitment, a pittance relative to the Pentagon's overall budget of $312 billion. But per capita spending on recruitment has increased by one half in the past decade. In 2003, the military will spend $13,000 to get a kid all the way to boot camp--one and a half times the amount the Chicago Public School Systems spent last year to educate a child.

Even with those resources, persuading someone to sign up isn't easy. Sgt. Chris Lebanon, an army recruiter from 1989-91, described getting enlistments as "one of the toughest jobs" she had in the military.

"I was calling kids. I was beating down doors. If you don't make your quotas, you put in longer hours," she said. According to Lebanon, Army recruiters have one of the highest divorce rates after the Rangers and Special Forces.

"Some people find it hard to sell the military," said Sgt. First Class Eric White, a former army recruiter for 10 years and now an instructor for JROTC at Carver Military Academy in Chicago. "It's not a commodity. It's not like buying a car. It's nothing you can actually see or taste. It's a dream. It's a vision you got to sell."

And the vision comes in many different packages.

Recruiting literature presents the military as the optimum choice for career development, even serf-development. Promotional literature for the Navy advertises "career opportunities that will take you as far as you want to go--and get you there faster."

Each branch offers a variety of enlistment options, many designed to accommodate the academic situation of potential recruits. The Delayed Entry Program allows a person to enlist immediately but delay reporting for duty up to one year and is commonly used among high school students. Most branches of the armed services have negotiated arrangements with colleges and universities to grant credit for military training, defer enrollment or offer courses to the enlisted. The Army Recruiting Command reports that there are more than 1,500 colleges willing to defer enrollment of active duty soldiers and reservists until they complete initial enlistment requirements. The military's ROTC program offers full scholarships to the eligible who want college first and then enlistment, while the Montgomery GI Bill provides partial scholarships for those going to college after their time in the service.