Military Recruitment--the lost art of

Man alive, I am having a very hard time trying to figure out what is going on with military recruiting today. Let me take you back a few years to the early 1970s. Back then the government had installed a sort of military draft selection lottery. Every day of the year was assigned a number, supposedly random, that was an indication of when you would be selected to join a branch of the military and prepare for a nice all-inclusive trip to Southeast Asia.

While how the numbers were picked for the associated days of the year is suspect, most of us knew that a low number was not as good as a high number if your goal was to avoid military service. Some friends back in those days whose numbers were lower than 100 opted instead to join a branch of service rather than be drafted. At least, that way they weren’t stuck in a line with some drill instructor passing by and assigning the new recruits to different branches of service by saying: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and so on.

Getting into military service back then was a piece of pie. No high school diploma? No problem we got a program for that. Criminal record? No problem, we got a program for that. Can’t speak English? No problem, we got a program for that. Village idiot? No problem, we got a program for that. No arms or legs? No problem, we got a program for that. Embalmed? No problem, we got a program for that.

Now, I don’t mean to say that military recruiters would take anybody, but I did see a few of them talking to life size cardboard cutouts in front of the movie theaters toward the end of the month. You know they had a quota. They had to rope in as many youngsters as they possibly could every month. For that, they got to be a “hometown recruiter” and stay back in the states, away from the nastiness of the jungle, the VC, and napalm. So given that motivator, recruiting was quick and fast and, well, loose.

Not so today.

Today it is ridiculously difficult to get a recruiter’s attention. Case in point is my youngest son Andrew. Andrew has been attempting to enlist in the Air Force for a few months now. At first, he contacted the recruiter’s office in Colonial Heights, and lo and behold, the Air Force recruiter is only here part time. The rest of the time the recruiter is pulling duty in Charlottesville. He sets up an appointment, but he can’t get a local appointment and ends up having to meet the recruiter in C-ville late on a Thursday night.

The meeting went well. He had a few things to do, like take the ASVAB and so on. He did that and scored well enough, but here is where the problem started. He could not get back in touch with his recruiter. It seems that she was getting ready to rotate out of her recruiter’s job and into whatever else it is she was doing for the Air Force. There was to be some kind of “transition” between her and the new person who was to handle his recruitment process.

I believe there was some kind of interaction between my son and this new person. He was told that the Air Force would be in touch with him. That was more than a month ago. Have we heard anything since? No. Back when I was in the Army, we called that a cluster flub.

It seems odd to me. And perhaps it’s related to all the cutbacks that we keep hearing and reading about with defense budget issues. Still, even though they are losing people it doesn’t mean they don’t need to keep the pipeline full, does it? During my entire seven years in the military, the only real constant was the continuous flow of new recruits.

It kind of makes me wonder what’s going on with recruitment today. Back when I joined the service in 1974, the only delay I experienced was the one geared toward lining up my chosen schools:  basic and advanced individual training at Fort Polk, followed by Jump School at Fort Benning. There was a slight two week break for Christmas before I had to report to Jump School.

Still, it’s almost as if the recruiters aren’t interested in new recruits. And, if that’s the case, maybe we ought to just shut down the recruitment offices and save a little money there.