Shek

Washington Post
December 18, 2005
Pg. 27

GIs In Iraq Choosing To Re-Up

Army Exceeding Retention Goals as Recruitment Suffers

By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer

BUHRIZ, Iraq -- It was nearing midnight as Pfc. Nicholas Outen and his platoon moved silently down an alley in this Sunni enclave of canals and palm groves, on a night of raiding houses with the Iraqi police. The patrol paused, and Outen had just crouched at a street corner when a large blast threw him backward.

"I saw a flash and a boom and was smashed against the wall," recalled Outen, 20, of Baltimore. His shoulder was ripped by shrapnel from a bomb that exploded 15 feet away, killing an Iraqi policeman. Five in Outen's platoon were wounded, including his team leader, Sgt. Nathan Rohrbaugh, who lay bleeding on top of him.

The Nov. 17 attack would draw together an already tightknit platoon, now on its second tour in Iraq. For Outen, it was doubly significant: On the same day that he became eligible for a Purple Heart, he reenlisted in the U.S. Army.

Across Iraq, U.S. soldiers risking their lives daily in combat are also re-upping by the thousands, bolstering the Army's flagging manpower at a time when many young Americans are unwilling to serve. Since 2001, the Army has surpassed its retention targets by wider margins each year, showing an unexpectedly robust ability to retain soldiers in a time of war. While the force is facing a shortfall in recruitment of new soldiers, it raised its retention goal this year by 8,000 people and still exceeded it, with nearly 70,000 soldiers, or 108 percent of the target, choosing to stay in the Army.

On palace rooftops and pockmarked streets, GIs are reenlisting in rituals that range from dramatic to harrowing. Soldiers have taken the oath in gaudy former residences of Saddam Hussein and in the spider hole near Tikrit where the gray-bearded fugitive was captured in December 2003. One cavalryman reenlisted on a median of Baghdad's treacherous airport road; others made the pledge during a lull in fighting in the battle for Fallujah in November 2004.

More than 4,000 soldiers from Outen's 3rd Infantry Division have reenlisted in the past year, including 117 who raised their hands together at a mass ceremony north of Baghdad in April. The division, whose tanks spearheaded the U.S. invasion in 2003, was the first to serve two tours in Iraq. Even so, this year it chalked up the highest retention rate among the Army's 10 active-duty divisions, hitting 137 percent of its goal.

To be sure, the hardship of repeated, year-long combat tours away from families is discouraging some soldiers, and retention is likely to slip among lower-ranking officers and enlisted soldiers, who bear the brunt of grueling overseas assignments, according to Army officials and military analysts. To compensate, the Army this year offered new deployment bonuses and career incentives for soldiers who chose to stay, doling out tens of millions of dollars in tax-free payments. Meanwhile, sergeants tasked with persuading soldiers to re-up are working overtime to meet bigger quotas.

"You tell the career counselor to get aggressive," said Sgt. Maj. Scott Kuhar, the Army's senior reenlistment sergeant. "He just rucks up and does it."

Despite the risk and long months away from home, many soldiers such as Outen say serving in Iraq gives them a powerful sense of purpose, a chance to use their skills and cement a bond with fellow soldiers who become like an extended family. Outen's infantry unit, Bayonet Company of 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, has lost three soldiers and received more than a dozen Purple Hearts and awards for valor. Yet the company of about 150 men met its retention goal two months early in 2005.

At a dusty base in Baqubah, a city on the Diyala River just north of Buhriz, Outen tended to his wound and reflected on his reasons for staying in the Army. "I'm only good at a few things -- camping in the woods and shooting a weapon. So I figure I can use my talents," said Outen, a member of his high school marksmanship team.

"The pay is decent, you have benefits, they help you with legal problems," he said. "It's kind of like having a big brother watching out for you all the time."

Outen knows "without a doubt " that he will be back in Iraq. But he manages to find a bright side even to being wounded. As a Purple Heart recipient, "I'll get free license plates for life."

Reasons to Stay Put

For Sgt. Scott Brown, duty in Iraq is -- above all -- a steady job.

"I reenlisted because I have two girls at home," Brown, 37, of Saginaw, Mich., said as he pulled on his body armor and headed out on a midmorning patrol with Bayonet Company in Baqubah's Tahrir neighborhood. "This is a good way to support my family."

Brown said he tried leaving the Army once for civilian life in the mid-1990s, driving a forklift for an ACE Hardware store in Seattle, but found it lacking. "You didn't have a lot of benefits," he said. "It's pretty hard out there if you don't have something lined up." He recently signed up for another six years, earning a bonus of $17,500.

Brown is typical of many mid-career soldiers who have already spent six to 10 years in the Army and plan to stay until the 20-year retirement mark. About four-fifths of the eligible soldiers in this category are reenlisting today, a figure that rises to 90 percent for those who have served more than 10 years. As they rise in rank, soldiers such as Brown gain opportunities to go to school or serve as recruiters or drill sergeants -- cutting down on the frequency of deployments. "I hope to avoid coming back over here for a while," Brown said.

In contrast, the Army's junior enlisted soldiers -- as well as younger officers -- have far fewer options for escaping multiple Iraq rotations, a factor leading some to quit the military, Army officials say. For both groups, retention rose after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but is now declining.

About half of the Army's enlisted soldiers now reenlist after their first term. More lieutenants and captains are also leaving the Army, as attrition among them rose from a historic low of 6.3 percent in 2003 to 8.5 percent this year.

Col. Mark Patterson, chief of officer retention for the Army, said retention rates are simply returning to where they stood before the Sept. 11 attacks, which stirred "a patriotic fever." Yet anecdotal evidence from Army officers in several units in Iraq suggests that an exodus of junior officers is possible in coming months, with 80 to 100 percent of eligible junior officers in some battalions planning to get out.

"It's pretty prevalent" for junior officers to leave, said Lt. Colby Pepon, 26, of Granbury, Tex., a platoon leader with Bayonet Company. "They've been in four years and spent two and a half over here. They put their careers on the back burner because they can't go to school. They're away from their families. Being over here really locks you down."

To entice officers to stay, the Army is promoting lieutenants and captains more quickly. It is also offering incentives such as graduate school, choice of specialty or choice of Army post for those who agree to serve three more years. "We're concerned about young officers. They're very marketable, very talented folk," said a senior Army officer in Iraq.

For enlisted soldiers, the Army this year announced several new bonuses for those who agree to stay in. These include up to $15,000 for deployed soldiers, which was boosted to $22,500 between July and September in an effort to make up for the Army's recruiting shortfall. New bonuses of up to $50,000 were offered to soldiers with vital skills who stay in beyond 20 years. On average, soldiers who reenlist are receiving bonuses of $6,000 to $12,000, according to Army personnel data. In 2005, soldiers in Outen's battalion received a total of more than $1.1 million in bonuses.

When monetary incentives fail, Army retention sergeants in Iraq say they resort to old-fashioned styles of persuasion, such as poking holes in a soldier's plans for making a living in the civilian world.

"You sit down and you pry the information out of them and make them show you," said Sgt. Maj. Craig T. Lott, the 3rd Infantry Division's senior sergeant for retention, his specialty for the past 18 years. "Are they marketable? Do they have skill sets? Have they looked at medical benefits? Are they prepared for major expenses?"

At Bayonet Company, 1st Sgt. Gaston learned that one of his infantrymen, Spec. Adam Tutor, 22, of Fredericksburg, Va., planned to leave the Army to attend college and then work at the FBI. But Gaston convinced Tutor that with a 16-month-old son and his wife pregnant, reenlisting was a more realistic way to support his family.

"It's so expensive . . . to live in Northern Virginia," Tutor acknowledged as he recovered from a foot injury at the Baqubah base. Tutor plans to reenlist for another four years.

A Defining Moment

Sgt. Colton Ryan Neal stood before the Never Forget Garden Memorial -- a tiny plot of grass meticulously kept alive amid the gravel, armored vehicles and dirt barricades of his Baqubah base -- and raised his right hand. Engraved on a plaque behind him were the names of three fellow soldiers from Bayonet Company, which is why he chose this spot to reenlist for six years.

"Those are the real heroes right there," said Neal, 21, of Jacksonville, Fla., who wears a metal band on his wrist for each of his fallen comrades.

Surrounded by his platoon, Neal said he had planned to leave the Army but changed his mind after coming to Iraq. "We've had plenty of IEDs [bomb explosions] and firefights together, shooting over each other's shoulder. That pulls you together," he said.

"I wouldn't say I love them any more" than family, he said, "but I don't love them any less."

Spec. Gary Orvis, a Bayonet Company medic and former firefighter from Titusville, Fla., recalls the mid-November clash in Buhriz as one of the moments that define why he's in the Army.

After the bomb exploded, Orvis, 30, was kneeling under a rain of dust and debris when, out of the darkness, he heard cries of "Doc! Doc!"

"It was bloodcurdling," he recalled.

Orvis rushed toward the voices almost robotically, checklists of treatment running through his head. "What do I got? What do I got?" he shouted. Then he saw his good friend Rohrbaugh, a boisterous, red-haired West Virginian, sprawled on top of Outen. "Seeing your best friend opened up on the ground . . ." he said, his eyes welling up.

Orvis stayed calm, quickly stopped the bleeding and saved Rohrbaugh, who is now recovering at Fort Benning, Ga.

Later, Orvis, Outen and others would joke about the fact that Rohrbaugh, too, was scheduled to reenlist just two days after the attack -- with all of Bayonet Company on guard -- in the middle of downtown Buhriz.

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"So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3