Text 1313, 220 rader
Skriven 2004-08-15 20:18:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Reelistments
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Say it isn't so.  This isn't supposed to be happening...

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http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/breaking_news/9407606.htm


Posted on Sun, Aug. 15, 2004 
  

Army on track to meet goal of re-enlisted soldiers

BY CHRIS VAUGHN

Knight Ridder Newspapers


FORT HOOD, Texas - (KRT) - Spc. Brian Harris made a cold calculation 
about his future in fatigues.

Then he signed the papers, raised his right hand and repeated the re-
enlistment oath given by his platoon leader. He shook hands with the men 
from the 588th Engineer Battalion, posed for a picture and went back to 
work.

An Iraq war veteran, Harris weighed the probability of another long 
deployment before his initial enlistment would expire. He decided the 
best option was to re-up with a guarantee that he could move to Fort 
Lewis, Wash., near his hometown.

"I figured I would deploy again in the next year, so if I'm going to 
deploy, I wanted to deploy from home, and my wife can be close to home, 
too," Harris said.

The Army is defying the conventional wisdom that the Iraq war will empty 
its ranks, and it appears to be on track to meet its retention goals for 
early, midcareer and career-enlisted soldiers.

As of late July, the Army had re-enlisted 45,256 soldiers of the 56,100 
it needs to meet its target this fiscal year, which ends in September. 
Short of an awful last two months, Army officials say they'll make their 
goal.

In a year of long deployments to Iraq, the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison 
and a decidedly bloody spring in which 278 service members died, 
retaining so many battle-tested corporals and sergeants is no small 
feat.

"In a way we're plagued by anecdotes where one soldier in a thousand is 
interviewed and complains that he can't wait to get out of the Army, so 
that means everybody must want out of the Army," said Lt. Col. Bryan 
Hilferty, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. "That becomes the truth, 
but it isn't. We don't have any problem with retention."

The reasons, Army career counselors say, are many: an unsettling 
civilian economy, large bonuses, improved pay and combat itself.

As one soldier put it, a firefighter who never got to fight fires would 
be unlikely to keep riding the truck.

"I joined the Army to run around in the woods, blow things up and bite 
the heads off snakes," said Master Sgt. Jerry Johnson, who leads 
retention efforts in the 82nd Airborne Division.

"When I'm guarding something on post, when I'm doing book work or 
practicing map-reading, that's not exciting," he said. "That's not what 
I joined for. When I'm in a combat situation, I'm doing what I signed up 
to do."

The picture is not uniformly rosy. Plenty of soldiers are jumping out of 
uniform when given the opportunity.

The Army is straining to find fresh troops to rotate into Iraq and 
Afghanistan, and many experts believe that the Bush administration is 
close to breaking the Army and its reserves.

Close to half of the 135,000 troops in Iraq are reservists or members of 
the National Guard, and that proportion will increase in 2005.

The Army has tapped 5,600 former soldiers for recall into the active 
duty, and the service has had enough of a recruiting problem this year 
that it is sending many of its recruits into basic training before they 
want to go.

Thousands more soldiers are covered by a stop-loss order preventing them 
from leaving or retiring, a move that critics call a backdoor draft.

Lastly, there is some evidence that soldiers are retiring as soon as 
they hit the 20-year mark and become eligible for full retirement 
benefits.

Still, this year's re-enlistments are evidence that the exodus isn't 
overwhelming among the enlisted or the young officers.

Hilferty said the Army is losing 5.5 percent of its lieutenants and 
captains a year, significantly fewer than four years ago.

"We did think the Bosnia and Kosovo rotations in the late '90s would 
cause retention to go down," Hilferty said. "It didn't. The units who 
rotated through there had higher retention rates than those that 
didn't."

But Sgt. Maj. Mike Massey, the 4th Infantry Division's chief career 
counselor, said the Army's regular and long rotations around the globe 
may hurt it in the long run.

"A deployment helps retention," Massey said. "Back-to-backs won't."

Rested from his 12-month deployment to Iraq, Staff Sgt. Marcus Rose, 28, 
an 11-year Army veteran and the son of a career soldier, re-enlisted 
this month at Fort Hood for the "fourth or fifth" time.

"I've been around this my whole life," Rose said. "I'm used to the 
environment."

The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment left Fort Polk, La., in March and April 
2003, setting up a base of operations around Baghdad after the invasion. 
Month after month, the 4,300 soldiers stayed.

When their 12-month tour came up, they stayed longer still at the order 
of top commanders who needed the extra firepower for the violent 
coordinated uprisings of the spring.

It was July when the soldiers came home, 15 months after they left. 
Sixteen of them had been killed in action, 200 wounded.

The reaction?

"We go to war, soldiers deploy and re-enlistments go through the roof," 
said Staff Sgt. Mark Duffy, the senior career counselor in the regiment.

The regiment was given its objective months ago: re-sign 682 soldiers. 
It has delivered 966 so far.

It's been considerably tougher at the 4th Infantry Division, which 
returned from a yearlong deployment to Iraq in March.

The division, which has enlisted 88 percent of its target of 2,812 
soldiers, is on pace to get 100 percent, but it hasn't been easy, Massey 
said.

"We are having to work harder than ever before," Massey said. "We're in 
a serious selling mode. That selling mode is the only thing that is 
taking us this far."

The 82nd Airborne, a division based at Fort Bragg, N.C., that has ranked 
among the most deployed since 2001, has met 92 percent of its objective.

For soldiers with 10 years of service or more, the division has met 105 
percent of its goal; for soldiers on their first enlistment, 89 percent.

The Army gave a boost to retention efforts this year by releasing more 
than $100 million in bonuses.

Junior soldiers are pocketing lump sums of $5,000 to $10,000 and don't 
pay a dime in taxes if they re-enlist in a combat zone such as Iraq or 
Afghanistan.

Few soldiers with more than 10 years of service are eligible for them 
because the Army figures that if they've been in that long, they're 
likely to stay until the 20-year mark anyway.

What attracted many of the 2nd Armored troops, Duffy said, was the bonus 
and a guarantee that the soldiers could stay at Fort Polk for several 
more years, an offer made only at certain installations.

Allowing soldiers to stay at their bases eliminated many concerns, Duffy 
said, because families don't like moving as frequently as the Army 
usually requires.

Johnson, from the 82nd Airborne, said the bonuses are also adding to the 
length of re-enlistments.

"The soldiers would have enlisted anyway, but they'd probably only take 
a two-year commitment," he said. "The bonuses help them make a four-year 
commitment."

Sometimes, though, money isn't a factor. Spc. Bryan Murphy, 23, a 
Maryland native, re-enlisted - this time for four years instead of three 
- because he hadn't met his goal of making sergeant.

"I'm doing this for my son and to prove to myself that I could do 
something with my life," Murphy said.

Massey, from the 4th Infantry Division, said people would be surprised 
how far a simple bit of praise and appreciation of sacrifices goes with 
soldiers.

"They get that warm and fuzzy," he said. "They think, `Hey, they 
appreciate me. They value me.' If no one in their platoon or company 
ever tells them they're a good soldier and a valuable part of the Army, 
then they'll leave because they figure no one cares if they do."

A series of pay raises over the last four years has also contributed to 
re-enlistments, soldiers say. Since 2000, pay has increased about 25 
percent, and housing allowances have gone up as well.

For example, a sergeant stationed at Fort Hood with a wife and two 
children earns $2,130 a month in base pay, plus $784 a month for 
housing: $34,968 annually. While deployed in Iraq, that sergeant would 
earn an extra $475 a month and pay no taxes.

The bonuses and pay raises, as well as an economy that is still 
recovering from recession, have all made the Army more appealing, 
soldiers said.

"I gotta tell you, I love all the negative press on the economy," 
Johnson said.

Maj. Ronald Elliott, a spokesman for the 2nd Armored, said his son 
reconsidered leaving the Army after returning from Iraq, where he served 
with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

"You're going to see those soldiers who will get out anyway, regardless 
of the deployment pace," Elliott said. "But the greater percentage see 
the cause as greater than their individual concerns."


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