Army Reserve battling an exodus: War is seen as drain on ranks

By Robert Schlesinger

<http://www.boston.com/news/nation/w...>

WASHINGTON — The US Army Reserve fell short of its
reenlistment goals this fiscal year, underscoring
Pentagon fears that the protracted conflict in Iraq
could cause a crippling exodus from the armed services.

The Army Reserve has missed its retention goal by 6.7
percent, the second shortfall since fiscal 1997. It was
largely the result of a larger than expected exodus of
career reservists, a loss of valuable skills because
such staff members are responsible for training junior
officers and operating complex weapons systems.

"The Army has invested an enormous amount of money in
training these people, and they’re very hard to
replace," said John Pike of globalsecurity.org, an
independent research group in Washington.

With extended deployments and increasingly deadly
attacks by Iraqi guerrillas, Defense Department
officials are scrambling to combat a broader downturn
in retention and recruitment that they fear is on the
horizon.

The US Army, the primary service deployed in Iraq, is
offering reenlistment bonuses of $5,000 for soldiers
serving there. The Army National Guard is extending an
official thank-you to members by arranging services to
honor returning soldiers. The Massachusetts National
Guard is offering rewards ranging from plaques to
NASCAR tickets to members who lure recruits. And
throughout the branches, recruitment advertising is up
and programs are being launched to make the military
seem more family-friendly.

The Army also is resorting to a policy called "stop
loss" that allows the Pentagon to indefinitely keep
soldiers from leaving the service once their time has
expired. The policy, used during war, is designed to
prevent staffing shortfalls in key sectors.

As the military ponders unpalatable measures — further
Reserve or Guard call-ups, back-to-back tours of duty
— to fill the global obligations, any personnel
shortfalls could prove disastrous. "It’s a slippery
slope in the sense that there’s kind of a snowball
effect," said Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director
of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,
a Washington think tank that focuses on defense issues.
"It’s very difficult to work your way out of, very
difficult to put Humpty Dumpty back together again once
you break the force."

While Pentagon officials have insisted that recruiting
and retention figures are mostly at or above expected
levels, thanks in part to a soft economy that offers
little competition, signs of trouble are emerging.
Recruiting for the Massachusetts National Guard, a
backup to the professional Army and Air Force, was down
30 percent this year. Nationwide, the Army National
Guard has fallen 13 percent short of its recruiting
goal, although that deficit was offset by fewer than
expected troops leaving the service.

Perhaps the most troubling statistic is the drop in
retention for the Army Reserve, first disclosed by Army
Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker on Wednesday in
testimony before Congress. The drop was due to the
Reserve falling 9.3 percent short of its retention goal
among career soldiers.

"They’ve got a fair amount of experience with these
things and generally manage to fine-tune them so that
they pretty much have in place all of the various
incentives and bonuses . . . that they’ll pretty much
come in on their number. So if they were off by 6
percent, that’s significant," Pike said.

It was the second time in the past seven years that the
Reserve has fallen below its intended reenlistment
figure, according to Steve Stromvall, an Army Reserve
spokesman. In the 12 months that concluded at the end
of September 2001, the Reserves was 1 percent short of
its number. That the shortfall was entirely among
career soldiers is important because they are
considered the Army’s backbone. "They’re critically
important," said Cindy Williams, a specialist on
military personnel issues with MIT’s Security Studies
Program. "That’s where the leadership is going to come
from in the next decade."

They are people like Staff Sergeant Scott Durst, a 15-
year veteran of the Army Reserve who extended his
enlistment after a tour in Bosnia but will not sign on
for another tour after Iraq, though it will means he
loses the opportunity for retirement benefits. "Not
even a chance, no," said his wife Nancy Durst, a high
school art teacher. "He didn’t sign up to be a Reserve
to be doing active-duty orders every year."

She added that her husband, a member of the 94th
Military Police Company, has spent too much time away
from their home in southern Maine and their two teenage
daughters.

"I fear there will be a negative impact on retention of
these Guard and Reserve personnel," said Senator Susan
Collins, a Republican of Maine who sits on the
personnel subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services
Committee. "There’s an old saying in the Army that they
enlist the soldier but reenlist the family, and the new
one-year `boots on the ground’ policy for service in
Iraq has really upset a lot of the families with whom
I’ve talked."

According to internal Pentagon surveys conducted last
spring and summer, the overall percentage of troops
intending to reenlist remained steady from last year,
at 58 percent. But among those serving in Iraq, only 54
percent who were surveyed agreed, while 46 percent said
they did not want to reenlist.

Michael O’Hanlon, a defense specialist at the
Washington-based Brookings Institution, called the
figures "at the threshold of tolerable. In and of
themselves they’re not catastrophic, but the problem is
they could get worse because as people increasingly
confirm the reality of returning to Iraq another time
these numbers can be expected to drop further. If you
wait too long to address the trends, then it’s too
late."

In 2003, the Army’s retention goal was 67 percent.

Like the recruiting shortfall in the Guard, the
unexpected drop in the Reserve’s 2003 retention was
offset by stronger than expected recruiting.

The Army, which oversees the bulk of troops in Iraq, is
not the only branch of the armed services facing
hardships in recruitment and retention because of the
Iraq war.

Air Force Major Joe Allegretti, chief of the Defense
Department’s Joint Recruiting Advertising Program,
cited a poll of youths conducted from April through
June in which half said the war in Iraq made them less
likely to join the military, and only one-third said it
made them more likely to join.

Sergeant Major James Vales, senior Army counselor in
charge of overseeing active-duty retention policy, said
his shop of 740 career counselors has been answering
concerns from members of Congress and Army leaders
about trying to prevent a talent drain.

"We have some things in the works to kind of offset any
problems that we may see in retention," Vales said,
citing options ranging from family-friendly policies
like support groups and child care to his most
important tool: cash. "Most of [the effort] is
increasing our retention bonus dollars. . . . The
biggest thing soldiers respond to is monetary
incentives."

Reserve and Guard leaders are working to improve
relations with stateside families by setting up support
networks, including "marriage enhancement seminars" run
through the Army Reserve’s chaplaincy and designed to
address such issues as long separations during
deployments.

Guard leaders also have sent teams into Iraq to work on
the problem. Several soldiers spread between Iraq and
Kuwait try to act as trouble- shooters for unhappy
Guard members, checking back twice weekly with Guard
headquarters in the United States, said Colonel Frank
Grass, the Guard’s chief of operations.

And thanks to "stop loss," members of the Guard and
Reserve cannot leave the military until 90 days after
they have been deactivated.

Robert Schlesinger can be reached at
schlesinger@globe.com.