thedrifter
03-18-05, 06:57 AM
March 21, 2005 <br />
<br />
With 2 months of missed goals, nervous parents and skeptical youth, the Corps is navigating a rough recruiting road <br />
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By Gordon Lubold <br />
Times staff writer <br />
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It had become so...
thedrifter
03-18-05, 06:57 AM
March 21, 2005
Recruiter finds that parents often are the biggest obstacle
By Joseph R. Chenelly
Times staff writer
Relaxed for the moment, the recruiter pulls his government vehicle into a parking lot to pick up a 20-year-old potential recruit.
The stocky young man stands on the curb wearing a half-unbuttoned white dress shirt with yellow stains. He still has an apron from work tied around his waist. He pulls the car door open with force, flops onto the velour-covered front seat and flicks the green pine air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror.
“Ready to meet my mom?” the young man asks with a grin. “She said she’s ready to meet you.”
“Of course,” the recruiter replies, stepping on the accelerator even before the passenger door slams shut. “I’m always ready to meet mothers.”
The recruiter, the young man and his mother agreed to be observed on the condition that they would not be identified.
A recruiter’s work environment is so “intense” that the U.S. Army Recruiting Command has barred recruiting stations from allowing journalists to shadow their soldiers in action now and for the foreseeable future, according to Doug Smith, a command spokesman at Fort Knox, Ky.
Longer hours, more days of the week. Dealing with parents who believe the Army wants to send their children to a certain death. That is what at least some recruiters regularly endure.
“I’ve been recruiting for six years, and it is tougher right now than at any other point I can remember,” said the staff sergeant, a recruiter in central Virginia. “We’re adapting to the new environment, but that means starting earlier and ending later. Not to mention working Sundays now.”
Statistics he keeps show he now has to make face-to-face contact with potential recruits three times more often than just two years ago to get them to enlist.
“The biggest obstacle to getting a young guy to enlist is usually his parents,” the recruiter said. “If I can get a parent to agree that joining is a good idea, then I almost always have the kid.”
Two weeks earlier, at work at a local grocery store, the young man was caught eyeing the recruiter’s uniform. “I just asked him if he wanted one of his own,” the staff sergeant recalled.
“He said he did but didn’t want to go to Iraq. Like a lot of the guys we put in, he comes from a single-parent household. His paycheck helps support his mother and little sister, so he’s worried about who would take care of them if he is hurt or killed in Iraq.”
The young man’s mother, who baby-sits for cash in her home during the day and works at the same grocery store as her son in the evenings, doesn’t come to the door when the recruiter and potential recruit enter. They wade past several toys for toddlers, a baby swing and other evidence of the mother’s day job. She sits at a wooden dining table in the living room. Her jet black hair is in a single ponytail, falling past her shoulders. Her relatively young face bears no makeup or emotion.
Pushing aside papers, she avoids eye contact while offering a seat to the uniformed soldier. She looks at her son, smiles and says, “It is a sharp outfit.”
The three settle around the table and the young man speaks first.
“My mom has to be OK with this before I go anywhere,” the young man tells his recruiter, catching the staff sergeant off guard. “We’re tight, and I don’t want to do something this serious unless she is good with it.”
The staff sergeant audibly sucks in his breath, but gets right to work. Reaching down to a bag by his feet, he pulls out a thick binder he hadn’t planned to use that afternoon. “Absolutely,” says the staff sergeant, looking directly at the mother, “it is very important for everyone involved to understand why this is in [the young man]’s best interest.”
The recruiter talks about the son learning job skills and getting practical experience, about a steady paycheck and about learning to live on his own. The mother listens, arms folded, nodding from time to time, for nearly an hour. Her eyes well up and redden at times, but she is mostly silent. When the recruiter is finished, he asks if she has any questions.
“How long until he is in Iraq?” the mother asks first. “How long will he be there? Why should he go? He can make something of himself here, too, you know.”
Without a pause, the staff sergeant tells her about the training the young man might undergo depending on his military occupational specialty. He says her son won’t be sent anywhere until he is ready. He says the son would likely be ineligible to deploy “for at least a year, maybe longer, because he will be learning his new job. With only four years on active duty he might not even go over. But there is, of course, the possibility.”
The mother peppers the recruiter with more questions, including one about news reports of soldiers in Iraq without armor. The recruiter had heard that one before and has a response ready: “CNN stretched the truth on that. Everyone who needed armor had it. The guys who didn’t really need it, didn’t have it at first, but they have it now. No soldier died because they were missing armor.”
The mother stands, signaling the end to the meeting that lasted nearly two tense hours. The recruiter extends his hand to shake hers. She looks at the hand for a full second before shaking it.
“I haven’t decided what I think is best yet,” she says. “I know what he said today, but the decision is really up to him.”
The recruiter nods, thanks them for their time and, unescorted, lets himself out.
Outside the home, the recruiter wipes sweat from inside his collar. He hears questions like those dozens of times per month. He admits such meetings are draining, and he has another one later that night. But he knows the importance of his job.
“I’ve got a mission to meet,” he says.
The Drifter's Wife
Ellie
thedrifter
03-18-05, 06:58 AM
March 21, 2005 <br />
<br />
Recruiters have rivals for hearts and minds <br />
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By Rick Hampson <br />
USA Today <br />
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NEW YORK — The Marines didn’t have to recruit Greg McCullough;: He signed a promise to enlist last...
What's more worrisome is the Army missing it's mark. It has been for quite a while now. The Corps missing it's mark for two months is just a blip I believe.